Breaking the Surface

The padel court at Westside Country Club gleamed under the July sun, expensive and pristine—everything my borrowed converse sneakers were not.

"You'll figure it out," Chloe said, already walking toward her side of the court. She'd invited me yesterday, suddenly, after two months of treating me like background furniture in our homeroom. Now she needed a partner for Saturday pickup games because her actual friend group was busy.

I gripped the padel racquet, my palms sweating. The guy across the net—Liam, with hair that fell over one eye and an easy grin that made my stomach do something weird—kept watching me. Probably judging my terrible form.

"You're overthinking it," he called as I whiffed another serve. "Loosen up. You're playing like someone's holding your racket hostage."

I laughed despite myself. Chloe shot me a look that said *don't flirt with the help*, but something in me snapped. I stopped caring about fitting into her curated world of country club memberships and performance friendships.

By the fifth game, my arms ached but my shoulders finally dropped. I even scored a point against Liam, who applauded like I'd won Wimbledon.

"Not bad for a rookie," he said as we all collapsed on the bench afterward. "You play with Chloe often?"

"First time," I admitted, wiping sweat from my forehead.

"Yeah, she only brings people when her regulars flake. Sorry, that was rude." But he didn't sound sorry. "Hey, we're hitting the pool later if you want to cool off. Chloe's probably heading to the mall anyway."

He was right. Chloe was already texting someone else, her back to me. I'd been her backup plan all along.

"Sure," I said, and something unclenched in my chest.

The pool water was shocking blue and freezing. I cannonballed in, surfacing to find Liam already doing laps. His friend Maya joined us, and the three of us spent the next hour talking about everything and nothing—school, music, why the club's ice cream machine was always broken, how weird it was that we'd gone to the same school for years and never really spoken.

"Chloe's not that bad," I said, trying to be generous.

"Nah," Liam said, treading water. "She's just... Chloe. You're cooler than this crowd anyway."

Floating on my back, watching the sky turn pink through the glass dome, I realized he was right. Some friends were just people you kept swimming alongside because you hadn't learned to breathe on your own yet.

I ducked underwater, holding my breath until my lungs burned, then broke the surface gasping and laughing. Real friendship, I decided, felt like coming up for air.