The Vitamin Collection

The hat was the first thing I noticed—a battered fedora perched on Maya's desk, unmistakably mine. I'd left it at the office holiday party three months ago, when half the marketing department was too drunk to find their coats, let alone their accessories.

"Found it in the lost and found," Maya said without looking up from her spreadsheet. "Been meaning to return it."

Maya, my desk neighbor for two years. My friend, or so I'd thought. The person who'd listened to me cry about my promotion going to David instead of me. The same David I'd seen leaving Maya's apartment last Tuesday, his hand lingering on her lower back just a moment too long.

I didn't mention David. I didn't mention how I'd started noticing things—the shared glances in meetings, how they always arrived together, the way she knew his coffee order better than I knew my own husband's.

Instead, I reached for the hat and my gaze caught on the array of bottles beside her keyboard. Prenatal vitamins. Expensive ones, the kind you had to special order.

"Congratulations," I said, my voice strangely steady.

Maya's fingers froze. "What?"

"The vitamins. I didn't know you and Marcus were trying."

Her husband's name was Marcus. They'd been trying for eighteen months, she'd told me over tears and cheap wine in October. She'd confided how much it hurt, how isolated she felt, how she worried Marcus would leave her for someone fertile, someone whole.

"Oh." Maya's face went pale. "Thanks."

"David's going to be thrilled," I added, watching her carefully.

The silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating. I thought about all the coffees we'd shared, all the secrets I'd spilled. I thought about how friendship is often just mutual convenience, how loyalty dissolves under the right pressure.

"Elena—" she started.

"Keep the hat," I said, turning toward my desk. "It looks better on you anyway."

That evening, I deleted all our photos together. Not because she'd slept with David. But because she'd let me pour my heart out about him for months while she was climbing into his bed, all while I comforted her about her infertility struggles.

Some vitamins are meant to sustain life. Others just help you swallow the bitter things.