Bear Minimum

Margot stood by the hotel pool at 2 AM, clutching a bottle of vitamin D supplements like they might somehow compensate for three years of graveyard shifts and fluorescent lighting. The water rippled in the moonlight, undisturbed except for the single leaf floating like a forgotten regret.

Thirty feet away, David sat in the cabana where they'd first kissed—back when they were both junior analysts convinced they'd change the world from inside the belly of the beast. Now David was Vice President of Something That Mattered, and Margot was still taking direction from Marcus, the department bull who'd made "bear minimum" a personal philosophy.

"You're still here," David said, not looking up from his phone.

"Working on the Holloway presentation," she lied. They both knew she'd finished it hours ago.

"Marcus told me you missed the vitamin pill rollout again."

"It's a supplement, David. Not the cure for existential dread."

He finally looked at her, really looked at her, and she saw the pity she'd been avoiding for months. They'd had something real once, back when success was a shared dream instead of his reality and her deferred maintenance plan. Now he had corner office windows and she had a vitamin deficiency and a boss who called her "honey" in performance reviews while claiming market conditions forced him to bear down on costs.

"The pool's heated," David said. "We could—"

"Don't."

"Margot."

"You promoted yourself out of loving me, David. That's the ugly truth. And the uglier part is I stayed, hoping if I worked harder, if I absorbed enough abuse, if I became indispensable, you'd remember why you chose me. But I'm just another line item now."

She threw the vitamin bottle into the pool. It sank without ceremony, like her tenure, like her patience, like the woman she used to be before she learned that some people will happily bear your weight forever as long as you never ask them to carry it.

"I'm putting in my resignation tomorrow," she said, turning toward the elevator. "And David? You don't have to pretend to care. The market's always bullish on something."

The pool remained perfect, chlorinated, still—absorbing everything, keeping nothing.