The Sphinx of Friday Nights

You know you've become a zombie when your own reflection startles you. That was Tuesday. By Friday, Maya was leaving orange peels on my desk—her way of saying I looked like I needed vitamin C, or maybe just color in a grayscale existence.

"You're not eating," she said, dropping another orange beside my keyboard. The rind released its sharp perfume into the stale office air, a tiny rebellion against the fluorescent hum. "You haven't been yourself since the promotion."

The promotion. That's what they called it when they gave me more money for the same work plus the work of two people they'd laid off. I'd been walking through days half-alive, pinned beneath questions I couldn't answer: Was this what I'd worked toward? When did ambition calcify into this?

Mayla had been my work friend for three years—the kind who knew your coffee order and your therapist's name. But lately she'd been watching me with concerned eyes, like I was a riddle she couldn't solve. A sphinx in a cardigan, withholding answers until I asked the right questions.

"What happens," she asked that Friday, leaning against my doorframe, "if this isn't just a phase? What if you're actually unhappy?"

The question landed like something physical. I'd been waiting for someone to name it.

"I don't know," I said. "I think I've been waiting for permission to admit it."

She nodded, like she'd expected this. "Then quit. Or don't. But whatever you do, stop being a ghost in your own life."

The orange sat there on my desk, impossibly bright against the beige everything. I peeled it while she watched, the juice staining my fingers, the scent filling the small space. For the first time in months, something felt real.

"Stay," I said. "Help me write the resignation letter."

She smiled. "I thought you'd never ask."

We stayed until the building emptied, crafting something honest and kind and final. Outside, the sky had turned that particular orange that comes before real darkness, the color of things ending so others can begin. For the first time in a long time, I didn't feel dead anymore.