The Bull in the Deep End

The pool deck radiated heat like an oven, chlorine thick enough to taste in the back of my throat. I stood there in my stupid Target swim trunks while everyone else seemed to have graduated to board shorts somewhere around sixth grade.

"You coming in or what?" Maya called from the water. She treaded water effortlessly, doing that thing where she barely moved her arms but somehow stayed suspended. It was annoying how graceful she was. Everything about Maya was annoying like that.

"Yeah, just checking the pH balance," I said, because saying "I'm terrified" wasn't exactly on brand for sophomore year.

The truth was, I hadn't been swimming since the incident at the city pool when I was seven. A lifeguard had jumped in to "save" me while I was literally fine, just floating facedown because that's how I rolled back then. Ever since, water and I had maintained a respectful distance.

But it was Maya's birthday party and she'd looked at me with those eyes that somehow managed to be both challenging and hopeful simultaneously, and suddenly I'd agreed. Like an idiot. Who says yes to swimming when they don't swim? Someone trying to impress a girl who treated friendzone as her permanent address, apparently.

I dipped a toe in. Cold. Obviously.

"The water's fine!" Jason yelled from the diving board, because Jason was that guy who said things like "the water's fine" unironically.

Then I saw it—a massive inflatable bull, twelve feet of happy yellow rubber floating near the deep end. People were trying to climb on and getting launched off likefailed rodeos. Tyler had just ricocheted off its head into a spectacular cannonball that drenched three freshman girls who screamed like he'd splashed them with acid.

Maya swam over to the bull. "Bet you can't stay on longer than me."

Something about her chin tilt—part dare, part challenge, part knowing I was secretly competitive as hell—sealed my fate. I slid into the pool, water closing around my chest like a cold handshake.

The bull was harder than it looked. Every time I tried to throw my leg over its back, it twisted beneath me. But finally, somehow, I was on—perched awkwardly on a fake yellow cow, water dripping from my hair, chlorine stinging my eyes, Maya laughing from her own precarious seat on the bull's rear.

"Five seconds," she counted. "Ten. You're actually doing it, Ryder."

And I was. For a glorious, stupid moment, I was the bull-riding king of the sophomore class, bobbing in the deep end where I'd refused to go for ten years. Maya grinned at me, all braces and sunscreen and the kind of easy confidence I'd been faking since middle school.

"We're staying on forever," she said. "Me and you, Ryder. Bull riders of the suburban apocalypse."

The bull tipped. We both went under, water rushing into my nose, chlorine burning, Maya's hand grabbing mine as we surfaced, coughing and laughing like this was exactly where we were supposed to be.

Maybe, I thought, wiping water from my eyes, some risks were worth taking. Even the ones that started with Target swim trunks and ended with fake bulls and chlorinated kisses.

"Again?" Maya asked, already climbing back on.

"Yeah," I said. "Again."