Bear Market
The orange sunset bled into the glass of her wine, staining it the color of warning signs. Sarah watched him across the table — David, her husband of twelve years, who'd come home late again with that practiced smile that no longer reached his eyes.
"Bull market's running on fumes," he said, pouring himself a scotch. "Hedge funds are positioning for the crash."
She'd become a spy in her own marriage, six months of noticing: the encrypted messages at 2 AM, the sudden trips to "the office" on Sundays, the second phone that buzzed from his sock drawer. Sarah, who once believed love was the only portfolio that mattered, now found herself calculating the emotional deficit like a day trader counting losses.
"There's this new guy at the firm," David continued, not looking at her. "Call him the fox. Clever. Ruthless. He's betting against everything."
"Everyone's a bull until the bear wakes up," she said softly. The words hung between them — their wedding vow, spoken during the last recession. They'd promised to hold each other through market cycles, through crashes and rallies. Now she wasn't sure what kind of animal she was married to anymore.
His phone buzzed. He didn't check it, but the muscles in his jaw tightened.
"Sarah —"
"I know, David." She set down her wine glass. The orange liquid trembled. "I know about the offshore accounts. The insider trading. The fox isn't a colleague, is he? He's your exit strategy."
His face collapsed like a bad investment. "It's for us. I was going to get us out before —"
"Before the bear catches you?" She stood up, the tragedy of it washing over her — not the betrayal itself, but how small it was. How human. How utterly predictable. "You're not a bull, David. You're just another pig at the trough."
The front door clicked shut behind her. Outside, the last of the orange light faded from the sky, leaving only the bruised purple of evening. Somewhere in the distance, a train whistled — the sound of leaving, of options still open, of markets that would open again tomorrow.