Vitamin Water on the Court

The neon yellow bottle sat on the bench—Vitamin C enhanced, immune support, Eleanor read the label while pretending to stretch her hamstring. Three months since the diagnosis. Three months of supplements and optimism and everyone telling her how great she looked.

"You're staring at that bottle like it owes you money."

She looked up. Julian stood at the baseline of the padel court, racquet loose in his hand. Same crooked smile. Those ridiculous tracking shorts. He hadn't aged in the five years since she'd walked out of his apartment with nothing but a plant she forgot to water.

"Just thinking about how they marketed this to people like me," Eleanor said. "Fear in a bottle."

"You drink actual water?" He tapped his own plastic bottle against the fence. "Tastes better."

They played. She'd forgotten how much padel demanded—shorter court than tennis, the walls coming into play, angles that appeared and vanished like old memories. Her muscles protested. Her breath came shorter than she remembered.

Julian didn't mention the treatments. Didn't ask about prognosis. Just kept feeding her balls she had to chase, making her work for every point, making her sweat and curse and feel something besides the cold dread that had lived under her breastbone since January.

Game point. Eleanor ran for a ball she had no business reaching, her racquet finding sweet spot, the ball kissing the glass wall and dropping dead.

She leaned over her knees, oxygen starvation making her dizzy, laughing.

Julian tossed her a water bottle. Not hers. His.

She drank. Nothing else. Just water and salt and the taste of being alive, being here, being almost thirty and terrified and so grateful it hurt like a bruise.

"Same time next week?" he asked, not looking at her, like it meant nothing. Like it meant everything.

"See you then," she said.

The vitamins could wait. The water was enough.