The Last Supplicant

Sarah peels the orange with surgical precision, the citrus mist hanging between us like the words we're both too cowardly to speak. We haven't been real friends in three years, not since the promotion, not since she chose her career over the truth.

'You're not taking your vitamin D,' she says, nodding at my untouched supplement organizer on the conference table. 'Your levels were practically non-existent last checkup.'

I want to tell her that some deficiencies can't be fixed with pills. That the hollowness in my chest isn't a deficiency—it's the excavation site where my integrity used to be. Instead, I watch her fingers work, stained with orange juice, and remember the night she helped me bury evidence of a mistake that would have destroyed both our careers.

'The report looks good,' she says, and I know what she means: the cover-up is holding. Another quarter, another fraud, another bonus.

The orange segments glisten in the fluorescent light. She offers me one, and I see it for what it is: a peace offering, a bribe, a test. If I eat it, I'm complicit. If I refuse, I'm dangerous.

'Your vitamin,' she insists, sliding the organizer toward me.

Outside, the city hums with the small dishonesties of millions of people trying to survive. I pop the pill, swallow it without water. Then I take the orange segment, let the sweetness flood my mouth, let myself believe, just for this moment, that friendship can survive the weight of what we've done together—that some bonds are stronger than the truth.

'Good,' she says, and something in her voice sounds like relief, or maybe just exhaustion. 'Now let's get back to work.'

We both know tomorrow never comes.