The Court Between Us

I'd been **running** late, again—my curly **hair** doing that frizz thing it does when I stress-sweat, which is exactly what happens every time I have to talk to Carlos. The crush situation was reaching catastrophic levels, and I was not built for this.

So naturally, I did what any rational fifteen-year-old would do: I became a backyard **spy**.

Carlos played **padel** at the rec center every Tuesday with his squad—the popular kids who never seemed to try too hard at anything while trying too hard at everything. Padel was like tennis but cooler, apparently. I'd hide behind the equipment shed, peeking through the fence slats like a total weirdo, watching him laugh and serve and exist in his effortless dimension.

Until the day the shed's **cable** caught my hoodie.

I stumbled forward, tangled in what turned out to be an old coaxial cable from the building's abandoned satellite dish, and faceplanted directly into Carlos's view.

"You okay?" he called out, abandoning the match.

The entire squad stopped playing. I was now part of the padel narrative. This was not in my five-year plan.

"Just... checking the equipment?" I lied, badly.

Carlos jogged over, helped me untangle from the cable, and didn't even make fun of my hair situation. "You play?"

"No."

"Wanna learn?"

"What?"

"You're here every Tuesday," he said, grinning. "Figured you wanted to join."

He'd KNOWN. The whole time. I wasn't a spy. I was the watchee, not the watcher.

And that's how I learned that embarrassment is temporary, but learning a backhand from your crush while your hair looks like you survived a tornado? That's a core memory.

Also, I'm terrible at padel. Like, actually awful. But Carlos still says hi to me in the hall now, so I'm calling it a win.