The Papaya Incident

Summer before freshman year, I found myself at Jessica Martinez's pool party—literally the most important social event of our entire middle school existence. The baseball team was there, including Tyler who I'd been lowkey crushing on since he hit that home run in gym class.

I was chilling by the snack table, trying to look casual, when Jessica's mom brought out this fancy fruit platter. Papaya. Who even eats papaya at a pool party? But I didn't want to look uncool, so I grabbed a slice, smiled like I ate exotic fruit every day, and—took the biggest bite of my life.

Huge mistake.

It was sweet mush with a weird aftertaste, but whatever. I played it off, grabbed some chips. That's when Tyler walked over, all sun-bleached hair and easy confidence. He asked about my summer. I said "fine" with literal spinach stuck between my front teeth from the spinach artichoke dip I'd inhaled earlier. A classic disaster.

Then his friend Carlos yells, "Water balloon fight!" and I'm like, forced into swimming in my two-piece that I spent three weeks picking out. I jumped in, papaya breath and all.

Underwater, everything felt muffled and peaceful. Nobody could see the spinach. Nobody could judge my papaya choices. I stayed under until my lungs burned, surfaced gasping, and Tyler's there laughing, flicking water at me.

"You got something," he said, gesturing to his teeth. I died. I literally died. But then he's like, "Happens to everyone. Last week, I had cilantro in my braces during my baseball presentation. Coach couldn't stop staring at my mouth."

We laughed. Actual genuine laughter. And maybe it wasn't the smoothest moment, maybe papaya would never be my thing, but I learned something that day: everybody's got their spinach moments. Even Tyler.

That night, I deleted thirteen carefully drafted texts to him and just sent: "Baseball practice tomorrow?"

He replied: "Only if you bring more of that papaya stuff."

I hate papaya now. But I really like Tyler.