TheExpiration Date

Marcus stood on the balcony of his corporate apartment, staring at the bottle of vitamin supplements on the counter. His forty-fifth birthday loomed like a storm cloud, and somewhere along the line, he'd started believing that if he could just optimize his biology—vitamin D3, magnesium, omega-3—he could outrun mortality.

He'd been running from something since college, though he couldn't name what. Perhaps it was the way his father had died suddenly at forty-seven, heart giving out during a Sunday afternoon baseball game. Marcus had stopped watching baseball after that. The crack of the bat, the leisurely rhythm—it all felt too fragile now.

"You're out there again," Elena called from inside. She was thirty-three, vibrant, played padel three times a week with friends who still said things like "living my best life." Marcus loved her desperately, hopelessly, the way a drowning man clings to driftwood.

"Just thinking," he said.

"About the merger?"

"About time."

The bull—his board director, a man named Richard who actually collected vintage bullfighting posters—had been pushing Marcus out for months. Richard moved through the office like he was already dancing with death, graceful and predatory. "You're tired, Marcus," Richard had told him last week. "No vitamin supplement can fix that."

He'd been right. Marcus was tired of running from the ghost of his father, tired of pretending that success could insulate him from loss, tired of the way his hands shook when he held Elena's and thought: someday, this ends.

Elena stepped onto the balcony, wrapping her arms around his waist. "My padel partner cancelled tomorrow. Come play with me?"

"I don't know how."

"I'll teach you. It's like tennis, but smaller. Faster."

Marcus looked at the vitamin bottle, then at the city lights flickering like dying stars. He took Elena's hand—steady, warm, terrifyingly alive.

"Okay," he said. "Teach me."

For the first time in twenty years, he stopped running.