Bull Market, Sweaty Palms

Sarah's palms were sweating again. She wiped them on her charcoal skirt, staring at the Bloomberg terminal as the numbers flashed red, then green, then something in between. Three years of bull markets had made her office's trading floor feel like a roman arena—cheers when she won, silence when she stumbled. Today, the crowd wasn't cheering.

"Your call, Sarah," her boss Marcus said, leaning against her desk with that predatory grin that had earned him the nickname "the bull." He thrived on chaos. Sarah just wanted to survive it.

The palm reader she'd visited on a whim during lunch break had been annoyingly vague. "You're at a crossroads," the woman had said, tracing the line on Sarah's hand. "Running away won't help. Running toward something might."

Sarah had laughed it off, dropped twenty bucks, and returned to the office. But now, watching the stock she'd shorted climb steadily upward, those words echoed. She could double down. She could cut her losses. Or she could do something entirely different.

"Sarah?" Marcus's voice sharpened. "The position?"

She looked at her palms—no longer sweating. She looked at the screens, at Marcus, at the corner office she'd spent ten years chasing. The bull market had made everyone rich, but it had made her something she barely recognized.

"I'm out," Sarah said, standing up. "Not just the position. The whole thing."

Marcus stared at her like she'd grown a second head. "You're kidding. You're three months from bonus season."

"I know." She walked to her desk, pulled out the family photo she kept propped against her monitor, and grabbed her bag. "I've got something better to run toward."

"What could possibly be better than—"

Sarah didn't finish the sentence. She was already halfway to the elevator, palms dry for the first time in years, finally heading toward the life she'd been too afraid to choose.