The Sphinx of 3B

I should have known better than to let the papaya sit on my desk. Its sweet, fermenting scent had already filled the office by 2 PM, but I needed the reminder of Hawaii—that week with Marcus when everything between us felt possible, before the promotion came between us like a wall we couldn't climb.

Now here we were, three years later, sitting across from each other in a conference room like strangers who happened to know each other's coffee orders. Marcus had become something of a sphinx around the office—inscrutable, distant, his face revealing nothing as he discussed the Q3 projections. The riddle he presented now was: which version of him was real? The one who'd held my hand on the beach at sunset, or this colleague who treated me like an obstacle to be navigated?

"Sarah, do you have those numbers?" he asked, and I couldn't tell if he was being deliberately cold or if I was reading into things. That was the problem with sphinxes—you never knew if the silence meant wisdom or indifference.

A cat meowed somewhere outside, probably that stray that lived behind the building. Last winter, Marcus and I had taken turns leaving food for it in the alley during smoke breaks, back when we took smoke breaks together, back when we were friends first and coworkers second.

"I'll have them by end of day," I said, standing to leave.

"Sarah." My name on his lips stopped me. "About that papaya..."

For a moment, the sphinx's face cracked. I saw something there—regret, maybe, or the ghost of the man who'd once told me he loved me against the sound of waves.

"It's just fruit, Marcus."

He nodded, the mask sliding back into place. "Right. Just fruit."

But as I walked back to my desk, I caught sight of that cat outside the window, watching me through the glass, and I wondered if some versions of a story could still be rewritten, or if we'd all just become inscrutable to each other, sphinxes guarding secrets we'd forgotten we were keeping.