The Sunday Game

The weekend padel tournament had been Elena's idea. She always knew how to make betrayal sound like social bonding.

As I watched her slice the ball toward my weakened backhand, sweat stinging my eyes, I thought about how she'd done the same thing in Thursday's meeting — targeting my vulnerabilities with surgical precision while Marcus, our boss, watched with the kind of predatory patience that made everyone nervous. The man was a **bull** in every sense: stubborn, territorial, and dangerously effective when he charged. He believed volume equaled leadership, and he'd roared with approval when Elena presented my project as her own.

The corporate **pyramid** had seemed less steep when we'd started together three years ago, two fresh graduates determined to climb it side by side. We'd been each other's tether to sanity during late nights and impossible deadlines. I'd trusted her with my doubts, my ambitions — the kind of confessions that feel like friendship until they become ammunition.

Now I chased the ball across the court like a faithful **dog**, lungs burning, pretending this was just a game. Elena moved with effortless grace, her face unreadable. She'd always been a **sphinx** to me — beautiful, mysterious, posing riddles I could never quite solve. Her smile revealed nothing of the promotion she'd already secured, the one she knew I'd also applied for, the one Marcus had promised to "strongly consider" when we'd met for drinks last month.

Her husband cheered from the sidelines, oblivious to how she'd played both of us. The ball hit the wall at an impossible angle. I missed.

"Good game," she said afterward, her hand on my shoulder, skin cool against my flushed neck. But her eyes were already calculating her next move, assessing whether I'd confront her or quietly fade away.

That night, I sat at my computer and opened the email drafting the one thing that could shatter her carefully constructed facade. Then I closed it. Some riddles you solve not by answering them, but by walking away. I deleted every message she'd ever sent me, three years of intimacy evaporating with a single click.

Monday morning, I accepted the transfer to the Berlin office. Let her explain that to her sphinx-like satisfaction.