The Riddle of Us

The cable bill lay on the kitchen counter between them like a signed confession. Maya watched Leo slice the papaya, his knife moving with rhythmic precision through the fruit's vibrant orange flesh, seeds glistening like dark pearls.

"You've been staring at that sphinx tattoo on my arm for twenty minutes," Leo said, not looking up. "What's the riddle this time?"

Maya's throat tightened. The sphinx—a creature of impossible questions and devouring silence—had been his twenty-first birthday drunken mistake, now permanently etched into his skin. Once she'd found it mysterious. Now it felt like a warning she'd ignored.

"The vitamin D supplements are in the cabinet," she said instead. "Doctor says your levels are critically low."

"I'll take them later."

He never did. Just like he never called the cable company to cancel the service they hadn't watched since their fight three months ago. The bill climbed each month like a debt they were both afraid to collect.

The papaya sat between them, untouched. Its sweetness had turned cloying in the heavy silence.

"Leo?"

"What."

"What's the answer?" she asked, his arm with the sphinx still visible beneath his rolled-up sleeve. "To the riddle."

He set down the knife. Outside, the summer sun burned through the windows, illuminating the dust motes dancing between them like trapped things.

"The thing about the sphinx," he said quietly, "is that sometimes there is no answer. Sometimes the creature just waits."

Maya stood up, her chair scraping against the floor. "I can't live in the waiting anymore."

"I know," he said, and for the first time in months, something like grief flickered across his face. "Neither can I."

She left with nothing but her keys. The cable bill still sat on the counter, the papaya slowly oxidizing in the heat, and the bottle of vitamins that neither of them would remember to take tomorrow.