The Hat, The Phone, The Truth

Marcus's fitted baseball hat was pulled so low it practically touched his eyelashes. Classic avoidance maneuver.

"You good, bro?" Ty asked, already knowing the answer.

"Yeah. Just checking something on my iPhone." Marcus tapped the black screen like there was actually something to see. There wasn't.

They were at the Hendersons' pool party — the kind of thing that was supposedly chill but actually felt like a social minefield. Everyone was already swimming or talking to someone they wanted to hook up with. Marcus was doing neither.

"That's bull," Ty said.

"What?"

"You've been checking that phone every thirty seconds. You're stalling."

Marcus stuffed the iPhone in his pocket. "I'm not stalling. I'm just... waiting for the right moment."

"For what? To jump in the pool? It's water, Marcus. Not the Hunger Games arena."

Then Kaia walked past in that bikini that had been ruining Marcus's focus since eighth grade. She gave him that half-smile that made his stomach do backflips.

"Hey Marcus," she said. "You gonna swim or just supervise?"

"I'm swimming. Definitely swimming. Just warming up."

Kaia raised an eyebrow. "You've been 'warming up' for forty-five minutes."

She called his bluff. Or bull, as Ty would say.

Marcus's hat felt ridiculous suddenly. This whole performance — the too-cool-to-swim bit, the iPhone as a prop, the hat pulled down like he was in some music video — it was exhausting. He was fifteen, not in a music video about being too cool for everything.

He pulled off the hat and tossed it onto a lawn chair. His hair was messy from having been smashed down all day, but whatever.

"Finally," Kaia said.

Marcus cannonballed into the deep end, surfacing to find Kaia already there, wet hair plastered to her face, grinning.

"Took you long enough," she said.

"I had a reputation to maintain," he said, splashing her.

"What reputation? The guy who never gets wet?"

"Exactly. Legendary status."

"You're ridiculous."

"Yeah," Marcus said, feeling lighter than he had all day. "I really am."

Sometimes that's the thing about growing up — you spend half your time constructing this whole elaborate version of yourself, then someone calls bull on it, and suddenly you're just... swimming. No iPhone, no hat, no performance. Just you, in the water, being ridiculous.

And honestly? That was way better anyway.