The Orange at the End

Margot peeled the orange at her desk, the citrus scent cutting through the stale office air like a knife through memory. Three months since the layoffs, and she was still here—still in this corner cubicle with the flickering fluorescent light, still caring for Jenkins's goldfish because someone had to. The fish, a solitary speck of orange in a bowl that was too large for one so small, circled endlessly in its transparent prison.

"You're still feeding that thing?" Reid leaned against her cubicle wall, fox-sharp eyes glinting with that particular mix of amusement and pity she'd come to dread. His tie was undone—Reid, who never untied his tie unless he was celebrating someone else's misfortune or his own small victories. "Jenkins isn't coming back, Margot."

She swallowed, her throat tight with something between grief and rage. "He might. He said—"

"He said lots of things." Reid's gaze drifted to the goldfish bowl. "Like how he was going to start that brewery. How his wife was finally going to leave him. How this fish—what did he name it? Bubbles?—was going to outlive us all."

"Barnaby," she said quietly.

"Right. Barnaby." He laughed, a sharp, dismissive sound. "You know what happens to goldfish when nobody wants them? They don't die gracefully. They just keep swimming until they forget they're swimming at all."

The orange in her hand suddenly seemed too bright, too absurd against the gray laminate desktop. She remembered Jenkins on his last day, pressing this very fruit into her palm. "For when you need to remember what sunlight tastes like," he'd said, like he was already fading away.

Reid was still talking, something about departments merging and desks being reassigned, but Margot could only hear the water filter's gentle hum, the goldfish's impossible circling, her own heart beating a rhythm that said *not yet, not yet*.

She dropped the orange peel into the wastebasket. It landed softly, like surrender.

"What are you doing this weekend?" Reid asked, and she almost missed it—the way his voice softened, just for a moment, the way he wasn't quite looking at her.

She thought about the bowl at home, empty and waiting. About how she'd carried Barnaby in a Tupperware container on the bus, through rain and indifferent crowds, because some things deserved better than office light and casual cruelty.

"I'm moving," she said. "Taking Barnaby somewhere real. Not a pond—he wouldn't last. But maybe a bigger bowl. Maybe near a window."

Reid's smile faltered. Just slightly. Just enough.

"That's," he started, stopped. "That's not stupid."

She offered him a section of the orange, bright as forgiveness, tart as hope.

"No," he said, but he took it anyway. Their fingers brushed, brief and electric, and Margot thought maybe—just maybe—the world was larger than this cubicle, this endless circling, this slow drowning in fluorescent light. Somewhere, there was water that moved. Somewhere, there was light that didn't flicker.

Barnaby swam to the surface of his bowl, mouth opening and closing in silent prayer.

Margot ate the rest of her orange. It was bitter, and it was sweet, and it was exactly enough.