Cable to Nowhere

The pyramid rose before me in the predawn haze - my corporate headquarters, thirty floors of glass and ego, and I was climbing it alone. Three years ago, Elias and I had made the ascent together, tethered by ambition and late nights connected through fiber optic cable, our screens glowing like twin hearths in the darkness.

He was a fox - beautiful, clever, impossible to pin down. We called ourselves friends, though the word felt too small for what burned between us during those marathon deadline nights. But romance between associates was against the pyramid's code, and neither of us was foolish enough to risk our footing on its terraced slopes.

"They'll chew you up," he'd said the night he resigned, standing in my doorway with that sly grin that always made me question everything. "But you love the climb, don't you, Sarah?"

I'd watched him go, choosing freedom over the golden tether. I'd chosen the pyramid.

Now, standing in my corner office with its panoramic view, the cable modem blinking its faithful little light, I understood what he'd tried to tell me. The pyramid had delivered me to its pinnacle, but somewhere along the way, I'd lost the only person who'd made the climb worth making.

I picked up my phone, scrolled to his number. It had been three years. Perhaps it wasn't too late to discover whether the fox had been running toward something, or merely away from everything I'd become.