The Architecture of Regret

Elena pressed her **palm** against the cold glass of her office window, twenty-three floors above the city. Below, the morning rush hour painted the streets in streaks of red and white. She'd forgotten her **vitamin** D supplements again—three weeks running—which explained why her bones felt like old iron left in the rain.

"You missed the meeting,"

"I didn't miss it. I chose not to attend."

Marcus laughed, that sharp barking sound that had drawn her in three years ago. "The **bull** in the china shop approach. It's why we hired you."

Elena turned from the window. Marcus stood in her doorway, leaning against the frame like he owned every molecule of air between them. They'd been sleeping together for six months. They hadn't discussed what it meant.

"They want me to design a monument," Elena said. "To corporate success. A literal **sphinx** in the lobby, riddling employees about quarterly earnings."

"And that's beneath you?"

"It's not beneath me. It's empty."

The silence stretched, thin and trembling as a **lightning** bolt about to strike. Elena remembered the night before—Marcus's thumb tracing the scar on her shoulder, his confession that he'd never loved anyone who didn't love themselves first. The way he'd looked at her, like she was a problem he couldn't solve but couldn't abandon.

"What do you want, El?"

She almost said it. Almost told him that she wanted to stop designing monuments to things that didn't matter, wanted to stop measuring her worth in billable hours and well-executed compromises. That she wanted to be the kind of person who took her vitamins and believed in something larger than the next promotion.

Instead she said: "I want to design the sphinx."

Marcus nodded, once, like she'd confirmed something he'd always suspected. "I'll tell them."

After he left, Elena opened her desk drawer and found the bottle of vitamins. She swallowed one dry, watching the city below, wondering what it would take to finally become the person she pretended to be.