Ten Percent and Burning

Maya's palms were sweating. Actual, embarrassing pools of nervous sweat that she kept wiping on her ripped black jeans like a total weirdo. Across the basement, Jordan was laughing at something someone said, head tilted back, exposing that perfect jawline that Maya had definitely not stared at during third period English every day this semester.

Her iPhone buzzed in her hand with the low-battery warning she'd been dreading all night. 8%. She'd forgotten her charging cable at home because she'd been rushing to get ready, spending forty minutes deciding whether the tiny silver hoop earrings made her look like she was trying too hard or just enough.

"Hey."

Maya practically jumped out of her skin. Jordan was standing right there. Like, actually there, within talking distance, smelling like vanilla and something woodsy.

"Your phone's about to die," Jordan said, nodding at the screen. "Classic party tragedy."

"Yeah, I—" Maya's brain short-circuited. "I forgot my cable. I'm basically living on borrowed time here."

Jordan held up a tangled mess of white wires. "I've got a portable charger in my car, but fair warning: this cable is janky as hell. You have to hold it at a specific angle or it stops working. It's a whole process."

"I'll take what I can get," Maya said, and then they were walking up the basement stairs together, out into the cool October air, and suddenly it was just the two of them in the driveway, illuminated by the orange glow of the porch light.

Jordan's car was older, kind of beat up, with a cracked dashboard and an air freshener that smelled like artificial citrus. As Jordan fished the portable charger from the glove compartment, Maya noticed a small palm tree drawing on the dashboard, done in silver Sharpie.

"What's that?" she asked before she could stop herself.

"Oh, that." Jordan laughed, running a hand through dark hair that caught the orange light. "My little sister drew it last summer. Before—before things got weird with my parents splitting. She was obsessed with Hawaii for some reason. She promised she'd take me there someday."

"That's actually really sweet," Maya said softly.

"Yeah, well." Jordan plugged in the cable, carefully positioning it at just the right angle. "Anyway, your phone should live. For like, twenty minutes at least."

Maya's phone screen lit up. 12% and climbing.

"Thanks," she said, and their eyes caught, and for a second everything felt different and electric and like maybe she wasn't the only one who'd been stealing glances across the basement.

"Hey," Jordan said, "you doing anything tomorrow? There's this coffee downtown, and I've been meaning—"

"Yes," Maya said, a little too quickly. "Like, absolutely yes."

Jordan's smile was worth the sweaty palms, worth the dying phone anxiety, worth everything.

"Cool," Jordan said. "Cool."

Her phone reached 15%. It wasn't much, but it was enough.