The Last Riddle

She was running from something she couldn't name—not away from, but toward. That's how it felt when she saw him across the crowded bar, his hair still wet from rain, wild like a fox caught in headlights. They hadn't spoken in three years.

Her iPhone buzzed in her pocket—emails from work, notifications she'd been ignoring since Monday. She ignored it now, too.

"You look tired," he said, when she reached him. Not as a question.

"I am." She signaled the bartender. "Work's been eating me alive. You know how it is."

He did know. They'd both been running that same hamster wheel when they were together, two ambitious lawyers at the same firm, too exhausted to love each other properly.

"I have a sphinx cat now," he said out of nowhere. "She's blind in one eye. Named her Riddle."

"A sphinx?"

"Hairless. Wrinkled like an old man's elbow. But she's the most affectionate thing I've ever known. She sleeps on my chest every night."

Something about that image—a hairless cat, this man she'd once loved, sleeping with a creature named Riddle—made her chest ache with a specificity she hadn't felt in years.

"Why Riddle?"

"Because I couldn't figure out why she kept showing up at my door. Stray animals don't usually choose you, you know? They just appear. And you either let them in or you don't."

The bartender set down her whiskey. She took a sip, letting it burn.

"I let something go," she said quietly. "Once. Something that kept showing up."

"I know," he said. "I was there."

Outside, the rain had stopped. The bar's neon sign reflected in puddles on the sidewalk, artificial light on wet pavement.

"Come meet Riddle," he said. "She's waiting."

Her iPhone buzzed again. This time, she turned it off completely.

They walked out into the wet night, two people who'd once been everything to each other, now strangers with history, walking toward a hairless cat named Riddle and whatever came next—running toward instead of away, for the first time in years.