Fish Court Catastrophe

The first time I met Marcus, I was literally running away from a situation I'd created entirely in my head. Freshman year. I'd convinced myself that everyone at the party would notice how my curls frizzed in humidity, how my converse were from two seasons ago, how I was essentially a walking catastrophe.

"Dude, you good?" Marcus had called out from his driveway, where he was hitting a padel ball against a wall. Padel — that tennis-squash hybrid sport only rich kids played at country clubs. Except Marcus was wearing gym shorts his mom definitely bought at Target.

"Yeah, just... cardio," I'd lied, breathless.

He tossed me a racket. "Wanna play? I promise not to judge your serve."

That was the thing about Marcus. He made everything feel easy. Which was exactly why, three months later, I was panicking about our first actual date. Not dinner. Not movies. He'd invited me to his family's lake house to meet his friends.

"Bring something to share," he'd said. "Everyone's bringing food."

My brain, being my brain, decided this meant I had to make my nana's legendary focaccia from scratch. But then my sister's cat got into the kitchen, knocked over the flour, and suddenly I was at a grocery store buying a container of party cookies like some kind of chaotic neutral.

The lake house was gorgeous. Huge windows. A dock. His friends were surprisingly chill — no bear of an older brother giving me the third degree, no mean girls sizing me up. Everyone was just... hanging out. Swimming. Being normal teenagers.

Then Marcus's cousin Jake pointed at the Tupperware I'd brought. "What's in there?"

"Cookies," I said. "Store-bought. I'm not domestic."

"Perfect," Jake said. "My brother's girlfriend made this three-layer organic vegan cake and honestly? We just want junk food."

We spent the afternoon jumping off the dock, trading stories about our most embarrassing moments. Marcus told us about the time he'd cried at a Marvel movie because he was "processing a lot of emotions." I confessed I still slept with the stuffed goldfish I'd won at a carnival when I was seven.

"No judgment," Marcus said, splashing me. "Emotional support fish are valid."

As the sun set, pink and gold across the water, I realized something: nobody was watching me as closely as I watched myself. I'd spent so much time worrying about being perfect — or at least, not noticeably weird — that I'd forgotten being weird was the whole point of being seventeen.

"Next time," Marcus said, walking me to my car, "we're playing padel for real. I saw your serve. You've got potential."

"I trip over my own feet regularly," I reminded him.

"Good," he said. "Means you'll fall for me eventually."

I rolled my eyes but couldn't stop smiling. Some things really were that easy.