The Last Game at Sunset Padel

The first week of July, my dad won a goldfish at the county fair. We named him Admiral Bubblepants because I was fifteen and thought I was hilarious. He lived in a bowl on my nightstand, swimming in tiny circles while I doom-scrolled through pics of Maya's pool party—the one I hadn't been invited to.

"You need to get out more," Mom said, handing me a cringe-worthy bucket hat with flowers. "Join that padel clinic everyone's talking about."

Padel. The sport all the popular kids played at the country club, the one with expensive racquets and cute outfits and somehow defined your entire social standing before sophomore year even started.

The first day, I spotted Liam immediately. He was stretching near the fence, hair wet from the pool, and my brain short-circuited. I'd had a crush on him since seventh grade, back when he still sat with the theater kids instead of the lacrosse bros.

"Hey," he said, jogging over. "You're in my history class, right?"

My stomach did something extremely uncool. "Yeah. I sit behind you."

"Wanna hit?" He held up a padel racquet. "I need a partner for drills."

We played until sunset, my palms sweating, my hat sliding off every five seconds. I was terrible—kept hitting the ball into the fence, the water fountain, once nearly into the parking lot. But Liam just laughed, easy and genuine, and didn't make me feel like the world's biggest loser.

"You're getting better," he said, wiping water from his forehead. "Way better than my first week. I took out a coach's shin."

That night, I flopped onto my bed, floating, absolutely buzzing, and accidentally knocked over Admiral Bubblepants's bowl. Water everywhere, tiny gravel embedded in my carpet, and the poor fish flopping on my duvet like he was having the worst day ever.

I scrambled, scooped him into a plastic cup filled with tap water, and set him on my desk. He swam in stressed, tiny circles, judging me.

My phone buzzed. Liam: *Today was fun. Same time tomorrow?*

I stared at the screen, my heart doing that thing where it forgets how to beat properly. Then I picked up the charging cable from my floor, plugged in my phone, and replied: *Absolutely.*

Beside me, Admiral Bubblepants swam on, survivor of my absolute chaos, living proof that sometimes you can knock over your whole life and still end up exactly where you're supposed to be.