Riddles in the Water

The sphinx beside the community pool had lost its nose to weather and teenagers, but its stone eyes still watched with ancient judgment. Maya adjusted her swimsuit, chlorine stinging her nostrils, the way it had every Tuesday night for three years of swimming laps with Daniel.

'You're late,' he called from the water, treading water with effortless grace. His dog, a lanky terrier mix named Buster, sat shivering on the pool deck, head cocked at the sphinx as if waiting for riddles.

'Work ran long.' She didn't mention how she'd driven past the office, how she'd sat in her car outside Daniel's apartment for twenty minutes, rehearsing words that refused to arrange themselves into sentences.

They'd met playing padel—the racquet sport everyone discovered briefly before forgetting. That first game, Daniel had laughed so hard at her terrible serve that beer had come out his nose. They'd been inseparable since, swimming together, eating cheap Thai food, watching each other's lives unfold like maps drawn by someone with questionable navigational skills.

Now his engagement ring glinted underwater as he pushed off the wall. His fiancée, Elena, was wonderful. Maya hated how much she liked her.

'My mother asked about you,' Daniel said between laps. 'At dinner Sunday. Wanted to know why her favorite person wasn't there.'

The sphinx seemed to mock her. What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in evening? The answer was man, but Maya's riddle was worse: What do you do when you love your best friend and he's marrying someone else, and you can't tell if you're in love with him or just in love with not being alone?

Buster barked at something only dogs could see.

'Maya?' Daniel treaded water again, studying her. 'You okay?'

The water pressure built behind her eyes. 'Fine.' She ducked underwater, let the silence envelop her, wished she could dissolve into molecules and drift away like scattered things.

When she surfaced, Daniel was watching her with that uncomfortable intensity he sometimes got, like he was solving equations she couldn't see.

'The sphinx doesn't actually have any riddles,' he said quietly. 'It's just a statue. We're the ones who make up the questions.'

He swam to the edge where Buster waited, water streaming down his back. 'Elena and I fought Sunday. About you.'

The air between them thickened.

'She thinks I'm in love with you.' He paused. 'I told her she was wrong.'

Maya's heart did something complicated in her chest.

'But I'm starting to wonder if she knows me better than I do.'

Buster barked again, and this time it sounded like an answer.