Sweaty Palms & Social Pyramids

Jordan's palms were sweating. Again. She wiped them on her shorts, probably for the tenth time in five minutes, and stared at the padel court like it was about to attack her.

"You coming or what?" Chloe called from the baseline, flipping her perfect hair. The self-anointed queen of the junior social pyramid stood with her arm around Tyler—baseball captain, obvious crush material, and currently looking annoyingly hot in his sleeveless shirt.

Jordan's mistake had been agreeing to this. She was a softball player through and through, but somehow she'd let Chloe talk her into trying padel at the country club. Now she was trapped in a glorified tennis box with the three most popular kids in tenth grade while she barely knew how to hold the racquet.

"Serve it already, Jordan," Tyler said, grinning. That was the worst part—he was actually nice. Which made everything more confusing.

Jordan tossed the ball up and missed completely. It bounced off her foot and rolled toward the fence.

Behind her, someone snorted.

She turned to face her humiliation head-on. But instead of laughing, Tyler was walking over, baseball cap backwards, picking up the ball.

"You're thinking like it's baseball," he said, tossing it back. "Too much windup. Just use your wrists—it's all about the angles."

He stood behind her, adjusting her grip on the padel racquet. "Like this. Looser. You're choking it."

His hands were warm. So were hers, but not in a good way. She was going to pass out.

"Try again," he said softly.

Jordan served. The ball hit the wall, bounced perfectly, and caught Chloe's paddle off guard. Point Jordan.

"Finally," Chloe rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. "Maybe you're not hopeless."

By game's end, Jordan's hair was a disaster and her calves were burning, but she'd actually won some points. Tyler gave her a fist bump that made her entire nervous system short-circuit.

"Same time next week?" he asked.

"Only if you're on my team," Jordan heard herself say, and then she couldn't believe she'd actually said that out loud.

Tyler's grin widened. "Deal."

As they walked off the court, the palm trees swaying in the sunset, Jordan realized something: maybe social pyramids weren't so hard to climb when someone was already reaching down to help her up.