The Riddle of Unsaid Words

The lightning cracked across the Seattle skyline just as Marcus closed his office door, leaving me alone with the sphinx-like silence of the executive suite. Outside, the storm mirrored everything I couldn't say to him—everything I'd been swallowing for three years of late nights and shared coffees and carefully maintained professional distance.

I picked up the orange he'd left on my desk, already peeled in that specific way he knew I liked. His small kindnesses were destroying me, each one a papery-thin layer between friendship and something else. Something that could get us both fired, or worse—something that could change everything.

Marcus called me his best friend at the holiday party, two bourbons deep. His wife was three feet away, laughing with HR. I'd smiled, swallowed the burn in my throat, and said it back. The weight of that lie had been sitting in my chest like a stone ever since, heavy and immutable.

Now he was leaving—promoted to the Chicago office, gone by Monday. This orange was goodbye, or it was nothing. The space between those meanings had become unbearable.

I'd seen him cry once. The day his mother died. We'd sat in his car outside the funeral home and he'd broken into pieces, saying he felt like he had to bear everyone else's grief while his own remained unspoken. I'd wanted to hold him then. I'd settled for handing him a tissue.

The storm intensified, rain lashing against glass that had held witness to every version of us—colleagues, collaborators, the careful architecture of almost.

My phone lit up with a text: You coming to drinks? One last time.

I looked at the orange segments on my desk, vivid as a warning against what happened next. Then I typed back: No. I think we both know better.

The screen stayed dark for a long minute. Then: Yeah. We do.

I ate the orange in the sudden clarity after the storm. Some things are better left unspoken. Some endings are the only way to keep what matters.