Palm Readings at the Carnival

Leo's palms were sweating. Like, actually sweating through his jeans kind of sweating, which was gross but also exactly what happened when you were about to do something that could potentially ruin your entire high school existence.

"You're being dramatic," Marcus said, not looking up from his phone. They were supposed to be studying for chemistry, but Marcus had been scrolling through Instagram for twenty minutes. "She's not gonna reject you in front of everyone. This isn't a Netflix movie."

Easy for him to say. Marcus had asked Sarah to spring fling last week by literally just sliding into her DMs with a flame emoji and she'd said yes. No drama, no sweating palms, no overthinking everything until 3 AM.

"Whatever," Leo muttered. "Can we just focus on these equations?"

But then Maya walked past their table in the library, and Leo's brain short-circuited. She was wearing that oversized hoodie she always wore, the one with the bleach stain on the sleeve, and she looked perfect. She gave him a small wave and kept walking.

"Did she just wave at me?" Leo whispered, like she might still hear him from twenty feet away.

"Bro." Marcus finally looked up. "You're so full of bull right now. You've been talking about asking her out for literally three months. At this point, you're in the friend zone by default."

The friend zone. The words hit like a physical force. Worse than the time his mom had started him on those gross vitamin gummies because she read somewhere they helped with "teen stress" or whatever.

That was it. That night.

Leo found Maya at the spring fling, standing near the punch bowl and looking as awkward as he felt. His palms were sweating again, but whatever.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey!" She smiled, and it wasn't the polite friend smile. It was the real one.

"So, I was wondering if you wanted—" The music cut him off. They both laughed.

"WHAT?" she shouted over the bass.

"I SAID, do you want to get out of here? There's this food truck outside that has actually good churros."

Maya's eyes lit up. "Oh my god, yes. The DJ is literally playing the same playlist as homecoming."

Walking outside, the cool air hitting his face, Leo realized his hands weren't sweating anymore. Sometimes you just had to ignore the voice in your head telling you you'd crash and burn.

Sometimes you just had to go for it.