Riding The Bull

The cable lay tangled like roadkill, and I was already sweating through my Goodwill polo. Third day on the job, and I still felt like an imposter. Sixteen, and somehow I'd convinced everyone I could handle this summer gig at Miller's Cable Co.

"Straight line through, Martinez," Rodriguez called from his truck. The man they called The Bull — not because he was big, but because he could smell weakness from three towns away. "No slack. No kinks. You give them what they pay for."

"Got it," I hollered back, praying my voice didn't crack. My palms were already slick, and I'd been gripping the coaxial cable for exactly twenty-three seconds.

A gray cat sat on the fence nearby, watching me like I was entertainment. Poor guy. I could barely keep it together in front of my coworkers, let alone an audience.

Then I saw her.

Stella. Walking down Miller Street with that unhurried grace that made everything else feel like fast-forward. Stella who'd sat behind me in biology, whose laugh sounded like something that belonged somewhere warmer than this industrial park.

My stomach did something catastrophic. Stella was headed straight toward us.

Rodriguez was already back in his truck, probably scrolling through family photos. The cat had lost interest and was cleaning its paw. Just me, my sweat-stained polo, and miles of cable I'd somehow managed to knot like a middle school friendship bracelet.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," I managed. Smooth. Totally smooth.

Stella looked at the tangled cable, then at me. Something flickered across her face — not judgment, exactly. Recognition.

"First job?" she asked.

"How'd you guess?"

"The fear," she said. "I worked at my uncle's garage last summer. First day, I burst a hydraulic line. Three hundred dollars in oil, all over the pavement."

My shoulders dropped three inches. "Seriously?"

"The Bull — my uncle — made me clean it up with a toothbrush. Said something about 'respecting the mess you make.'" She shrugged. "Taught me more than anything else that summer."

I looked at my cable disaster differently. Stella had been here too. Stella had felt like an imposter, made mistakes, wanted to disappear into concrete.

"Rodriguez called me 'rookie' five times this morning," I admitted.

"He called me 'wrecking ball' until August," she said. Then she held out her hand. "I'm Stella, by the way. Biology, third row back."

"Leo," I said, and when our palms touched, something settled in my chest. Not confidence, exactly. But company.

The gray cat jumped down from the fence, stretched, and padded over like it approved this turn of events.

"Hey," Stella said, pointing. "What's that in your pocket?"

I glanced down. My phone. Screen lit up with an incoming text from — seriously — my mom. "DID YOU REMEMBER TO DRINK WATER? IT'S NINETY DEGREES"

I laughed. Stella laughed. And somehow, standing there in the suffocating heat with cable strewn everywhere and The Bull watching from his truck and a stray cat weaving through our ankles, I didn't feel like such a disaster anymore.

Just someone beginning.

"Want help with that?" Stella asked. "I'm pretty good at untangling things by now."

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, actually."

And for the first time all summer, the future didn't feel like something to survive. It felt like something waiting to happen.