The Last Bull

Maggie sat alone at the corner table, nursing a gin and tonic that had long gone warm. The bar's neon lights reflected in the window, casting ghostly shadows across her face. Three years of going through the motions, and she still couldn't decide if she was the survivor or the walking dead.

"You look like shit, Mags."

Emma slid into the booth opposite her, uninvited but not unwelcome. They hadn't spoken since the funeral—Maggie's fault, mostly. She'd pushed everyone away in those first months, retreated into a house full of Marcus's things, surrounded by his smell in the closets, his books on the nightstand, his ghost in every room.

"Rough week," Maggie said, tracing condensation on her glass.

"The merger?" Emma asked, like she'd been keeping tabs. Of course she had. Emma always knew everything, even when they weren't speaking.

"The merger," Maggie confirmed. "The corporate bull machine churns on. They want us to work faster, cheaper, harder. I spent all day in meetings where nobody said anything real. Just zombies around a conference table, nodding at PowerPoint slides about 'synergy' and 'optimization.'"

Emma signaled the waiter for two whiskeys. "Remember college? When we thought we'd change the world?"

"Now I optimize supply chains for a conglomerate that sells overpriced crap to people who can't afford it. Some change."

"We're all compromised, Mags. You think I'm not? I defend corporate polluters and call it a career. But at least I'm still angry about it." Emma's whiskey arrived. She took a long pull. "You're not even angry anymore. That's what scares me."

Maggie felt the truth of it settle in her chest like a stone. Marcus's death had hollowed her out, and she'd never quite filled the empty space back up. Just kept functioning, day after day, a shell of a person performing the motions of living.

"I don't know how to be anything else," she whispered.

Emma's expression softened. She reached across the table, covering Maggie's hand with her own. "Start small. Get angry at something. Call me when you do."

The friend she'd pushed away was still there, still waiting. Maybe that was enough, for now. Maybe that was everything.

"The bull," Maggie said suddenly. "They're bringing in that new VP—the one they call 'the bull' for charging through problems. He starts Monday."

Emma laughed, surprised. "Now that's something to be angry about."

Maggie felt something shift inside her, small but real. A crack in the shell. "Yeah. Yeah, it is."

Outside, the neon signs flickered against the darkness. For the first time in a long time, the future didn't feel like just more of the same.