Goldfish Memory

Maya's palm was sweating against her iPhone case as she hovered over Jake's profile for the third time that night. His new post — him shirtless at some beach party with girls she didn't know — had dropped two hours ago, and she still hadn't liked it. That would be desperate. That would be admitting she noticed.

"You gonna stare at that screen all night or actually come outside?" Kia called from the backyard. Maya's older sister was hosting her first real party since moving into her own place, and Maya had promised herself she'd be chill. Confident. Not the girl who brought a homemade papaya smoothie to a house party like last month.

"Coming!"

The backyard was transformed into something magical — string lights everywhere, people Maya barely knew laughing over red cups, the smell of coconut wax melting in tiki torches. And there, by the fire pit, was Leo, the guy from her history class who'd drawn a bear in the margins of his notebook all semester.

"Hey," he said, like she wasn't completely out of his league. "You're the girl who corrected Mrs. Chen about the Battle of Hastings."

Maya felt her face burn. "And you're the guy who's obsessed with bears."

"Goldfish, actually." Leo grinned, all crooked teeth and confidence that shouldn't have worked but did. "Bears are just what I draw when I'm bored. My dad's a marine biologist. Got twelve tanks of them at home. Want to see?"

She should've said no. She should've found her friends, pretended she belonged here. Instead she followed him inside, where he showed her pictures of fish she'd never remember the names of, his hand brushing hers as he scrolled.

"You have, like, zero game," Maya said, but she was smiling.

"Working on it." His eyes dropped to her lips, then back up. "Is it working?"

Her iPhone buzzed in her pocket — probably Jake finally posting something else, or one of her group chats blowing up about who was hooking up with whom. She didn't check.

"Maybe," she said.

The papaya incident could wait. Jake could wait. Tonight, she was the kind of girl who took risks on goldfish guys with crooked grins and zero game. Tonight, she was someone new.