The Orange Crush Incident

The first time I saw Mateo across the **padel** court, I was eating a clementine. He wore that faded gray Nike shirt that every guy at Westwood High seemed to own, but somehow it looked different on him. Better.

"You're staring again," Lena said, nudging my arm. "It's giving obsession."

"I'm not obsessed," I protested, though the orange peel I'd just sectioned was suddenly very interesting. "I'm observing. There's a difference."

"Girl, you've been 'observing' since summer rec started. Either talk to him or I'm telling him you think his serve is mid."

I shoved her. Because she wasn't wrong. My entire personality had become this weird oscillating between confidence (looking fire in my new orange bikini) and absolute paralysis (actually speaking to him).

The incident happened Wednesday, during open swim. I'd been working myself up to approach the padel courts all week—like, actually scripting conversations in my notes app—when Mateo and his friends walked past the pool area. Naturally, in that moment, my brain chose violence.

"I got this," I told myself, and pushed off the wall for what was supposed to be a confident, elegant swim toward the ladder. But someone—a literal actual **bull** in the form of a sixth grader named Marcus—decided now was the time to execute a chaotic cannonball directly into my path.

The physics of his trajectory intercepted mine with catastrophic precision. I surfaced, spluttering, while half the pool erupted into laughter. But not Mateo. He just watched.

Then his eyes dropped to my orange bikini—the color still somehow intact despite my dignity being fully compromised—and then back to my face.

"Your form," he called out, deadpan, from the pool's edge, "could use some work."

Everyone got quiet.

"But," he continued, "that color though. It's... a choice."

I flipped him off. But I was also smiling. And later, when I found him waiting for me by the padel courts, pretending to check his phone while his friends wandered ahead, I knew something had shifted.

"So," he said, not looking up, "you doing this or what?"

"Doing what?"

"Pretending you don't want me to teach you how to actually play."

I bit back a smile. "Your serve is probably mid anyway."

He laughed. And that—that was how the summer of my embarrassment turned into something real.