Bull Market Heart

The vitamin D sat on her desk like an accusation. Maria had been taking them every morning for three years, ever since Dr. Patel said her levels were 'concerning for a woman your age.' Thirty-five, and already her body was betraying her.

Her iPhone buzzed—David. Again.

'Can we talk?'

She stared at the message until the screen dimmed. Six months ago, they'd been discussing engagement rings over artisanal cocktails. Now David worked for Apollo Capital, and she worked for the cable company's regulatory compliance team—on opposite sides of the acquisition deal that had somehow consumed both their lives.

The office was quiet at 8 PM. Only the hum of the server room and the distant clicking of the cleaning crew's vacuum. Her cat, Buster, was presumably home alone, probably knocking her water glass off the nightstand again. She should be there. Instead, she was reviewing cross-ownership structures.

'Your client's being a bull about the divestiture terms,' David had told her yesterday in the conference room, his corporate lawyer voice sliding into something more personal. 'They want to keep the regional markets.'

'They're not my client,' she'd snapped. 'I just process the paperwork.'

But it wasn't just paperwork, and they both knew it. The cable company was her father's legacy—twenty years of climbing telephone poles in Chicago winters before he'd saved enough to buy a contracting business. Now it was being absorbed, and she was helping dismantle it, paragraph by paragraph.

Her iPhone lit up again. Not David this time.

'Miss me?'

Raj from the M&A team down the hall. They'd slept together twice since David moved out. Once in the supply closet, once after happy hour. Both times, she'd pretended to be drunker than she was.

The vitamin D bottle caught the light from her desk lamp. She remembered her father's hands—rough, scarred, always smelling of copper and cold air. He'd given her this job. He'd given her this life.

She deleted Raj's message. She deleted David's too.

The bull would have to wait. The markets would open tomorrow with or without her approval. Buster would definitely knock over that water glass. And she would take her vitamin, because that's what you did when you were thirty-five and certain you'd forgotten how to want anything at all.

Maria turned off her phone and went home to feed the cat.