The Chlorine Confession

The pool water shimmered like liquid sapphire, but Maya stood at the edge wearing her usual oversized t-shirt. Senior year. Pool parties. The universal language of I'm not confident enough to be seen in a bathing suit.

"Maya! Get in here!" Chloe waved from the deep end, floating on an inflatable pizza slice. Chloe, her best friend since seventh grade, who now sat at the popular lunch table and had somehow become beautiful without Maya noticing it happening.

"In a minute," Maya lied. She'd been saying that for forty-five minutes.

She made her fourth trip to the snack table, loading up with chips she wasn't hungry for. That's when she saw him — Ethan, leaning against the fence, petting the neighbor's golden retriever that had wandered over. The dog nudged his hand, and Ethan laughed, scratching behind its ears.

Maya froze. She'd had a crush on Ethan since AP Bio started, and they'd exchanged maybe seventeen words total. Now here she was, wearing cargo shorts and a Zelda shirt, standing at a pool party she wasn't actually participating in.

The dog bounded toward her, tail wagging like metronome set to prestissimo. Maya knelt to pet it, smiling as it licked her face.

"That's Buster," Ethan said, suddenly beside her. "He's an escape artist."

"He's perfect," Maya said, then realized how weird that sounded. "I mean, for a dog. Not that I'm evaluating his dog qualities on a scale—"

Ethan laughed. "I get it. Buster's objectively an excellent boy."

They sat there for ten minutes, talking while the dog rested his head on Maya's knee. The party noise faded to background hum. Ethan was funny, thoughtful, asked about her art portfolio.

"You should come in," he said finally. "The water's not that cold."

Maya hesitated. Then she felt something — a piece of spinach, from the spinach artichoke dip she'd massacred earlier, definitely wedged between her front teeth.

Every. Single. Horror. Movie.

She'd been talking to Ethan for ten minutes. With spinach in her teeth.

"I—" Maya started.

Ethan's eyes crinkled. "You've got a little—" He gestured to his own teeth.

Maya wanted to dissolve into the concrete. Instead, she groaned. "How long?"

"Since we started talking about Buster."

"And you didn't say anything?"

"I didn't want to make it weird," Ethan grinned. "But honestly? It kind of made it better. Like, now we've already survived the most awkward thing that could happen."

Maya started laughing. Real laughter, the kind that crinkles your eyes and makes your stomach hurt.

"You're coming in," Ethan said, standing up and extending a hand.

"I'm not wearing—"

"Your clothes will dry. But you'll regret missing this."

Maya looked at Chloe, who was watching from the pool with an encouraging smile. Then she looked at Ethan, hand still extended, waiting. And at Buster, who had already moved on to someone else's food.

She took Ethan's hand.

"Fine," she said. "But I'm doing a cannonball."

"That's the spirit," Ethan said.

Maya jumped, pool water swallowing her whole. When she surfaced, spluttering and chlorine-scented, everyone was cheering. Even Chloe. And Ethan was grinning like she'd just won something.

Maybe she had.