Vitamins and Variations

Forty-two years old and Marcus was still chasing impossible returns on the padel court, his knees screaming in protest every time he pivoted. Across the net, Elena moved with predatory grace, her racket slicing through the humid air like she was hunting something vital.

"You're playing like a bear fresh from hibernation," she called out, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. There was no malice in it—just the comfortable cruelty of a twelve-year marriage reduced to weekend sport and evening silences.

Marcus laughed, a short dry sound. His doctor had handed him a prescription for vitamin D supplements that morning, another acknowledgment that his body was slowly declaring its independence. "Maybe I need more vitamins. More sunlight. Less this."

"Less us?" Elena's racket paused mid-swing.

"Less everything."

A fox darted along the perimeter fence, stopping to watch them with ancient, indifferent eyes. Marcus found himself envying its simple agenda—survival, hunger, sleep. No mortgages, no suppressed conversations about whether they should try again, no slowly accumulating evidence that they'd become strangers who shared a bed and a Netflix subscription.

"My mother called," Elena said, suddenly vulnerable in the way she only was after exercising, when her guard was down alongside her body temperature. "She asked if we're still happy."

"What did you say?"

"I said happiness is a vitamin deficiency. Fixable."

Marcus walked to the net. The fox had vanished, but the gap between them felt bridgeable for the first time in months. "Maybe some things aren't deficiencies. Maybe they're just evolutions."

"Into what?" She wasn't mocking him. She was asking.

"People who remember why they chose each other. People who might choose differently now, but don't regret the first choice."

Elena's smile was cautious, like testing ice on a frozen pond. "I still choose you, Marcus. Even when you play like a bear."

"Even when you're fox-cunning and I never see the twist coming?" He extended his hand across the net.

"Especially then."

Their palms were damp, grips calloused from years of holding onto things that wanted to get away. The fox was gone, the vitamins waited at home, the bear in him lumbered toward a quieter hibernation. For now, they held on.