The Last Floor

The 47th floor felt less like an achievement and more like altitude sickness.

"I can't bear another meeting," Sarah whispered, her voice cracking. She wasn't talking about the actual bears she'd once studied in Alaska—she meant the weight of expectations that had calcified around her shoulders like sediment.

Marcus smiled, that practiced expression she'd photographed on his face too many times. "That's why they pay us the medium bucks, right?"

He was her oldest friend in the company, which meant something and nothing at all.

Corporate headquarters was designed like a pyramid, both literally and metaphorically. Sarah's corner office had a wall of windows, but the glass had a way of making everything outside look smaller, further away. Including the life she kept meaning to start living.

"The numbers are down," Marcus said, sliding a tablet across her desk. "Upper management is talking restructuring."

He didn't say: *I interviewed for your job yesterday.*

He didn't say: *Your husband called me, drunk.*

He didn't say: *I'm sorry.*

"The market is a bear," Sarah said instead, tasting copper in her mouth. "It'll turn."

Marcus watched her, and in that moment, she understood that friendship between adults is mostly what you don't say. The accumulated silences build their own architecture—pyramids of unsaid things, towering over everything, casting long shadows that everyone pretends not to notice.

"You should call him," Marcus said finally, standing up. "Your husband."

He left without another word, and Sarah was alone with her view of the city, where tiny cars moved like insects along streets that looked like cracks in a pavement she'd outgrown. The bear market would turn. The pyramid would remain. And tomorrow, she'd have to decide what she was willing to bear.