Papaya Summer

The cable guy had been at our house for three hours, which was exactly how long I'd been avoiding the backyard where Ryder's golden retriever, Buster, was supposedly "guarding" my first batch of papayas. My abuela had sent them all the way from Miami, and she expected FaceTime evidence that I'd actually used them in something.

"You gonna let them rot, mijo?" she'd said this morning, her voice crackling through my phone. "Un papaya maduro waits for no one."

I was fifteen and entirely unequipped to handle tropical fruit responsibilities.

The screen door slammed. Maya, the softball pitcher who lived two houses down, stood there holding a baseball glove like she carried it everywhere, which she kind of did. Her hair was in those same messy buns that made my stomach do this pathetic little flip thing.

"Your dog's eating your papayas," she said.

I ran outside. Buster had indeed discovered the basket. He'd dragged two papayas into the dirt and was enthusiastically decapitating a third with the precision of someone who'd done this before.

"BUSTER, NO!"

Maya laughed, not meanly. She squatted beside the dog, who immediately abandoned papaya murder to roll over for belly rubs. "Traitor," I told him.

"At least he has good taste," Maya said, then: "My mom makes papaya smoothies with lime and honey. You could probably save the non-destroyed ones."

Which is how I ended up in my kitchen at 4 PM with Maya Rivera and my abuela on FaceTime, blending suspiciously textured smoothies while the cable guy finally fixed our WiFi. The cable was out more often than it worked, a source of constant household drama, but today it felt like background noise to something more interesting.

"Her hands are all wrong," Abuela announced critically as Maya sliced lime. "Too slow. But she has good energy."

Maya's ears turned pink. She smiled at the phone. "Nice to meet you too, Mrs. Rivera."

"Rodriguez. And tell me, Maya, does this grandson of mine know you strike out anyone who can't handle your curveball?"

"Abuela!" I protested, but Maya just grinned, all sharp teeth and confidence.

"He knows," she said. "He was at my last game."

The smoothies were honestly terrible—fuzzy and weirdly earthy, like drinking a garden that had given up on life. But Maya drank hers anyway, leaning against my kitchen counter in her softball uniform, and when the cable guy finally called "All done!" from the living room, neither of us moved.

"Tomorrow," she said, setting down her glass, "bring a glove to my practice. I'll teach you to hit my curveball."

"I don't play baseball."

"You're not playing baseball," she said, heading for the door. "You're not letting me strike you out. There's a difference."

Buster followed her to the door, papaya seeds stuck to his chin like some weird orange badge of honor. I watched Maya walk away, already worried about what to wear, and realized some disasters—like mushy papayas and destructive dogs—weren't disasters at all.

The cable was working, finally. But I was too busy thinking about tomorrow to care about WiFi.