Poolside Practice

Maya had been fake-dreaming about this moment for weeks. Jason's pool party. The invite that had landed in her DMs like gold dust. And now here she was, standing at the edge of the crystal-blue water in her new bikini, feeling like she'd forgotten how to be a human being.

"You coming in or what?" Jason called from the diving board, that effortless grin plastered across his face. The same grin that got him out of detention last week.

"Yeah! Just... warming up!" Maya's voice cracked. Great. Smooth.

The truth was, Maya hadn't been swimming since last summer's incident at the community pool. The one where she'd done a belly flop that made everyone go dead silent for exactly three seconds before they lost it. The video still haunted her algorithm.

"Hey, you play padel?" Jason swam over, wiping water from his eyes. "My dad's got a court. We could play sometime."

Padel. Of course Jason played padel. The sport that all the cool kids were suddenly obsessed with—the love child of tennis and squash that everyone was learning from TikTok tutorials. Maya had held a racquet exactly once, in seventh grade PE, and she'd somehow managed to hit herself in the forehead.

"Yeah, totally," Maya lied. "I'm, like, pretty decent."

"Awesome." Jason's eyes lit up. "We should set something up. Maybe tomorrow?"

Maya's stomach did something complicated. This was it—the moment she'd been waiting for all summer. Jason Wright wanted to hang out. One-on-one. At his dad's fancy padel court.

But she also had approximately zero ability to back up this claim.

"Cool!" she said, then immediately started sinking beneath the water's surface. The pool embraced her like an old friend, muffling the sound of her own spiraling thoughts.

Underwater, everything was quiet. No expectations. No social climbing. No having to pretend she knew how to play a sport she'd barely heard of three months ago.

She broke the surface, gasping.

"You okay?" Jason was still there, treading water. "You kind of disappeared."

Maya wiped her face and made a decision.

"Actually? I'm terrible at padel. Like, embarrassingly bad," she said. "I only said yes because... I don't know. I wanted to seem cool."

The confession hung between them like a bubble waiting to pop.

Jason laughed—but not the mean laugh she'd braced for.

"Dude, I'm awful too. I just like hitting things and pretending I'm athletic. We'll suck together. It'll be iconic."