The Vitamin Conspiracy

The cat watched him from the windowsill—Mittens had that judging look cats perfect when they know something you don't. David uncapped another vitamin D supplement, the gel capsule gleaming like a tiny amber sun between his fingers. Forty-two years old and he'd reduced his existence to pills, morning routines, and the hollow ache of a king-sized bed slept in alone.

"You're staring at me again," he told the cat. Mittens blinked, slow and deliberate.

The bull—that's what Marcus called his stock portfolio strategy when they met for padel on Tuesdays. "Ride the bull or get trampled, mate." Marcus, who still had hair, whose wife still laughed at his jokes, whose life seemed to follow some upward trajectory David's had derailed from somewhere around his second divorce. The sport itself had become this weird ritual of pretend athleticism among men who made six figures and paid strangers to mow their lawns. They'd smack the ball around, sweat in their expensive gear, and talk about crypto or property markets or whatever distraction kept them from noticing the fraying edges of their lives.

"She kept the dog," Sarah had said in the lawyer's office, like it was just another item on the inventory sheet. The dog—Barnaby, a golden retriever who'd greeted him at the door for seven years—was now hers. The house in Malvern was hers. Half his pension, hers.

What remained: vitamins, a condo with west-facing windows, Mittens (Sarah's cat, somehow now his), and padel with Marcus.

David swallowed the vitamin with lukewarm coffee. His phone buzzed—Sarah. Something about Barnaby having surgery on his ACL, did he want to contribute? Did he want to see him one last time before the operation?

The cat jumped from the sill, landed silently on the hardwood. David watched it stretch, that liquid movement cats made look effortless. He thought about Barnaby's clumsy enthusiasm, the way the dog had always made him feel like he'd been gone for years even when he'd just popped out for milk. Thought about Sarah crying in their kitchen two months ago, saying she'd stopped feeling seen somewhere around year five.

He typed back: What time?

Some victories, he realized, were just different kinds of defeat. But Barnaby deserved someone there. Some things still mattered.