Market Close

The trading floor smelled of panic and stale coffee, but Marcus couldn't tear his eyes from the screen. ORANGE futures were plummeting—his position, his mistake, his ruin. Three months of bets, all riding on a citrus crop report that had come back wrong.

"You should've hedged," Sarah said, sliding into the chair beside him. She held two bottles of WATER, condensation dripping onto her expensive sleeve. "I warned you."

Marcus ignored the water. "It's not over yet. The market's overreacting. This is just noise."

"It's a 40% drop, Marcus. That's not noise. That's you being BULL-headed about a bad position." She set the water down harder than she intended. "We can't afford the house payments if you liquidate now. I thought we agreed—I take the safe job, you take the calculated risks. This wasn't calculated. This was gambling."

"I was protecting us from inflation—"

"You were protecting your ego." She studied him, really looked at him, like she was seeing something new. "I interviewed for that promotion today."

Marcus's stomach dropped harder than the orange futures. "The one in Chicago? We talked about this. You said you wouldn't—"

"I said I wouldn't if we could afford for me not to." She pushed the water toward him. "Drink. You look like you haven't had water in days."

He did. It was lukewarm, slightly metallic. Just water, but it tasted like surrender.

"The offer's good," she said quietly. "Better than good. But it means moving. Means starting over. Means leaving this—this fantasy that you're going to strike it rich on a hunch."

Marcus stared at the screen where numbers kept falling. He thought of the calculator in his pocket, the retirement projections he ran at 2 AM when Sarah slept. He thought of the way she'd stopped asking about his trades six months ago.

"I told them I'd need to discuss it with my husband," she said. "But honestly? I'm not sure there's anything to discuss."

The water bottle sweated onto his paperwork. The orange futures hit the circuit breaker—trading halted. Marcus looked at Sarah, really looked at her, and saw the exhaustion he'd been too selfish to notice.

"Take the job," he said.

She didn't smile. She just nodded, like she'd expected this to hurt more than it did.

"Okay," she said. "Okay."