The Riddle of Us
The hotel room overlooked the Mediterranean, the blue water stretching into an infinite horizon that mocked the finite nature of our marriage.
"Elena."
She sat by the window, peeling an orange, her fingers stained with citrus. The sharp scent cut through the stale air of our suffocating silence—seven years compressed into this weekend getaway meant to save what was already gone.
"I spoke to him yesterday," she said, not turning around.
The admission hung between us like the ancient sphinx we'd visited in Egypt on our honeymoon, its stone face frozen in eternal riddle. Back then, we'd laughed trying to solve its mystery together. Now, the riddle was us: what destroys something that was once alive?
"How long?"
"Three months." She separated the orange into segments, placing them on a white plate. Each piece looked like a small, offering. "He's twenty-six. He thinks I'm mysterious."
"Mysterious." I laughed bitterly. "That's what you called me once, before mystery became distance."
The maid arrived with fresh towels. We both fell silent, conspirators in our mutual pretense. After she left, Elena pushed the plate toward me.
"Eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"You once said you loved oranges because they're complicated—hard to open, but worth it." She finally looked at me, her eyes red-rimmed. "When did you stop wanting to peel them?"
The question cracked something open in my chest.
"I didn't," I whispered. "You just stopped letting me."
She began to cry then, silent tears that reminded me of rain on our wedding day. We'd called it romantic then. Now it just felt like water eroding stone, inevitable and merciless.
"What do we do?" she asked.
Like the sphinx's unanswerable question, there was no solving this—only accepting that some riddles destroy you when you finally learn their answers.
Outside, the Mediterranean continued its indifferent rhythm, washing over everything, wearing down even the hardest stone eventually.
"We let go," I said.
And somewhere, in the wreckage of us, that felt like the only truth left.