The Sphinx at Sunrise

I was basically a zombie. Three hours of sleep will do that to you, especially when you spent them scrolling through your ex's Instagram instead of actually sleeping like a normal person.

"Dude, you alive?" Marcus asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet like he hadn't just dragged me to the padel courts at 7 AM on a Saturday.

"Barely," I muttered, clutching my racquet like it was a lifeline. "Why did I agree to this again?"

"Because you're my best friend and you love me," he grinned, that annoyingly perfect smile that made everyone forgive him for everything. "Also, you need to get out of your head. Literally. You've been living there since—"

"Don't say it."

"Since the Incident."

I groaned. The Incident. That's what Marcus called catching me crying in the bathroom last week because Jordan posted a photo with someone new. Someone who wasn't me.

The padel court was empty except for this sleek, hairless cat curled up on a bench near the net. It opened one yellow eye and stared at us like it knew things. Ancient, judgmental things.

"That's one weird-looking cat," Marcus said.

"It's a sphinx," I said, because I'd Googled "cats without hair" once when I was bored and depressed. "They're actually super friendly."

The cat—let's call it the sphinx—stood up, stretched, and padded over to me. It rubbed its bald body against my leg, purring like a tiny engine.

"Okay, I see how it is," Marcus laughed. "Even the cat knows you're the soft one."

We played. I sucked. My coordination was shot, and I kept hitting the ball into the fence or directly at Marcus's head (sorry, not sorry). But the sphinx cat just watched, totally unimpressed, like it had seen worse. Probably had. It was a cat. It had nine lives' worth of experience.

Somewhere around game three, Marcus got real quiet. Which was never a good sign.

"You know," he said, serving the ball into my stomach because he had terrible aim when he was being serious, "Jordan's loss. Like, actually. You're funny when you're not being mopey, you're terrible at sports but you keep trying anyway, and cats love you. What's not to want?"

The ball rolled away. The sphinx cat trotted over and batted it toward me.

"Thanks," I said, both to Marcus and the cat. "For the compliment. And the assist."

"Anytime." Marcus grinned. "Now get up, zombie. We've got a best-of-five to finish, and I'm not letting you live down losing to a cat."

The sphinx meowed like, "Damn right."

I laughed, and for the first time in weeks, it actually reached my eyes. Maybe Marcus was right. Maybe I needed to stop living in the past and start living in the present—even if the present involved being terrible at padel and being judged by a hairless cat at sunrise.

Maybe that was enough. For now, that was enough.