Riddles at Twilight

The orange slice floated in her martini like a dying sun. Elena watched it rotate, trapped in the glass's circular logic, much like she felt trapped in this conversation.

"You're like a sphinx," Marcus said, swirling his own drink. "Impossible to read. I never know what's going on behind those eyes."

She almost laughed. That was rich—him accusing her of being a riddle when he was the one who'd come home three hours late smelling of someone else's perfume. But the scent wasn't perfume anymore. It was coconut conditioner, the cheap kind. The kind she used.

They sat by the apartment complex pool at twilight, the water turning that peculiar shade of blue that exists nowhere in nature. A single strand of hair fell across Elena's forehead—gray now, something she'd stopped bothering to hide two years ago. Marcus's temples had gone silver too. They'd aged together, which was supposed to mean something.

"The sphinx asked a riddle," she said finally. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening. But here's what nobody remembers: Oedipus solved it, and the sphinx threw herself off a cliff. Some answers destroy the questioner."

Marcus opened his mouth, then closed it. The silence stretched between them, uncomfortable and familiar.

The pool's surface rippled in the wind. Tomorrow she would ask him to leave. Tonight she let the orange slice complete one final rotation, finished her drink, and wondered if some riddles were better left unanswered—even when you already knew the answer was going to destroy you both.