Sphinx Summer

My **iphone** sat on the pool edge, glowing with incoming texts I was too scared to check. Typical Friday night - Tyler's house, his parents gone, the sort of party where everyone pretended to be cooler than they actually were.

That's when Sasha appeared, holding her weird hairless **sphinx** cat like it was a normal thing to bring to a pool party. The cat's wrinkly gray skin looked almost alien in the string lights, its enormous eyes scanning the chaos like it knew something we didn't.

"He likes **water**," Sasha said, completely serious, as if that explained everything.

Someone pushed me from behind - I never found out who - and suddenly I was falling. The **cable** of my earbuds tangled around my ankle like a snake, and I hit the pool surface with a splash that soaked half the people standing nearby.

When I came up sputtering, Tyler was laughing. But not in a mean way. He extended his **palm** - calloused from guitar practice, I noticed - and pulled me up.

"You okay?"

His hand lingered on mine for a second too long. My phone sat abandoned on the concrete, still lighting up with texts I suddenly didn't care about. The sphinx cat watched from the deck, looking satisfied with the chaos it had witnessed.

Sometimes the worst moments become the best ones. Sometimes you fall in, and someone unexpected helps pull you out. And sometimes you realize the thing you were anxious about - the texts, the awkwardness, the fear of looking uncool - doesn't matter when you're dripping wet in front of everyone and somehow, that's okay.

Sasha's cat meowed. I laughed. Tyler smiled. And for the first time all night, I actually felt like myself.