The Sphinx at Center Court

The padel ball hit the glass wall with that familiar hollow thud — a sound that had echoed through Tuesday evenings for six years of friendship. Marcus wiped sweat from his forehead, his knees already protesting at thirty-five. Beside him, David checked his iPhone for the third time that set.

"Your serve," Marcus said, but David was already scrolling, face illuminated in the artificial twilight of the indoor court.

"Sorry. Work." David slipped the phone into his pocket without meeting Marcus's eyes. "You know how it is."

Marcus did know. That was the problem. He knew David's promotion meant more money, more hours, more distance between the version of himself Marcus recognized and this stranger wearing his friend's face like an ill-fitting suit. They'd stopped talking about anything real months ago.

Later, over dinner, David picked at his spinach salad — meticulously removing every stem, the same childhood habit Marcus had found endearing at twenty-two and exhausting at thirty-five. The restaurant hummed around them, couples and friends weaving stories in the air between them.

"You're not happy," Marcus said, and the words hung there, sphinx-like and demanding.

David's fork paused halfway to his mouth. "What makes you say that?"

"You check your phone every five minutes. You order things you don't eat. You haven't asked about Sarah once."

David set down the fork. The spinach wilted on his plate like something already dead.

"I'm just tired, Marc. It's called being an adult."

"No," Marcus said, his voice low. "It's called disappearing."

They'd had this conversation before, in other forms. But something about the way David's phone lit up again on the table — some notification demanding his immediate attention, severing this moment too — made Marcus realize something with sickening clarity.

The sphinx's riddle wasn't about saving his friend. It was about admitting that sometimes, you outgrow the people who once knew you better than you knew yourself. That friendship, like anything else, could become a habit rather than a hunger.

Marcus signaled for the check. They'd finish dinner, say their polite goodbyes, make plans they wouldn't keep to play padel next Tuesday. Some distances were too vast to cross, even in the glass-walled cage where they'd once been everything to each other.