The Vitamins on the Nightstand

The bull market had roared for three years, and Marcus had ridden it until his portfolio swelled to numbers that felt like fiction. Now the bear had arrived, hungry and relentless, tearing through his gains with the same indifferent violence that time had visited on his hairline.

He stood before the bathroom mirror at 2 AM, fluorescent light exposing the map of his decline. Thinning hair at the temples. Deepening parentheses around his mouth. He reached for the vitamin bottle—D3, omega-3, something about cellular resilience his doctor had prescribed with that neutral professional look that said *we're both pretending this isn't about age.*

"You're up again."

Elena leaned in the doorway, wearing his old fedora, the one he'd worn to their first meeting twelve years ago. The hat swallowed her small head. She looked ridiculous and heartbreaking all at once.

"Just thinking about tomorrow's meeting," Marcus said, though they both knew the market closed hours ago.

She crossed the tiles and placed a hand on his shoulder, her thumb finding the knot between his neck muscles. "The bear won't eat you. It's just numbers."

"It's not just numbers. It's everything."

He told her then about the margin call, the borrowed money, the way he'd convinced himself the bull would never stagger. The words fell out like dirty water, and when he finished, he couldn't meet her eyes in the mirror.

Elena turned him around gently. She took off the hat and set it on the counter, nestled among his vitamins and cologne and the detritus of a life carefully curated to look like success.

"Remember what you told me when my mother died?" she asked. "That grief is like a bear market. It comes, it destroys, and eventually—always eventually—it turns."

She kissed him, and for the first time in months, he didn't feel like a failure or a fraud or a man slowly being devoured by time. He felt like someone who might survive the winter.