Chasing Summer
The first time Marcus saw me in a swimsuit, he laughed. Loud. Behind his hand, but yeah, I noticed.
"Dude, are you about to go swimming or what?" The way he said it—like my presence at the pool was some kind of joke.
I'd been running track all spring. Lean, sinewy, comfortable in my body. Then pool party season hit, and suddenly every shirt felt like a statement I hadn't prepared to make.
The real bull wasn't Marcus though. It was the way my brain wouldn't shut up. You're too skinny. You're too brown. You're too everything.
Coach made me captain of the swim team freshman year, which felt like winning the lottery and then realizing everyone else wanted your ticket. So I started running extra. Before practice. After. Weekends when normal people slept in.
"You're gonna burn out," Maya told me. She was right. Maya was always right.
We were sitting on the edge of the pool deck, feet dangling in the water. Sun going down, that golden hour where everything looks cinematic.
"Here." She held out half a papaya. "My mom's obsessed with them now. Said it's 'tropical and full of enzymes.'"
I stared at it. Orange flesh, black seeds glistening like someone had spilled pepper into a sunset. "That looks weird."
"Everything's weird until you try it," Maya said. "Including pool parties. Including being you."
The papaya tasted like summer. Like something I couldn't name but wanted more of. Sweet and unfamiliar and totally okay with being itself.
Marcus walked by then. Shirtless, confident, not even looking at me.
"You think he remembers making fun of me?" I asked Maya.
"Probably not. Bull****ters move on fast. That's their superpower." She grinned. "But you know what yours is?"
"What?"
"Still being here. Still running. Still showing up."
The next day at practice, I dove in first. The water hit me like forgiveness. I didn't think about Marcus. I didn't think about the papaya. I just swam.
Some days you run. Some days you swim. And sometimes, if you're lucky, you find the people who make both feel like home.