Options Expiring

The spinach sat limp in his desk drawer, its leaves yellowing like an old prospectus. Marcus had packed it three days ago when he'd still believed in the possibility of change—a smoothie, a gym membership, something to break the rhythm of late nights and catered meals that had left his blood pressure reading like a stock ticker in a bull run.

"You need to take care of yourself," Elena had said the night she left, hand paused on the doorknob. She'd placed a bottle of vitamin D supplements on the counter with clinical precision. "These will help with the winter."

That was February. Now it was August, and the pills remained unopened.

The glass walls of the forty-second floor reflected the trading pit below—men in bespoke suits screaming into headsets, fortunes made and lost in the seconds between breaths. Marcus used to love it. Now he felt like a man watching his own life through thick glass, a specimen in an experiment he couldn't remember signing up for.

His phone buzzed. *Padel at 7?* The message from Jake, his colleague and only friend in this vertical city of strangers. They'd played every Thursday for two years, standing across the net from each other in a glass-walled court that felt smaller each week. The game was supposed to be fun, a release, but lately even that felt like performance.

He thought about declining. About going home to the empty apartment with its unopened vitamins and wilted spinach. About the fact that Elena had been right about everything, and that recognition had arrived too late to matter.

Instead, Marcus found himself in the locker room at 6:45, lacing up shoes that cost more than his first car. Jake was already there, stretching, the easy grace of him making something twist in Marcus's chest.

"Rough day?" Jake asked, and Marcus realized his face must be showing it.

"You ever feel like you're playing the wrong game?" The words escaped before he could stop them.

Jake paused mid-stretch. The fluorescent lights caught the gray in his temples. "Every single day, brother. Every single day."

They played in silence, the ball bouncing between them like a metronome counting down something neither could name. Afterward, they sat on a bench watching the sunset turn the city's glass canyons orange and gold.

"My dad took me to baseball games every Sunday," Jake said quietly. "He'd buy me those cheap ice cream bars in the plastic wrappers. By the ninth inning, my hands would be sticky and I'd be half-asleep against his shoulder. I didn't care about the score. I just—I didn't know it then, but that was what happiness felt like."

Marcus thought about the spinach in his drawer. About the vitamins. About the hundreds of tiny ways he'd tried to become the kind of man who didn't need anyone.

"I think I need to go home," he said.

Jake nodded. "Yeah. Me too."