The Goldfish at Canary Wharf

The goldfish had been staring at her through the glass for three hours, its mouth opening and closing in that perpetual, silent scream. Elena checked her watch. 2:14 AM. The office tower's fifty-third floor was a graveyard of abandoned coffees and ergonomic chairs, but she couldn't leave. Not yet. Not with the merger deadline looming like a storm front.

Her phone lit up with a message from him: *Still at work? Come over.*

She typed *Can't* then backspaced, thumb hovering over the screen. Marcus was everything she wasn't supposed to want—brash, reckless, the kind of man who bought rounds of champagne for strangers and talked about emotions in crowded bars. He was a bull in a china shop, and she was the china.

The goldfish swam to the surface, expecting food. Elena dropped an orange slice into its bowl. The citrus oil spread across the water's surface like a toxic rainbow.

"You're pathetic," she told the fish. "You'll eat anything."

The fish ignored her, peeling at the orange rind with weirdly human determination.

Her father had called that morning. *Have you taken your vitamin D?* he'd asked, as if supplements could fix the hollowed-out feeling in her chest, the way she woke up mornings unable to move for twenty minutes, paralyzed by the sheer weight of existing in a world that demanded performance over humanity.

"I'm fine, Dad."

*You don't sound fine.*

The elevator dinged. Elena spun around, heart hammering.

Marcus stood there with a bag of takeaway, cashmere coat dusted with snow. "I brought curry. And I'm not leaving until you eat something."

"How did you—"

"Your assistant. She thinks you're going to die of exhaustion and partially blames herself."

He crossed the room, kicked off his shoes, and sank onto the carpet beside her desk. The goldfish nosed at its orange slice, indifferent to this invasion.

"I have to finish—"

"The merger can wait. Elena." His voice dropped. "You're drowning."

She looked at him—really looked—at the concern creasing his forehead, the way he'd loosened his tie, the snow melting in his hair. The bull who'd charged into her carefully ordered life and somehow, impossibly, made her feel safe.

"Stay," she said.

"Always."

The goldfish finally abandoned its orange, swimming in languid circles as the snow continued falling outside, London turning white while they sat on the floor of a glass tower, eating cold curry and saying nothing at all.