Gummy Bear Thunder

Jordan's phone buzzed for the third time in two minutes. Another notification from the wellness app her mom had installed—Time for your evening vitamin! She tapped dismiss without looking, the blue light of her iphone washing over her face in the dim room. Outside, thunder rumbled low and warning.

"You coming?" Maya leaned against the doorframe, already wearing her oversized hoodie—the one with the stitched baseball on the chest, vintage soft from a thousand washes.

"Yeah, one sec." Jordan grabbed her backpack, checking her reflection. Hair okay. Okay. Not that it mattered. It was just the team gathering at the field. Just a casual thing. Totally not about Riley being there.

The walk to the park felt charged. The air heavy, static electricity making the hair on Jordan's arms stand up. The old joke floated through her head: This is what lightning feels like before it strikes. Which was stupid. She wasn't some literary character having a moment. She was just a girl who maybe possibly wanted Riley to notice she existed.

They reached the baseball diamond just as the first real flash cracked across the sky—a fork of white-hot lightning that turned everything into this stark, weird photograph for half a second. Everyone huddled under the metal bleachers, that cramped space smelling like old gum and rain and teen boy body spray.

Riley was there. Of course Riley was there, sitting on a cooler in that damn cutoff tank, throwing a gummy bear into the air and catching it in their mouth. Jordan's stomach did this awful fluttery thing, like butterflies or panic. Both, probably.

"Nice catch," Jordan said before she could talk herself out of it.

Riley grinned. All crooked and unbothered. "Want one?" They held out a bag of bears—the good kind, sour ones that turned your tongue weird colors. "Sugar's basically a vitamin. My mom's a nutritionist. I'm basically an expert."

Jordan laughed. She actually laughed. "That's not how that works."

"Everything's medicine if you believe hard enough." Riley's knee brushed against Jordan's. Warm skin, contact, electric. Outside, the sky lit up again, but Jordan couldn't look away from Riley's face, illuminated in flashes like a stop-motion movie. Their eyes met. Something passed between them—acknowledgment. Maybe.

The rain started, big warm drops, and they all shrieked and ran for it. Jordan grabbed Riley's hand. Just practically. Because they were both running slow. The reason didn't matter. What mattered was that Riley didn't pull away.

They ducked into the dugout, breathless and soaked. Jordan's iphone buzzed in her pocket again. Vitamin reminder. Mom checking in. Whatever. She ignored it all.

"Hey," Riley said. "My band's playing next weekend. You should come."

Jordan's heart did something dangerous. "Yeah. I'd—I'd really like that."

The lightning flashed one more time, but Jordan wasn't thinking about storms anymore. She was thinking about sour gummy bears and baseball hoodies and how Riley's hand had felt in hers, and how maybe, just maybe, this was what it felt like to start living.