Fox at the Pool Party

Maya's palms were sweating. Like, actually sweating through her favorite denim shorts as she stood by the **pool** edge, clutching a red Solo cup like it was a lifeline.

"You good?" her best friend Jamie asked, fanning herself with a discarded magazine. "You look like you're about to puke."

"I'm fine," Maya lied. "Totally fine."

She wasn't fine. Tyler was across the **pool**, laughing at something some senior had said, his hair still damp from swimming, and Maya had been psyching herself up to talk to him for literally forty-five minutes.

The weekend house party was already in full swing - someone had hijacked the Bluetooth speakers, people were playing beer **padel** on the driveway court (which was honestly kind of impressive), and Maya was still frozen in place like an NPC with glitchy dialogue.

Her phone buzzed in her hand. A message from Jamie, who was literally standing right next to her: *talk to him or i'm doing it for u 🦊*

The **fox** emoji. Their inside joke from when they'd drunkenly declared themselves "foxes" at summer camp because "we're slick and we get what we want." (They were fourteen. It was a whole thing.)

"Okay, okay," Maya muttered. "I'm going."

"You're not going anywhere," Jamie said, but Maya was already moving, circling around the **pool** toward where Tyler stood.

Her heart was doing that thing where it felt like it was trying to escape her chest cavity. She was three feet away. Two feet. Tyler turned, saw her, and his face lit up in this way that made her knees feel weirdly unstable.

"Hey!" he said. "You made it."

"Yeah," Maya managed. "Yeah, I'm here."

"We were just talking about the **padel** tournament," Tyler said, gesturing toward the driveway. "You should join. We need more players."

"I've never played," Maya admitted.

"I can teach you," Tyler said, and then he did this thing - this little half-smile that made her stomach flip. "If you want."

Across the **pool**, Jamie gave her a thumbs-up. Someone put the Weeknd on the speakers. The summer air smelled like chlorine and charcoal and possibility.

Maya looked at Tyler's **palm** resting on the patio table, then up at his face, and for the first time all day, her hands stopped shaking.

"Yeah," she said. "I want that."