The Supplement Aisle Sphinx

Maya's dad's old baseball cap was basically her emotional support animal. It was this ratty, faded blue thing with a oil stain on the brim, and she literally never took it off. Not at school, not at dinner, definitely not at her first job at GreenLife, where she spent six hours a day organizing vitamin bottles into rainbow rows and explaining to boomers that no, collagen supplements wouldn't make them look twenty again.

The cap went everywhere. It was her armor.

Then came Caleb, the new hire with the stupid perfect hair and the stupid perfect smile, who leaned against the vitamin C display during their shared shift like he was modeling for a catalogue.

"Nice hat," he said, and Maya's brain short-circuited. Was he being sarcastic? Sincere? Flirty? The ambiguity was literally destroying her.

"Thanks," she mumbled, accidentally knocking over a pyramid of biotin gummies. They cascaded across the floor like rainbow-colored disaster.

Caleb laughed, dropping to his knees to help her gather them. His hand brushed hers. Maya forgot how to breathe. This was it. This was the moment. She needed to say something cool, something that would make him see her as more than the weird hat girl.

"So," Caleb said, popping a gummy into his mouth with a grin. "Riddle me this. What's the one thing in this store you can't put on a shelf?"

Maya stared at him. Was this a test? A weird interview question? A—

And then it hit her. He was making her the sphinx. Gatekeeper of answers. Judge of worth. Her heart hammered against her ribs like it was trying to escape.

"Time," she said quietly. "You can't bottle time."

Caleb's eyes went wide, and for the first time, his perfect smile wasn't perfect—it was real. "Damn," he said. "You're actually the smartest person here."

"Wear the hat tomorrow?" Caleb asked, like it wasn't the most devastating question anyone had ever asked her.

She tugged the brim lower. "Maybe."

"Maybe's good," he said. "Maybe's a start."

Later that night, Maya took off the hat and put it on her desk. It felt like leaving a piece of herself behind, but maybe—just maybe—that was the point.