Bear Market Heart

The first time Elena called herself a zombie, we were in bed at 2 AM, both scrolling through work emails on our phones like addicts seeking a final hit before the comedown.

"I feel like I'm running on fumes," she said, not looking at me. "Just a corporate zombie shuffling between meetings."

I should have kissed her then. Should have put the phone down and told her she was still the woman I'd fallen in love with eight years ago, the one who danced in grocery store aisles and talked about opening that bakery she'd dreamed of since culinary school. Instead I checked my portfolio and saw we were officially in a bear market, and muttered something about volatility being a buying opportunity.

The invitation to the padel club came from Marcus, my boss, whose wife had apparently decided that weekly matches would be excellent for networking. Elena went along with it, the way she'd gone along with the suburban house and the SUV and the life that looked perfect on Instagram but felt increasingly like we were both actors who'd forgotten our lines.

She was good at padel—better than me, graceful and fierce in a way I hadn't seen in years. I watched her across the court, hair pulled back, face flushed with actual life, and felt something sharp and guilty in my chest.

"You've got a bull in you," Marcus said afterward, clapping me on the shoulder at the clubhouse bar. "Market turns and you dig in. I like that about you, David." He ordered another round. "But Elena—she's something else. She seems tired, doesn't she?"

The way he said it—too knowing, too intimate—made the back of my neck prickle. I'd seen them talking during breaks, leaning in close, her laughing at something he'd said. Not the polite laugh she gave clients, but something real.

That night, I asked her about Marcus.

"He listens," she said, not meeting my eyes. "He asks about the bakery. About what I wanted before I became your wife and a zombie and whatever else this life requires."

"So you're running off with my boss?" I asked, and immediately hated how petty it sounded.

"No," she said quietly. "But I thought about it. The problem isn't that I want to be with someone else. The problem is I don't remember who I am when I'm not with you."

She packed a bag the next morning. Not her things—just a small overnight bag, like she was leaving for the weekend, not forever.

"I'm going to stay with Sarah for a few days," she said. "I'm going to bake bread. I'm going to sleep until I wake up naturally. I'm going to remember what it feels like to not be running on a hamster wheel."

"Is this about Marcus?" I asked again.

"This is about the zombie," she said. "And about how the only time I've felt alive in three years was on that padel court, and that's not enough anymore."

The market continued its bear slide. Marcus stopped inviting me to matches. I sat in our bedroom at 2 AM, scrolling through emails I didn't care about, feeling like a zombie myself, and understood too late that love isn't something you earn and then keep forever like a promotion. It's something you have to choose, every single day, preferably before the person you love becomes a ghost in their own life.

I wondered if she was making bread somewhere. If she was sleeping. If she was still angry.

Mostly, I wondered if it was too late to put down the phone and ask her what she dreamed about now, eight years and a lifetime later.