Chasing Lightning

Maya's palms were sweating — like, actual dripping — and she kept wiping them on her denim shorts, which was definitely not the vibe she was going for. The party was already in full swing, music thumping through the borrowed speakers, someone's older brother mixing cheap sodas with even cheaper attitude in the kitchen.

And then there was Fox.

Not an actual fox, obviously. Fox was the nickname that stuck to sophomore Leo somehow, probably from that time he'd dyed his hair copper for fall semester and it actually looked good. He was currently leaning against the back porch railing, baseball cap backwards, laughing at something that was definitely not funny enough to warrant that smile.

"You're staring again," whispered Jules, her best friend since sixth grade, who was currently winning a goldfish from a rigged carnival game setup in the corner. The fish swam in its temporary bag home, oblivious to its role as a distraction mechanism. "Either talk to him or accept that you'll be telling your therapist about this moment in ten years."

"I hate you," Maya hissed, but she was already moving, because Jules was annoyingly right about this stuff. The spring air felt charged, like the atmosphere before lightning strikes, which was maybe just her anxiety projecting weather patterns onto social situations.

The baseball game playing from someone's portable radio created background noise — innings and scores that nobody was actually tracking. Fox turned as she approached, and his expression shifted from bored to something that looked almost interested.

"Hey," he said. And then, because apparently her life had become a teen movie: "You want to help me find my phone? I think I left it somewhere."

They ended up searching the backyard as the first storm clouds rolled in, distant lightning flashing behind the hills. Maya's palms stopped sweating somewhere around the third time their shoulders brushed against each other. When they found his phone under a deck chair, neither of them made any move to end the search.

"So," Fox said, as the first real storm crack split the sky. "You coming to the bonfire tomorrow?"

Maya smiled, and for once, she didn't overthink it. "Yeah. I think I am."