The Vitamin Regimen

Marcus swallowed his morning vitamin cocktail with practiced efficiency—C, D3, omega-3, and that expensive coenzyme Q10 his cardiologist insisted would keep his heart from spontaneously detonating. At forty-seven, he'd become a connoisseur of his own mortality.

The padel court at his club was where men like him went to prove they hadn't yet surrendered to decline. His partner, Richard, was sixty-two and still moved like a predator, slicing the ball with surgical precision. They played against two younger men—finance types who talked loudly about bull markets and bear markets, their confidence undiminished by their obvious mediocrity on the court.

Marcus's phone buzzed in his bag. Sarah. Again.

'Your wife called,' Richard said, wiping sweat from his forehead. 'Everything alright?'

'She's not my wife anymore. That's sort of the problem.' Marcus served, the ball hitting the wall with a satisfying thwack. 'She wants to reconcile. Says she made a mistake.'

Richard watched the ball bounce back. 'That's a bear of a situation.'

'That's one word for it.' Marcus had spent the past six months building a life that didn't require her forgiveness for his perceived failures—the missed promotions, the quiet depressions he'd weathered instead of conquered. He'd taken up padel. He'd started the vitamins. He'd become someone who took care of things.

The finance bros high-fived after winning a point. 'BULL RUN!' one shouted, and Marcus wanted to scream.

Later, in the locker room, Richard sat on the bench beside him. 'My ex-wife wanted to come back too. Ten years after the divorce.'

'What did you do?'

'I told her no.' Richard tied his shoes with deliberate care. 'Some things break, Marcus. You can glue them back together, but they're never quite the same. The cracks stay. You learn to live with the broken version or you find something new.'

Marcus walked home slowly, stopping at the pharmacy. The same clerk who'd sold him his vitamins for months looked up. 'The usual?'

'No. Just the C.' He paused. 'Actually, nothing today.'

He called Sarah from his front porch. 'Let's talk. But I'm not coming back to who I was.'

'Bear with me,' she said, and he almost smiled at the inadequate metaphor.

'I will,' he said. 'But I'm taking vitamins now. And I play padel. And I'm done apologizing for surviving.'