The Day the Market Turned

The bear market had been eating us alive for six months. My hair was falling out in clumps in the shower, and Maya's appetite had vanished to nothing. We shouldered our racquet bags for the Tuesday night padel league—the only thing keeping us sane—as the sky turned that sickly greenish-yellow that precedes violence.

"You're quiet," she said, walking beside me to the courts. Her breath hitched like she was about to say something else.

"Just tired." I was always tired now. The margin calls, the angry clients, the way I woke up at 3 AM calculating portfolio losses instead of sleeping.

We were two sets down, my serve disintegrating, when the first lightning cracked. Not the distant, pretty kind. This was a violent white slash that split the sky directly above the club, simultaneous with thunder that rattled my teeth.

"We should go inside," someone yelled, but neither of us moved. Maya stood at the net, rain plastering her hair to her face, and I saw something break in her expression. Something that had been held together by sheer determination for months.

"I lost the baby," she said over the rumble. "Three weeks ago. I didn't tell you because you were already drowning, and I thought... I thought if you had one more thing to carry, you'd break."

The second strike hit closer, illuminating the anguish in her eyes like a flashbulb going off in the dark. All this time, I'd thought she was pulling away from me. I'd thought the distance was her loss of interest, her lack of support, her failure to understand what the bull market collapse was doing to my pride.

Instead, she'd been carrying her own bear market alone.

I dropped my racquet and crossed the court, not caring about the rain or the metal posts or the fact that we were both still holding weapons made for hitting things. She collapsed against my shoulder, and the storm that had been brewing between us for months finally broke.

Later, wrapped in towels inside the club, dripping water onto the concrete floor, she traced the scar on my palm from a childhood dog bite. "We need different markets," she said quietly. "Ones where we don't have to be strong all the time."

"Yeah," I said, and kissed her salty hair. "I think those exist."