The Vitamin Deficiency

Elena stood before the bathroom mirror, examining the thinning patches at her temples. Another vitamin subscription arrived yesterday — biotin, collagen, some proprietary blend promising to restore what stress had stolen. At thirty-eight, she'd assumed hair loss was a problem for later decades, not now.

"You're wearing the hat again?" Mark called from the bedroom. His tone carried that particular weariness she'd come to dread — the sound of someone no longer pretending to be patient.

"It's cold out."

"It's July, El."

She adjusted the brim, hiding the evidence. The hat had become a statement, then a crutch, now essentially part of her anatomy. They were meeting at the padel club at noon, another couple's activity meant to fix what seven years of therapy hadn't touched. Mark loved the game — the strategy, the competition, the way success depended entirely on how well you could anticipate your partner's movements. Elena mostly loved the glass walls, how they contained everything within neat boundaries.

The vitamin bottle sat on the counter like an accusation. She'd started taking them after the miscarriage, then again after Mark's promotion required those late nights at the office, each pill a tiny petition to the universe: *let me keep something.*

"Are you still mad about Saturday?" Mark appeared in the doorway, already holding his racquet.

"No."

"You said I abandoned you. At your sister's wedding."

"I said you left early."

"Same thing."

It wasn't the same. Abandonment suggested she'd needed him there. The truth was more complicated — she'd wanted him to want to be there, wanted his presence to be automatic, not something he had to be reminded to provide. The vitamins weren't working. The hat wasn't hiding anything. And somehow they were still playing padel twice a week, still having the same conversations in the car afterward, still pretending this was what they'd both chosen.

She grabbed her racquet. "Let's just go."

He touched her shoulder, and she didn't pull away. That was something, wasn't it? That was its own kind of vitamin — insufficient perhaps, but you took what you could get.