The Orange Peeler

The fluorescent lights of the break room hummed with that particular frequency that made Sarah's teeth ache. She sat at the scarred laminate table, methodically peeling an orange—the bright citrus scent cutting through the stale coffee air and the metallic taste of her own exhaustion.

"You're doing it again," Marcus said, leaning against the doorframe. He had that look he got during quarterly reviews, like he was simultaneously her boss and something else entirely. "The orange thing. When you're avoiding something."

Sarah didn't look up. "I'm not avoiding anything."

"The merger announcement is in an hour. Everyone's losing their minds. And you're here, recreating the Great Citrus Incident of 2019."

She finally met his eyes. Marcus had been her mentor, then her colleague, then the person she accidentally kissed at the Christmas party three years ago—the incident they never discussed, the elephant that had become a bear in the room, lumbering between them through meetings and emails and late-night project debriefs.

"Remember when you told me I needed to be more aggressive?" Sarah said, separating the orange into perfect segments. "That I was too accommodating, too nice? That I needed to bear my teeth sometimes?"

"I was drunk."

"You were honest." She placed an orange segment on a napkin. "That advice cost me my promotion, by the way. Management called it 'difficult.' They called it 'not a culture fit.'"

Marcus flinched. Outside, someone's dog barked—probably that golden retriever from accounting that sometimes came in on casual Fridays, the one that made everyone smile because it was the only genuine thing in the whole building.

"The merger," Marcus started. "I've heard things."

"Everyone has."

"They're keeping the Boston team. Letting us go."

Sarah's hands stilled. The orange peel curled around her thumb like a crown. "So we're unemployed by lunch."

"Basically."

She considered this—twelve years of her life, the spreadsheets and presentations, the performance reviews and team-building exercises. All of it reduced to a severance package and an forwarded email.

"You know what I'm going to do?" Sarah said, finally tasting the orange. It was impossibly sweet, almost artificial. "I'm going to adopt a dog. I'm going to get the biggest, messiest dog from the shelter. And I'm going to spend my mornings in the park instead of a conference room. And you—you're going to finally admit that you should have taken that transfer to Seattle when you had the chance."

Marcus smiled, really smiled, for the first time in months. "I didn't go because of you."

"I know." She ate another segment. "Which makes everything so much worse."

The bear in the room roared, but neither of them looked away.