Poolside Confidential

Leo's life had become a mess of stolen glances and what-ifs. He lived for the crack of the bat against his baseball, the dirt kicking up around home plate, the way the summer air smelled like possibility and concession stand popcorn. But mostly, he lived for the three seconds every day when Maya Rodriguez walked past his locker.

"You're gonna need backup," Trey said, slapping Leo on the back. "We can't just show up at Jenna's party like a bunch of creeps. We need intel."

"So we're gonna spy on them now?" Leo asked, though his stomach did that weird flip thing it always did when Maya's name came up. "That's not weird at all."

"It's not spying. It's reconnaissance."

They ended up behind the bushes next to Jenna's above-ground pool, squinting through the chain-link fence like the world's most pathetic private investigators. Water slicked everything in blue light—Maya climbing up the diving board, her laugh carrying across the yard like something Leo wanted to catch and keep forever. She cannonballed in, surfacing with a splash that sprayed half the party.

"See?" Trey whispered. "She's having fun. Nobody's thinking about you. You're overthinking this whole thing."

Leo watched Maya shake water from her hair like a dog, grinning so wide it made his chest hurt. And suddenly he realized Trey was right, but also wrong. Maya wasn't thinking about him—but that didn't mean she never would. And Leo had spent so much time worrying about being the guy who played baseball, the guy who fit in, the guy who knew exactly what to say, that he'd forgotten to just be the guy who showed up.

He left Trey by the fence and walked around to the gate.

"Hey," Maya said when she saw him, water dripping from her eyelashes. "You made it."

"Yeah," Leo said, and something loosened in his chest. "Sorry I'm late. Got held up."

She laughed. "Doing what? Saving the world?"

"Something like that."

Later, he'd realize life wasn't about perfect pitches or having the right words. It was about cannonballs. It was about showing up wet and messy and figuring the rest out as you went.