Riddles in the Raw

The sphinx of existential dread sat between them at the kitchen island—silent, imposing, asking without words: what are we still doing here? Ethan chopped spinach with aggressive precision, the knife's rhythmic thunk against wood matching the hollow pulse in his chest. Dinner with Maya had become this: performances of domesticity, two people who'd once burned so hot they'd singed the air between them now reduced to coexisting lukewarm.

"You've got something..." Maya reached across, her palm brushing his cheek. The contact sent a jolt through him, electric and unwelcome. She wiped a fleck of green from his chin, her thumb lingering on his jawline. That used to undo him. That used to be enough.

He swallowed. "Thanks."

She studied her own palm then, those lifeline creases like a map she'd stopped reading years ago. "Remember when you tried to read my fortune at that party? Told me I'd live to a hundred and love only once?"

"I was full of shit," Ethan said, maybe too harshly. "That's what twenty-one gets you."

"You were sweet." She turned her hand over, examined her fingernails. "I liked that version of you. The one who believed in—"

"Bullshit?"

"Magic." Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "Remember?"

Outside, a car horn blared, some urban bull announcing itself. The spinach released its iron tang into the air. Ethan wanted to say something true, something about how love wasn't magic but metabolism—how it consumed and excreted and left you changed, about how he'd met someone else, about how she probably had too, about how the sphinx between them would never be satisfied with answers because the question had rotted from within.

Instead: "I'll add garlic."

"Ethan."

"What?"

"Look at me." Her palm found his again, fingers interlacing like they used to, practiced and terrible. "The sphinx doesn't want an answer. It wants you to stop pretending there's a riddle."

The spinach sat limp in the bowl. Outside, the city hummed its relentless indifferent song. He squeezed her hand back, once, and let go. "I know," he said, and finally began to cook.