The Vitamin Water Fix

The score was 14-14. Elena's palm sweated against the padel racket as she watched Marco serve. His iPhone had buzzed three times during the match—each vibration another crack in the already fractured glass between them.

He missed. The ball sailed wide.

"Sorry," he muttered, glancing at his phone again. "Work."

"It's Saturday, Marco."

"It's always something." He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "Water break?"

She nodded, following him to the bench where they'd left their things. His vitamin supplements sat next to his phone—calcium, magnesium, D3, some expensive cocktail of wellness he'd started taking after his panic attack three months ago. The panic attack he'd never actually talked about.

"You're going to lose me," Elena said, her voice quiet but steady. The words hung between them, heavier than the humidity.

Marco froze, his water bottle halfway to his lips. "What?"

"The phone. The job. The vitamins. You're treating your life like something to be optimized, not lived. I can't do it anymore."

He set the bottle down carefully. Too carefully. "Elena, I'm doing this for us. The promotion, the supplements—"

"Since when did 'us' mean checking emails during padel? Since when did loving you require me to compete with your screen?" She felt the sting of tears but didn't let them fall. "You think you can fix everything with the right combination of vitamins and hustle? Some things aren't deficiencies to be corrected."

Marco's phone buzzed again. This time, he didn't look.

"I'm scared," he said finally. "That if I stop running, everything falls apart."

"It already has." Elena picked up her racket. "Finish the game. Then we'll talk."

The sun beat down on the padel court. Marco served again, and this time, his phone stayed on the bench.