Sweaty Palms Season

Maya's palms were sweating again. She wiped them on her uniform apron for the third time, glancing at her iPhone on the break room counter. No new messages from Ethan. Of course not. Why would the cute junior from AP Chem text some sophomore who worked at Tropical Swirl?

"Maya! Table 4's waiting!" her manager called.

She grabbed the order ticket: Large Green Machine — spinach, mango, banana. Simple. Except her hands were literally shaking. This was her first week and she was still convinced she'd mess up everything.

She dumped the spinach into the blender — too much? too little? — and was reaching for the mango when she saw it. The papaya. Ethan's favorite. He'd mentioned it yesterday when his friend group came in after school. "Dude, papaya's underrated," he'd said, and Maya had memorized that fact like it was the periodic table.

But this order didn't have papaya.

She poured the mango anyway. Then paused. Her phone buzzed. A notification from Instagram — Ethan had posted a story. Her thumb hovered over the screen, dying to check it, but Tyler's voice cut through: "We're backed up, Maya!"

Right. Professionalism. She hit blend.

The old blender at station 2 had a frayed cable she was supposed to avoid. Everyone knew it. But stations 1 and 3 were taken. Whatever. It's fine. She plugged it in and hit the button.

SPARK. BLACK. The whole smoothie station went dark.

"Seriously?" Tyler groaned. "That cable again?"

Maya's face burned. She wanted to melt into the floor. Her phone lit up in the darkness — another Insta story notification, now glowing way too obvious in the dim break room. Great. Now everyone knew she was obsessing over her phone instead of working.

But then the bell above the door chimed.

"Yo, is the Green Machine ready?"

Ethan. Standing there in his basketball jersey, looking exactly like himself while Maya stood there in the dark next to a broken blender covered in spinach specks.

"Uh... technical difficulties," she managed.

He laughed. Not mean-laughed. Real laughed. "No worries. Can I get papaya added though? If you guys ever get power back?"

Her palms stopped sweating. "Yeah. I can do that."

"Cool." He leaned against the counter. "So how's your first week going? Anyway better than mine — Coach is killing us at conditioning."

They talked for six minutes while the station stayed dead. About nothing. About everything. About how papaya was actually kind of overrated but he'd never admit that to his friends.

When power finally came back, she made him the best smoothie of her life. Extra papaya, no charge.

Her phone buzzed later that night. Unknown number: "This is Ethan lol Tyler gave me your number. That smoothie was actually insane."