Riddles in Blue Light

Maya stood in the doorway of my office at 11 PM, her silhouette framed by the hallway's harsh fluorescent glow. We'd been dancing around each other for six months—since the Philadelphia merger, since the hotel bar in October, since everything shifted between professional and something dangerously undefined. She held up her iPhone, screen glowing with a photograph she'd taken at the MET that afternoon.

"What do you see?" she asked, voice low with that maddening calm she always maintained. The sphinx in the photo stared back, weathered limestone and eternal silence, and behind it, Maya's reflection in the glass case—her expression matching the statue's inscrutability.

"Ancient riddles," I said, ignoring the way my chest tightened. "Questions without answers."

She laughed, and I hated how much I loved that sound. "You always overthink things, David. Sometimes it's just art."

"Sometimes it's not."

I reached into my desk drawer and swallowed a vitamin D capsule without water—my doctor had prescribed them three months ago when I'd mentioned how the winter gray was settling into my bones, how I wasn't sleeping. Maya noticed the gesture, her eyes tracking the movement.

"Still taking your vitamins?" she asked, and there was something in her tone—tenderness, maybe, or perhaps I was projecting again.

"Doctor's orders."

"She cares about you."

"I care about me too. Most days."

Maya stepped closer, and I could smell her perfume—sandalwood and something electric. "What about the other days?"

"Those are harder."

She set her iPhone on my desk, facedown, and I noticed the case was cracked. "My apartment lease is up next month," she said, and the words hung between us like smoke. "I was thinking about Brooklyn. But I was also thinking about not doing it alone."

"Are you asking me a riddle, Maya?"

"I'm asking if you want to stop overthinking and start living. With someone who's terrible at being mysterious but excellent at loving you."

The sphinx on her phone's screen might have been eternal, but whatever we'd been doing—this dance of maybe and almost and not yet—that was about to change. I took another vitamin from the drawer, this time offering her one first.

"Only if you promise to answer my questions directly."

"I promise," she said, and for once, the inscrutability was gone, replaced by something terrifyingly real.