Sticky Sweet Summer

Sierra's phone buzzed against her nightstand at 11:47 PM. Another notification from Lucas. She'd been staring at his profile picture for three weeks now—那个 stupidly perfect shot where he's laughing with sunset-kissed hair, looking like he belongs in a Netflix original movie.

"You coming to Jay's party tomorrow?" the text read.

Sierra's thumbs hovered over her iPhone screen. She typed and deleted five different responses. Cool girl Sierra would type something casual. Normal Sierra would say yes. But her actual Sierra-ness was already overthinking it: What would she wear? What would she say? What if she said something weird and he never looked at her again?

"Yeah!" she finally sent, followed immediately by three praying hands emojis. Cringe.

The next day, Sierra's abuela placed a plate of sliced papaya in front of her. "Eat, mi hija. Good for your skin."

"Abuela, I can't eat papaya before a party. What if my stomach hurts? What if I BURP papaya smell while talking to Lucas?"

Her grandmother waved a papaya-colored hand dismissively. "This boy? If he likes you, he'll like your papaya burps. If not, his loss."

Sierra rolled her eyes but ate the fruit anyway, because Abuela had that sixth sense about these things.

At Jay's party, Sierra spotted Lucas immediately. He was even cuter in person—messy dark curls, shoulders that filled out his black T-shirt perfectly, that crooked smile that made her stomach do little somersaults. She clutured her red Solo cup so hard her palm was sweating against the plastic.

Then she saw it. On the snack table. A papaya. Someone had literally brought a papaya to a high school party. Who DOES that?

Lucas caught her staring at it and wandered over. "Weird, right? My little sister's obsessed with them lately. I think she's trying to become an influencer or something."

"My abuela forces me to eat it 'for my skin,'" Sierra said before she could stop herself. Then she added, "Not that I need it or anything. Obviously."

Lucas laughed, and it was better than his profile picture. "Obviously. Your skin's... really nice."

Sierra's face heated up. They talked for twenty minutes about everything and nothing—awkward teachers, their shared hatred of mathematics, how his little sister had tried to make papaya smoothies last week and it was "a disaster." Sierra felt her phone buzz in her pocket multiple times but ignored it.

When Lucas finally asked for her number, Sierra's palm was sweating again as she typed it into his iPhone. "Don't judge my contact photo," she warned.

"I'm sure it's great," he said, and then—because the universe has perfect timing—someone accidentally knocked the plate of papaya off the table. It splattered everywhere, including on Sierra's white Converse.

They both stared at her bright orange-stained shoes.

"Well," Lucas said, grinning. "At least now you'll always remember this party."

Siera looked at her papaya shoes, then at Lucas's still-crooked smile, then at her forgotten phone lighting up with texts from her best friend demanding details. She didn't need to document this moment for Instagram or analyze it for potential disaster. Some papaya-stained moments were just perfect as they were.

"Yeah," she said. "I guess I will."