Sparks in the Basement

The cable went out at exactly the wrong moment. Netflix froze mid-season, and my mom was already annoyed about my phone bill.

"It's probably the coaxial connection again," she sighed from the kitchen. "Since you're down there anyway, can you check the basement?"

I wasn't alone. Maya was sitting on my bed, supposedly helping me study for AP Bio, but mostly we'd been not-so-subtly inching closer to each other for three weeks. The tension was literally killing me. Every brush of hands, every accidental knee touch felt like lightning shooting through my chest.

"I'll come with," she said, grabbing her backpack. "I need to... see your setup anyway. For science."

We both knew that was the worst lie ever told.

The basement was creepy even with lights on. Old boxes, my dad's workshop, and in the corner—the massive teddy bear my grandma won at a carnival when I was seven. I'd been meaning to toss that thing for years but never got around to it. Now it watched us with glassy eyes, basically third-wheeling whatever was about to happen.

"Is that...?" Maya pointed at the bear like it might attack.

"Don't judge. It was a simpler time."

She laughed, and the sound made something in my stomach do a full backflip. We knelt by the cable box, but neither of us actually looked at the wires. Maya's knee pressed against mine and stayed there.

"Hey, Quinn?"

"Yeah?"

"I heard what you said about me at lunch yesterday."

Oh god. I was dead. My friends had been roasted for getting caught talking crushes, but I'd thought I was being subtle when I told Marcus that Maya was basically the smartest person I knew and maybe also cute but whatever.

"All good things," I rushed out. "Mostly. Marcus might have exaggerated the part where I said—"

Her lips cut me off. Not lightning-fast. Slow, intentional, her fingers tangling in my hoodie strings like she'd been waiting to do this forever.

The bear witnessed everything. The cable box waited. But for the first time in my life, I didn't care what anyone else thought about anything.

"You're not subtle," she whispered against my mouth. "But you're cute when you panic."

The cable could stay dead forever for all I cared. Some things were way more important than Netflix.