Goldfish & Papaya Confessions

I spent forty-five minutes styling my hair for what was technically a 'study session' with Tyler. My mom burst into my room holding the offending fruit like it was a weapon.

"You're eating this before you go," she announced, thrusting the sliced papaya at me. "It's brain food."

"Mom, I'm going to study history, not take the SATs."

"Just eat it, Maya. Your skin looks tired." Classic Mom gaslighting.

The papaya sat in my stomach like betrayal. What if Tyler could smell it on me? What if he thought I ate tropical fruit as a personality trait? These were the things that kept me up at night while other girls were worrying about college applications and whether their exes had moved on.

I arrived at Tyler's house ten minutes early because I have no chill. His little sister answered the door with zero hesitation.

"You're here for the goldfish, right?" she asked.

"Uh, what?"

"The goldfish funeral. Tyler's been crying since Bubbles died three days ago." She leaned in conspiratorially. "I'm not supposed to tell anyone, but you seem cool."

So that's why he'd been so weird in algebra all week. Not ghosting me. Grieving.

Tyler appeared behind her, eyes puffy but still annoyingly attractive. "Layla, stop telling everyone my business."

"She figured it out, genius. Your cover's blown."

His bedroom was exactly what I expected: band posters, a guitar he definitely couldn't play, and a fishbowl that now sat empty on his desk. We sat on his bed, textbooks completely ignored.

"I know it's dumb to cry over a fish," he said, staring at his ceiling. "But he was there when my parents split. That fish saw me at my worst."

Something cracked open in my chest. "It's not dumb."

"Can I tell you something?" He turned to face me. "I wasn't going to study today. I just wanted to see you."

His bedroom door creaked open and Layla's cat slipped through, tail held high like it owned the place.

"GET OUT," Tyler yelled. "SHOO!"

The cat scrambled under his bed, knocking over a stack of books. One hit the floor with a thud—my journal. The one I'd brought for absolutely no reason, filled with pages about how much I liked Tyler and couldn't tell him.

"Is that...?" Tyler reached for it.

"NO, don't—"

Too late. The pages fell open to an entry from last Tuesday: "Tyler wore that green hoodie again and I almost had a stroke in the hallway."

Silence. The kind of silence that makes you consider faking your own death and moving to another country.

Then Tyler started laughing. Not mean laughing. The real kind.

"You wrote a whole page about my hoodie?"

"I'm having it burned," I said, covering my face with my hands. "This entire house. Gone."

"Maya." His voice dropped. "I wrote 'Tyler + Maya' on my math homework last week. In permanent marker."

I peeked through my fingers. "For real?"

"Mrs. Henderson definitely saw it."

We sat there grinning like idiots while his sister's cat emerged from under the bed, looking judgmental. The papaya situation didn't matter anymore. The goldfish didn't matter. None of it mattered except that Tyler was right there, and somehow, impossibly, we were on the same page.

"So," he said. "About that history test..."