The Longest Cable

The spinach leaf in her teeth had been there for twenty minutes. Maya could feel it, a green flag of surrender, but she couldn't bring herself to leave Marco's side. Not when he was finally looking at her like that.

"Your cable's loose," he said, gesturing to the coaxial connection dangling from the rooftop bar's television. Same Marco—always fixing, never feeling.

"It's fine," she said. "Leave it."

They were the last two at the company retreat party, standing by the pool as it reflected the Chicago skyline. The water rippled in the wind, like it was trying to tell them something neither could say.

"You're my best friend, May," Marco said softly, not meeting her eyes. "I don't want to mess that up."

She laughed bitterly. "Since when do we protect what's easy?"

The truth was, she'd been his friend for seven years, his confidante through divorce and promotion, the person he called at 2 AM when the silence got too loud. She knew every jagged edge of him, every hope and terror. She was his sphinx—guarding the entrance to his heart, waiting for him to solve the riddle she'd become.

But riddles have answers.

"Ask me," she said.

"What?"

"Ask me the riddle, Marco. Ask me what I want."

The wind picked up, sending waves across the pool. Behind them, the loose cable swung in the breeze, a pendulum counting down something neither could name.

He stepped closer. She could smell the gin on his breath, see the spinach still caught between her front teeth in his dilated pupils. And still he moved toward her, like she wasn't a puzzle to be solved but something to be broken open.

"What do you want, Maya?" he whispered.

"I want you to stop being my friend."

His forehead rested against hers. The cable swung faster. The pool rippled harder.

"Then what?" he asked.

"Then everything else."