The Orange Hour

Mira stood in her kitchen at 5 PM, the light through the window turning everything the color of a dying bruise. She stirred wilted spinach into a pan, watching it collapse like something had finally given up.

"You look like shit," her best friend Elena said from the doorway, not unkindly. "Like actually, medically, like shit."

"I feel like a zombie," Mira said, and the joke was too close to the bone. "I think I died somewhere around February and forgot to stop moving."

Elena came in and took the spoon from her hand. Their fingers brushed. Elena's hands were always warm, Mira's always cold now.

"Sit," Elena said. "I'll make dinner. You had the meeting today, right? The one where they decide if your team gets to keep being employed people?"

"They kept us. We're safe until the next round." Mira sank onto a stool, pressing her palms against her eyes. "The worst part is that I almost wish they'd laid me off. At least then I'd feel something."

She heard the fridge open, the sound of chopping, the hiss of garlic hitting oil. When she looked up, Elena was peeling an orange, the bright citrus scent cutting through the stale air of the apartment. Elena stripped the peel in one long spiral, like she was unwrapping something precious.

"Here," Elena said, handing her a segment. "Your brain needs vitamin C. Your entire life needs vitamin C."

Mira ate it. The burst of juice was almost painfully sharp. She looked at Elena — at the way her friend's hair fell over her face, at the concerned crease between her eyebrows, at how she'd been showing up at Mira's door every Tuesday and Thursday for three months like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Why do you keep coming?" Mira asked quietly. "I'm terrible company. I talk about work, or I don't talk at all. I'm not even sure I'm here half the time."

"Because you're my friend," Elena said simply, adding the spinach to a pan with eggs. "Because I remember when you were alive, and I'm stubborn enough to wait for you to come back. Because someone has to believe you're not actually a zombie, and that someone is me."

Mira felt something crack open in her chest.

"I think," she said, watching the spinach steam and curl, "I think I might be starting to believe you too."

"Good," Elena said, sliding a plate toward her. "Eat. Then we're going to drink wine and talk about something that isn't your job or your existential crisis. I heard a rumor that pandas are fake, staged by the Chinese government. I want your take."

Mira smiled. It felt unfamiliar, like using an atrophied muscle. But it was real.

"Okay," she said. "I'm in."