What We Feed Ourselves

Marcus found his friend Rafael sitting on a crate behind the gym's vitamin aisle, staring at a bottle of pills with the intensity of someone reading a last will and testament.

"You gonna buy those or just hypnotize them?" Marcus said, dropping his duffel bag.

Rafael looked up. The fluorescent lights caught the gray in his temples — new, or maybe Marcus hadn't been paying attention. "My doctor says I need D supplements. Says my bones are basically fifty now."

"You're thirty-four."

"Thirty-five next Tuesday." Rafael pocketed the bottle. "Same age as when Jerry died."

The name hung between them like smoke. Jerry had been the third in their friendship triangle until the motorcycle accident seven years ago. Marcus still dreamed about it sometimes — the screech of tires, the impossible geometry of twisted metal, the hospital room where Rafael had sat silent for three days straight.

"You still going through with it?" Marcus asked.

"With what?"

"The promotion. Chicago."

Rafael's laugh was sharp and bitter. "You sound just like him. 'Go for it, Rafe. Don't be scared.' That was his bull, man. All this talk about seizing the day, and where did it get him? A grave in New Jersey and us in our mid-thirties, still terrified of making real moves."

Marcus sat beside him on the dusty floor. "He wasn't wrong, though. The fear doesn't mean you shouldn't go. It just means you're alive."

"What if I go and it's a mistake? What if I hate it?"

"Then you come back. Or you don't." Marcus bumped his shoulder against Rafael's. "You want my real advice? Stop trying to find the right choice. There is no right choice. There's just choosing, and living with what you chose, and being grateful you had options at all."

Rafael was quiet for a long moment. He pulled the vitamin bottle from his pocket and turned it over in his hands. "Jerry had a point. About the bull. About not waiting. I've been offered this position three times. Three times."

"And what did you tell them?"

"That I needed to think about it." Rafael's hands stilled. "I already have my answer. I just needed someone to call me on my own bullshit."

Marcus stood up and extended a hand. "So go. Chicago. Vitamin D deficiency or not."

Rafael grasped it, pulling himself up. "You'll visit?"

"After the winter. I'm not an animal."

They walked out into the evening together, the automatic doors sliding shut behind them, and somewhere in the distance, a bullhorn blared from a protest downtown — the city's persistent reminder that everything, everything, demands to be heard.