The Riddle We Never Solved

I sat on the balcony watching the storm roll in, nursing my drink. The sky turned that sickly orange color that comes just before everything breaks open. Somewhere in the distance, lightning fractured the darkness – the kind that doesn't just illuminate but exposes.

You're like a sphinx, I'd told Sarah three months ago, drunk on wine and the thrill of being misunderstood. You speak in riddles and wait for me to fail.

She'd laughed, that careful laugh that always meant something else. Maybe you just don't want to hear the answers.

Now my iphone lay on the table like a dead insect, its screen dark, no messages, no missed calls, nothing but the faint reflection of my own face staring back. We'd had four years. Four years of conversations that circled without landing, of intimacy that felt like something you could hold but never keep.

Her apartment was half-empty now. I'd gone over yesterday to help pack, found the goldfish bowl on the windowsill – one fish left, circling the same small space, its memory supposedly seven seconds long. I'd wanted to ask: is it better that way? To not remember how many times you've already been here, how many times you'll circle back?

Sarah had walked in with a box in her arms. You're staring at the fish.

I'm thinking about memory.

She'd set down the box. The room had filled with all the things we weren't saying. That was always the problem – the riddles we couldn't solve, the answers we wouldn't give.

The storm broke. Rain fell like it meant to wash everything away. I watched the glass doors fog over, my reflection disappearing. That's what time does – it doesn't heal, it just makes you harder to see. I picked up the phone, thumb hovering over her name, then set it down again.

Some riddles you solve. Some you just stop asking.