Vitamin Season

The vitamin supplements sat in their orange plastic organizer on the kitchen counter — a weekly regiment of hope that Elena swallowed without thinking. D3 for the darkness that had settled in her chest. B-complex for the energy she no longer felt. Magnesium for the sleep that wouldn't come. Outside, the August heat pressed against the windows like something alive.

"You coming?" Mark called from the driveway. "We have the court at seven."

Padel. Their Thursday ritual. The game they'd learned together in that first flush of relationship, when everything seemed possible and winning felt like something they could do together, not to each other. Elena grabbed her water bottle — the condensation already beading on the plastic, weeping for what she was about to do.

The court was enclosed in glass, like a terrarium for their failing marriage. As they played, Elena watched Mark across the net: his shirt clinging to his back, his grunts of effort, the way he chased every ball like his life depended on it. He was still beautiful. That was the problem.

"You're distracted," he said, after she missed an easy volley. The ball bounced away toward the fence.

"Just tired." The lie tasted like copper.

That's when she saw it — a fox at the edge of the court, watching them through the glass. Its russet coat gleamed in the floodlights, and something about its stillness, its amber regard, made her stop. It was the most alive thing she'd seen in months.

"Mark. Look."

He turned. The fox held their gaze for three heartbeats, elegant and unimpressed, then slipped away into the darkness beyond the court.

"Cool," Mark said, turning back. "Your serve."

Elena stood there, racket dangling from her hand. The fox had known something they didn't. About when to leave, about the dignity of departure, about not overstaying your welcome in places that can no longer hold you.

"I can't do this anymore," she said.

Mark froze. The ball in his hand dropped to the court, bounced once, twice. "What?"

"Us. The vitamins. The pretending. Any of it." She took a drink of water, swallowing past the thickness in her throat. The liquid was cold and clean, and for the first time in a year, something tasted real.

"Here? Now?"

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

The glass walls reflected them back at themselves: two people in a cage of their own making, surrounded by the evidence of everything they'd built and everything they'd lost. Somewhere beyond the fence, the fox was moving through the world, wild and unencumbered, taking nothing with it but its own survival.

Elena walked to the gate and pushed it open. The night air rushed in, heavy with the scent of approaching rain. Behind her, Mark said her name, but she kept walking toward the parking lot, toward whatever came next, toward a life she would have to learn to live alone.