Vitamin D Deficiency

The padel court smelled of rubber and dust, the way all courts do at six in the evening when the sun gives up and the lights flicker on. Jonas stood at the net, sweating through his shirt, watching Sarah bend to retrieve a ball. She'd been different lately - sharper, quicker, like she'd started taking some supplement he didn't know about.

"Your vitamins," he said, not really a question.

She straightened, racquet loose in her hand. "What about them?"

"You're taking them again. The ones that made you jittery last time."

"They're different now." She served without waiting for his response. The ball skipped off the back wall, impossible to return. She'd always been better at padel - more athletic, less willing to let things slide. But this was something else. She was playing like someone who'd suddenly remembered she could lose.

Jonas thought about the way she'd looked at him over breakfast that morning, vitamins lined up on the counter like ammunition. He was bearing it, that was the thing. Bearing the weight of what he hadn't said, what she hadn't asked. The affair had ended eight months ago, but infidelity has a half-life - it keeps radiating long after the source is gone.

"I saw him," Sarah said, hitting a forehand that clipped the line. "At the coffee shop. With someone else."

The air between them crystallized. This was the fox in the henhouse they'd both been pretending not to hear.

"He looked happy," she continued, voice flat. "Like people who've never done what they've done. Like people who deserve to be happy."

Jonas wanted to tell her that everyone deserves happiness, that he'd spent six months trying to deserve her again. But the words felt thick in his throat, like something that might choke him. Instead he watched a fox emerge from the brush beyond the court - a real one, copper-colored and impossible, padding through the shadows like it owned everything.

"Sarah," he said, and something broke in his voice.

She stopped. The fox stopped. The world narrowed to the space between them, the rubber particles suspended in the air.

"I don't want to play anymore," she said.

Not the game. She didn't want to play at forgiveness, at recovery, at the careful choreography they'd been performing since everything fell apart. The vitamins weren't vitamins at all - they were exit strategies, insurance, backup plans for when pretending became too exhausting to sustain.

Jonas understood, finally. He'd been bearing the wrong weight. He should have been bearing witness.

"Okay," he said.

The fox melted into the darkness. Sarah walked to the bench where her bag waited, vitamins clicking together in their plastic bottle. Jonas stood alone on the court, holding a racquet that had suddenly become too heavy to lift.