The Sphinx of Spectrum Pool

I didn't want to come. Honestly, I'd rather be doing literally anything else — including watching my dad attempt to explain the difference between a bear market and a bull market to my completely uninterested little brother. But Jordan said they'd be here, and apparently my spine is made of marshmallow fluff.

So here I am, standing at the edge of the pool in swim trunks that felt perfectly adequate in my bedroom but now feel criminally inadequate under the harsh judgment of the afternoon sun. The Spectrum Community Pool party is in full swing — literally, with people doing cannonballs off the diving board like they've never heard of spinal injuries.

I spot Jordan immediately, of course. They're swimming laps with that enviable effortless grace, while I'm still paralyzed by the existential crisis of whether to get in gradually or just jump and risk looking like a distressed seal.

Then I see it — the sphinx.

Someone brought this bizarre sphinx statue thing from the community center's prop closet. It's sitting on a patio table like it owns the place, its stone face somehow managing to look more confident than I feel. A bunch of people are taking stupid pictures with it, doing sphinx poses, making sphinx faces. It's the kind of thing that's so cringe it loops back around to being kind of amazing.

Jordan climbs out of the pool, water dripping everywhere, being all annoyingly gorgeous and approachable. They wave me over. My stomach does that embarrassing little flip it always does.

"Hey!" Jordan says, grabbing a towel. "Gonna come in, or just stand there contemplating the meaning of existence?"

"I'm bear-ing it," I blurt out, then immediately want to dissolve into the concrete. What does that even mean?

Jordan laughs though. Not mean-laughing. Actually laughing. "You're so weird. I love it."

We spend the next hour floating around the shallow end, talking about everything and nothing, and somehow I'm bear-ing my actual soul about how I hate these parties but didn't want to miss seeing them, and they're admitting they only came because their cousin forced them to socialize or they'd "become a full-on hermit crab."

The bull market versus bear market lecture from my dad suddenly makes sense — not the economics part, but the idea that some things are about momentum, about riding waves instead of fighting them. So I take a breath, ignore my brain screaming that this is terrifying, and ask if they want to get smoothies next weekend.

Jordan's smile is brighter than the sun reflecting off the pool. "I'd love that."

And just like that, I'm not scared anymore. Well, maybe a little. But it's the good kind of scared.