Fake Fox, Real Friend

Maya's palms were sweating so much she was probably leaving actual puddles on the fabric of her dress. Which was tragic, because this was the first house party of sophomore year and she'd spent forty-five minutes curling her hair and another twenty convincing herself it wasn't cringe to wear a dress to a casual hang.

"You good?" asked Zion, sliding onto the backyard swing beside her. He was wearing a fox hoodie — the animal kind, ears and everything, looking somehow both ridiculous and endearing. Maya's stomach did that thing it sometimes did around him, which she definitely didn't have the emotional bandwidth to analyze right now.

"I'm just vibrating with anxiety," she admitted, wiping her palms on her dress. "Why do we do this to ourselves?"

"Because FOMO is a powerful drug." Zion bumped her shoulder with his. "Also, Jayden has that fancy soda maker thing. Have you tried the peach vanilla yet? It's mid but also kind of iconic."

Maya smiled. Zion was her oldest friend in the friend group, the one she'd known since elementary school, the one who somehow made her feel less panicked about existing in social spaces. Which was probably why she'd been lowkey avoiding him lately.

Speaking of.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" she said, her heart suddenly pounding like she'd just finished a TikTok dance tutorial. "Like, actually ask you something?"

"You're being ominous," Zion said, but he was smiling, fox ears flopping slightly as he turned toward her. "Hit me with it."

Maya took a breath, wiped her palms one last time, and went for it before she could overthink it into oblivion.

"Why did you unfriend me on Discord last month and then act like nothing happened?"

Zion's face did this thing where it kind of froze and then broke into a thousand pieces. He looked away, swinging slightly higher on the swing.

"Oh," he said. "That."

"Yeah," Maya said, suddenly wanting to teleport to Mars. "That."

"I was gonna send you this really stupid message at like 2 AM and then I panicked and unfriended you so I wouldn't do it and then I couldn't refriend you without making it weird so I just... waited for you to notice."

Maya blinked. "What was the message?"

Zion looked at her, fox hoodie and everything, and the backyard lighting caught his face in a way that made her stomach do that thing again.

"That I think you look really pretty tonight," he said.

Maya wiped her palms on her dress one more time. "Oh," she said.

"Yeah," Zion said. "Oh."

They sat there for a minute, the party noise muffled and distant, the swing creaking softly, and Maya thought maybe sophomore year wasn't going to be so bad after all.