Portfolio of Small Regrets

The iPhone lit up at 3 AM, that sickly blue glow cutting across the ceiling like a price graph tumbling south. Sarah's eyes snapped open, heart already hammering before she registered the notification: another margin call from the Tokyo office. She reached for the device with practiced, trembling fingers, but her hand found only the bottle of vitamin D supplements on her nightstand. Her doctor had prescribed them last month—something about deficiency, seasonal affective disorder, the usual corporate malaise.

The cat, Barnaby, shifted at her feet, annoyed by the movement. He was the only living thing in her apartment that didn't want something from her. No yield, no ROI, no deliverables. Just warmth and the occasional demand for kibble. She envied him sometimes.

Her phone pinged again. A message from Michael: 'Need you on the call. Bull's running wild on copper futures.'

The Bull—Marcus Thorne, the man who'd personally cost her three promotions and what remained of her thyroid function. The man who'd once told her, in front of the entire trading floor, that women were too emotional for commodities. The same man who was now, apparently, threatening to blow up their biggest position.

Sarah swung her legs out of bed and padded to the kitchen. The vitamin bottle rattled as she dry-swallowed two pills. They tasted like chalk and surrender. On the counter, her iPhone displayed Marcus's face on a Zoom invitation, his familiar predatory grin already frozen in the preview window.

Barnaby wound around her ankles, purring like a small engine. She bent to scratch him, and for a second, the world narrowed to this: warm fur, the hum of the refrigerator, the weight of a creature who loved her without conditions. Then the phone began its insistent buzzing, a digital heartbeat demanding she return to the slaughter.

She answered. Marcus's voice boomed through the speaker, all swagger and testosterone. 'Sarah, finally. We're getting killed here.'

'Shouldn't have taken that position, Marcus,' she said, hearing the calm in her own voice and knowing it was the calm of someone who's already running the numbers on her exit strategy. 'I flagged it three weeks ago.'

'What are you talking about? You signed off on—'

'I signed nothing,' she said. 'And I recorded everything.'

Silence on the line. Then, from the bedroom, her phone chimed again with a text from Michael: 'Thank god. We've got him.'

Sarah hung up, walked to the window, and watched dawn break over the city. Somewhere in that city, Marcus was realizing his career had just ended. Somewhere, Michael was probably celebrating. And here, in her kitchen, Sarah swallowed another vitamin and decided to finally call the therapist she'd been putting off for six years. Barnaby hopped onto the sill beside her, and they both watched the sun come up like a promise kept.