Vitamin P for Paradise
The padel court reflected the sun like glass, each ball's echo punctuating the silence. Mark adjusted his grip, sweat slick on the racquet handle. Across the net, Elena adjusted her sunglasses—those expensive ones from last Christmas, before everything turned brittle.
"You still play like a bull," she said, not quite smiling. "Charging at everything."
The word stung. A bull—what his therapist had called him, right before prescribing vitamin supplements for stress. Little capsules to contain what was leaking out of him.
Palm fronds rustled above, casting shadows. They were at a Mexican resort—a last effort funded by joint savings Elena insisted on draining before finalizing the paperwork.
"Serve," she said. He hit the ball toward her backhand. She missed.
They'd been playing for three hours, neither willing to quit first. Their marriage had become emotional endurance tests disguised as casual games.
"You forgot your vitamins this morning," she said between volleys. "Saw the bottle on the nightstand."
He hadn't forgotten. He'd stopped taking them two weeks ago—some small rebellion against the routine that had sustained them for fifteen years.
"I'm fine," he said, hitting the ball harder.
She returned it fluidly, everything he wasn't. "You're not fine. You're a bull without a ring. All that energy and nowhere to charge."
The sun set behind the palm trees, bruising the sky. He remembered sitting beneath palms in CancĂşn a decade ago, making promises that now felt like artifacts from another civilization.
"I took them," he lied. "Every damn vitamin."
She didn't respond, just hit the ball back. The score was irrelevant. They were two people sweating out the last moments of something once felt like everything.
"You know what I miss most?" Elena asked suddenly, letting the ball drop untouched. "The me who believed love could survive anything, even my own nature."
Mark stood there, racquet lowered. A bull who'd finally stopped charging. A man who'd stopped pretending that vitamins or vacations could repair what two people had spent fifteen years breaking.
"Yeah," he said. "Me too."
Behind them, palm fronds whispered in the evening breeze, sounding less like secrets and more like something finally letting go.