Vitamin Z

The first thing Sarah noticed about Mike's affair wasn't the lipstick or the perfume—it was that his iPhone screen stayed clean. No more thumbprints smudging the glass, because he wasn't checking their messages anymore. He wasn't checking anything except, presumably, her.

Their cat, Buster, had known first. Animals always do. He'd stopped sleeping on Mike's side of the bed months ago, as if the space had become contaminated with something the animal couldn't name but wouldn't tolerate. Now Buster watched from the palm fronds in the backyard, yellow eyes judging them both as Sarah sat at the patio table with her morning smoothie and handful of vitamins.

"You're taking enough supplements to kill a horse," Mike said, appearing in the sliding glass door. He looked terrible—hollow-cheeked, eyes rimmed with exhaustion. The irony wasn't lost on her: he was the one with the secret new life, yet she was the one trying to chemically enhance hers.

"Better living through chemistry," Sarah said, swallowing another vitamin D capsule. "Unlike some people, I don't have a natural source of excitement these days."

Mike flinched. Good.

"We need to talk," he said.

"About what? About how we've both been zombies for three years? About how the only thing keeping us together was inertia and a shared mortgage?" Sarah's voice cracked, surprising her. She'd thought she was past the stage where her body betrayed her like this. "Or about how you found someone who made you feel something again, and instead of being honest, you just... checked out?"

"Sarah."

"Don't." She stood up, knocking over the vitamin bottle. Orange pills scattered across the patio stones like accidental confetti. "Just go. Pack your things. Take the cat—he likes you better anyway."

"Buster hates me," Mike said quietly. "That's how I knew you knew."

The silence between them stretched, heavy and suffocating, like the humidity before a tropical storm. From the palm tree above, Buster let out a mournful yowl.

"What are we?" Sarah asked finally. Not what went wrong, not who did what. Just—what.

Mike looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time in months. "We're the ones who stayed," he said. "Even after we were already gone."