Wellness and Other Lies

Maya stood in the supplements aisle, staring at the amber plastic bottles. Vitamin D for the darkness that had settled in her bones since Leo moved out. B-complex for the frayed edges of her patience. Magnesium for the sleep that refused to come without his warmth beside her. She dropped them into her basket with practiced desperation, like someone trying to buy back a life that had already been sold.

"You look like shit," Sarah said, sliding into the booth across from her. They hadn't spoken since the funeral—that weird, suspended period where grief makes everyone either too close or impossibly far. Sarah had chosen far.

Maya adjusted the oversized fedora she'd stolen from Leo's closet, its brim casting a shadow over eyes that had learned too much about crying in public. "You look expensive."

"The new job pays for therapy and good wine." Sarah signaled the waitress. "Remember when we promised to never become those people who only get drinks twice a year and talk about nothing real?"

"I remember." The vitamins sat heavy in Maya's purse, a pocket pharmacy against the realization that some things can't be fixed. That wellness was mostly just coping dressed up in rose gold packaging. That she was still wearing her ex-husband's hat three months later, carrying around a piece of someone who hadn't wanted to be kept.

Sarah reached across the table, her fingers brushing Maya's wrist. "I'm sorry I disappeared. Some kinds of sadness felt too contagious, and I was already drowning."

The waitress arrived. They ordered mimosas—orange juice as its own kind of vitamin, champagne to make the truth go down easier. Outside, the world kept turning, indifferent to the small ways people tried to heal. Maya took off the hat and ran her fingers through hair that needed washing. Some things, she decided, didn't need supplements. They just needed to be felt, in all their messy, inadequately medicated glory.

"Stay," she said. "Let's talk about everything real."

Sarah smiled, and for the first time in months, Maya felt something the supplements couldn't provide: the terrifying, necessary weight of being known.