Riddles in the Dark

Maya sat across from him at the corner table, her iphone face-down on the scratched wood like a sleeping animal between them. Three silent notifications had already lit its screen—each one a tiny heartbeat she refused to acknowledge.

"You're like the sphinx," David said, swirling his coffee. "All these riddles, but no answers."

Maya laughed, a dry sound. "The sphinx ate people who couldn't solve her riddles. I'm just waiting for you to ask the right question."

Outside, rain streaked the window palm trees swaying like drunks in the storm. She remembered tracing the palm of his hand that first night, pretending she believed in fortune telling though she'd only ever read about it in books. Your lifeline's fractured, she'd whispered, and he'd kissed her instead of asking what she meant.

Now his hair was longer than she'd ever seen it—curling at the collar, wild as he'd become in these final months. Or maybe she was the one who had changed. Maybe she was the one who had become something else entirely, something that couldn't fit inside the life they'd built together.

"Is there someone else?" he asked finally.

Maya's iphone buzzed again. This time she caught herself reaching for it—the instinct to escape into its glowing world, to lose herself in messages and notifications and anything but this moment.

She pulled her hand back. "Not someone. Just—something else."

"What does that mean?"

She thought about the riddle she'd been living inside: How do you tell someone that the love you have for them isn't enough anymore? That you've outgrown the shape of yourself beside them?

"The sphinx's riddle was about time," she said instead. "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening. The answer was man, but the real question was about change. About how we keep becoming different versions of ourselves."

David stood up, and Maya saw that this was the answer he'd been dreading—the version of her that existed now didn't have room for the version of him she'd loved three years ago.

"Some riddles," he said quietly, "aren't meant to be solved."

He walked out into the rain. Maya's iphone lit up with another message. She turned it over, face-down again, and watched the palm trees bend against the wind, alone in the restaurant and finally, terrifyingly, ready to begin.