The Sphinx Waits

You've been running for three years now—running from that night, from the look in Elena's eyes when she found out, from the version of yourself that betrayed your oldest friend. Some mornings you wake up gasping, your feet moving against phantom sheets, chasing something you can never quite catch.

The cat appeared on your fire escape two weeks ago—a sleek, judgmental black thing with eyes like amber pits. It watches you through the glass while you drink coffee that's gone cold, while you stare at the unread messages piling up on your phone. You've started leaving food out, though you tell yourself it's not charity. It's just... acknowledgment. Of what, you're not sure.

"You're like a sphinx," you tell it today, your voice rusty from disuse. "All secrets and riddles, eating whatever the gods leave at your doorstep."

The cat blinks, slowly, and you almost laugh. Because that's the thing about sphinxes—they don't ask questions. They wait for you to offer the wrong answer, and then they devour you.

That's when Elena's name lights up your screen again. Three years of radio silence, broken by a notification that makes your chest ache like a physical wound. She's in town. She wants to meet.

The truth is, you've been carrying this like a stone in your gut. What you did—what you and David did—wasn't just friendship betrayed. It was something uglier. Something that rewrote the geography of your shared history, turned every memory inside out.

You're still running, you realize. The cat is still watching. And somewhere in this city, Elena is waiting with her own riddles, her own impossible questions. Maybe that's what friendship becomes, sometimes—a sphinx in the hallway of your life, asking: Who are you, really, when you think no one is watching?