Spinach Teeth and Strikeouts

Kayla was definitely not having a **baseball** moment. Like, at all.

She'd only agreed to come to Marcus's game because Jenna promised "extra credit social points" — whatever that meant when you're a sophomore and still trying to figure out if your existence qualifies as mid or if you're actually built different. The bleachers were packed, everyone screaming and cheering like their lives depended on it, while Kayla sat there replaying the cafeteria disaster in her head for the hundredth time.

The **spinach** incident. Because of course it happened on the day she finally worked up the nerve to talk to Marcus at lunch. She'd spent twenty minutes crafting the perfect casual approach, only to have Jenna whisper after, "Uh, you have something in your teeth." Massive green chunks. And Marcus had definitely noticed. He'd given her this tiny half-smile that could have meant "it's cute" or "I'm internally screaming" or literally anything else.

Now here she was, watching him pitch, feeling like a total fraud in her slightly-too-big orange hoodie she'd stolen from her brother's closet because supposedly oversized was still in.

Then storm clouds started rolling in, fast. The sky turned that weird purple-gray color that means you're about to get absolutely dumped on. People started grabbing their stuff, **running** toward the parking lot. Kayla hesitated, watching Marcus on the mound.

**Lightning** cracked — actually cracked, like the sky was splitting open — and everyone screamed. The game was called. Players scattered, and suddenly Marcus was jogging toward the stands, looking around frantically.

He locked eyes with her.

"Hey!" Marcus called, ducking under the bleachers just as the sky opened up. "You waiting for someone?"

"I — um," Kayla's brain short-circuited. Rain was pouring down in sheets, and somehow she was squeezed under the metal bench with Marcus Freaking Rodriguez, whose Instagram she'd been stalking for approximately three months.

"You're Kayla, right?" He shook water out of his hair, and somehow it looked good. How was that fair. "From AP Bio? You sit behind me."

"Yeah. That's me."

"Cool." He grinned, and then — because the universe had a sick sense of timing — "You, uh, had some spinach in your teeth earlier. Just so you know. For next time."

Kayla wanted to dissolve into the concrete. Instead, she started laughing. She couldn't stop. It was the kind of laugh that was practically a sob, and Marcus joined in, and suddenly they were both losing it under a baseball bleacher during a thunderstorm, soaked and ridiculous.

"I was literally so terrified to talk to you," she admitted, wiping her eyes. "And then I did, with spinach teeth. Epic fail."

"Nah," Marcus said, shrugging. "I thought it was kind of... I don't know. Endearing? Like you were actually eating lunch instead of just pretending to."

"Is that a compliment? I can't tell."

"It's absolutely a compliment." He checked his phone. "Hey, my mom's picking me up. You want a ride? Unless you have one?"

Kayla's heart did something genuinely concerning. "I'd love that."

The rain didn't stop, but that was fine. Sometimes the best moments happened when everything was falling apart around you — when your carefully curated middle school aesthetic got washed away by a storm, and you ended up exactly where you needed to be.

Spinach teeth and all.