The Vitamin Counter

Marcus counted the pills on the kitchen counter—twelve vitamin supplements, arranged in military precision. The orange bottle stood out against the granite, mocking him. Elena used to organize them like this, her morning ritual before she started running with that trainer from the gym. The one with the teeth too white to be natural.

He palmed the vitamin D, dry and chalky against his tongue, and swallowed without water. This was what forty looked like: counting supplements while your marriage dissolved in slow motion.

The baseball trophy from his corporate league sat on the windowsill, coated in three months of dust. Third place, 2019. Before the promotions, before the expensive house, before they forgot how to talk to each other about anything besides quarterly goals and property taxes. He'd bear the weight of that mortgage alone now.

He checked his phone again. Still no response to the text he'd sent four hours ago: "We should talk."

Marcus had seen them yesterday outside that overpriced juice bar—Elena laughing at something the trainer said, her hand lingering on his arm. Not a mistake. Not a momentary lapse. The kind of deliberate choice that broke things beyond repair.

He'd started running then, literally, down the sidewalk in his dress shoes, coat flapping. Three blocks before he stopped, lungs burning, heart hammering with that special kind of panic that feels like dying but is really just living catching up with you.

Now the orange sunset bled across the kitchen floor, catching the trophy's faded engraving. He could stay. He could leave. He could call her and beg or scream or simply ask why the vitamins mattered more than whatever they'd lost along the way.

Instead, Marcus swept all twelve bottles into the trash. The sound was satisfying—glass and plastic clattering together, a small violence he could control.

Tomorrow he'd figure out the rest. Tomorrow he'd call a lawyer or a therapist or maybe just get a dog. For tonight, he poured two fingers of whiskey and watched the last light die, feeling something like hope, or maybe just the absence of despair.