The Riddle We Never Solved

The iPhone lit up at 3:14 AM — a message that shouldn't have been there. *Can't stop thinking about last night.*

I stared at Marcus's sleeping profile beside me, his chest rising in that familiar rhythm I'd found comforting for seven years. Now it felt like a performance.

The message was from Elena, his padel partner. They played every Tuesday and Thursday. *Just tennis,* he'd said. *She's just a friend from the club.*

I slipped out of bed and found myself running — not away, exactly, just through the darkened streets of our neighborhood at dawn, my breath fogging in the October chill. Running had always been how I processed things, how I made space for thoughts that couldn't fit inside walls.

But this thought wouldn't resolve itself. Elena's sphinx tattoo — I'd seen it in a group photo from the club's summer tournament. A mythological creature posing impossible questions, devouring those who couldn't answer. The irony felt almost cruel.

By the time I returned, Marcus was awake. "Where did you go?"

"Running," I said, the word feeling insufficient. "I needed to think."

He knew. I could see it in the way he wouldn't meet my eyes, the defensive posture that had somehow become his default. We'd been circling each other for months, a riddle neither of us wanted to solve.

"Your phone," I said simply.

The silence stretched between us, heavy with things unsaid. Finally, he spoke. "It's not what you think."

"Isn't it?" I studied his face, searching for the man I'd thought I knew. "You're either the person who lies about who they are, or the person who betrays the one who loves them. Which riddle are you solving, Marcus?"

He had no answer. Some sphinxes, I realized, don't ask questions at all — they simply wait for you to finally see them.

I packed my things that afternoon. Some mysteries don't need solving. They just need leaving behind.