Market Correction

I slice the papaya with practiced precision, the bright orange flesh glistening against the morning light. Three years of marriage, and this is our ritual: breakfast in silence, the humidity of our Miami apartment thick between us.

"The market's down again," Marcus says, not looking up from his phone. His thumb scrolls furiously, like he's trying to outrun something.

"I heard."

"Bear territory, Elena. We're officially in bear territory." He laughs bitterly. "Remember when I promised you this was the year? The year I'd make partner? The year we'd start trying for a baby?"

I set down my knife. My palm sweats against the countertop. Outside, the first storm of the season gathers, purple clouds bruising the sky.

"Marcus—"

"I was so sure," he interrupts. "All the signs. I had the momentum, Elena. I was the bull. Nothing could stop me."

His phone buzzes. A margin call, probably. Or maybe it's his mother asking why we haven't visited, why he looks so exhausted in every photo, why the light has gone out of his eyes.

"I'm leaving," I say quietly.

The storm breaks. Lightning fractures the sky, illuminating everything—the papaya on my plate, the wedding photo magnet to the fridge, Marcus's face as he finally looks at me.

"What?"

"Not just you," I say. "This. All of it. The waiting. The compromises. The version of myself I became to fit inside your ambition."

"But I'm doing this for us."

"Are you?" I touch his shoulder, feeling the tension knot there. "Or are you chasing something you can never quite catch?"

He stares at me, and in that flash of lightning, I see it: the exhaustion, the fear, the realization that maybe some things matter more than winning. He sets down his phone.

"Stay," he whispers. "Just stay."

"Only if you're really here," I say. "Not some version of you that's always looking at the next quarter, the next trade, the next win."

Lightning strikes again, closer this time. The thunder follows, shaking the floor beneath us. And then—impossibly—he laughs.

"I think," he says, "I just made the worst trade of my life."

"And the best," I say, and we both start laughing, crying, holding on as the storm washes everything clean.