The Last Orange

Marcus stood in the breakroom, peeling an orange with surgical precision. The citrus spray misted the air, sharp and clean—everything his life wasn't anymore. Three days since the layoffs. Three days of avoiding Derek's calls.

Derek, who'd sat two desks over for seven years. Derek, who'd voted with management in the end. The word *friend* felt like a foreign language now, something he'd once spoken fluently but had somehow lost the ability to pronounce.

On the counter, near the microwave nobody bothered to clean anymore, sat a bowl containing a single *goldfish*. Someone's abandoned office pet, now swimming in sluggish circles, its scales dulling in the fluorescent light. Marcus watched it pulse its gills, thinking how the fish had more job security than he did.

His phone vibrated. Derek again.

Marcus ate the orange section by section, letting the juice sting his lips. He remembered the time Derek covered for him when his mother died—the forged timesheets, the lies to HR. 'That's what *friends* do,' Derek had said, and Marcus had believed him. Believed it meant something permanent.

The goldfish rose to the surface, mouth opening and closing in silent request.

'Yeah,' Marcus said aloud. 'I get it.'

He peeled another *orange* and dropped a segment into the bowl. The fish snapped it up, voracious, grateful—for now.

Marcus typed back to Derek: 'Coffee tomorrow?'

Some alliances are conditional. Some survive betrayal. And some things, like goldfish and second chances, you keep feeding even when you know better.