Electric Sphinx at the Funplex

The sphinx stared at me with painted eyes, judging my life choices.

"You're seriously wearing that to ask out Sarah?" Maya said behind me, already exhausted by my drama. She adjusted her name tag at Funplex Mini Golf where we both worked miserable summer jobs.

I looked down at my orange polo—the mandatory uniform that made me look like a traffic cone. "It's not like I have options, Maya. My shift starts in ten minutes."

"Then wait until after. You're gonna look like a bull in a china shop out there." She nudged me toward the sphinx-themed Hole 3. "Speaking of, your nemesis approaches."

The sphinx decoration at Hole 3 wasn't just ancient Egyptian theming gone wrong—it was where I'd been mortified two weeks ago. I'd tried to impress Sarah with my mini golf skills, sliced my ball into the sphinx's nose, and spent twenty minutes retrieving it while she watched, visibly second-guessing whatever interest she'd had in me.

But tonight, lightning cracked across the sky, weirdly purple-green, and the funplex speakers glitched into silence. The temperature dropped like someone had cranked the AC to Arctic.

"Weird, right?" Sarah said, suddenly beside me. My stomach did that thing where it forgets how to be an organ. "The storm, I mean. Not me creeping up on you."

"No, yeah, totally weird," I managed, smooth as sandpaper.

She gestured at the sphinx. "Remember when you practically decapitated it with your golf ball?"

I groaned. "Why do you remember everything?"

"Because it was kind of adorable," she said, and I froze, processing. Then: "You know the ancient Egyptians believed the sphinx guarded knowledge? Riddles and stuff."

"Are you about to quiz me? Because I will absolutely fail."

She laughed, and it hit me like actual lightning—this could happen. This could be the moment.

Then the sky opened up. Not rain—sheets of water, like someone dumped the Atlantic on New Jersey. We scrambled under the pyramid-shaped awning at Hole 7, shoulder to shoulder, breath fogging in the sudden cold.

"So," Sarah said, hair plastering to her face, mascara running down her cheeks like black tears. She looked like a beautiful disaster, and I was orange-poloed, shivering, terrified. "You gonna ask me, or what?"

"How did you—"

"Maya literally posted in the group chat five minutes ago. 'My boy is finally gonna shoot his shot at the sphinx.' She's about as subtle as, well, you."

I could've died. Should've, probably. But instead, lightning flashed again, illuminating everything—the parking lot, the sphinx in the distance, the pyramid overhead, Sarah's ridiculous perfect smile even with mascara everywhere.

"Yes," I said. "I mean—will you go out with me? Like, not here. Not in this. But."

"But what?"

"But somewhere I'm not dressed as an orange traffic cone."

She kissed me. Right there, under the pyramid, while lightning struck somewhere nearby, while rain sheeted down, while my entire life rearranged itself into something entirely new.

"Deal," she said. "But I'm keeping the polo. It grows on you."