The Summer I Stopped Watching

My transformation began when I quit the baseball team. Coach Miller's face did that crumpling thing—like a disappointed math teacher discovering you'd used ChatGPT on the final. But I was done. Done with the cleats, the dugout gossip, the way everyone expected me to be the same guy who'd been playing shortstop since Little League.

"You sure about this, Maya?" Lena asked, blowing a bubble with her gum. It popped. She's been my best friend since third grade, which basically means she's legally required to question my terrible decisions.

"Dead sure." I adjusted my grip on the padel racket. Mom had signed me up for lessons at the new club, trying to fix whatever teenage rebellion she thought I was going through. Padel was like tennis but cooler—more fast-paced, more strategic, less country club vibes. Plus, nobody there knew me as "the baseball girl."

Nobody except Tyler.

He showed up on day three, wearing that obnoxious green hoodie he refuses to wash because "it's vintage." We'd had a thing in eighth grade, which lasted approximately two weeks before he got distracted by someone else. Now he was everywhere, and I was suddenly hyper-aware of my posture, my serve, whether my hair looked decent after sweating through a drill.

The worst part: I became a total spy. Not the cool kind with gadgets and exotic locations. The lame kind who obsessively checks his Instagram stories, who takes the long way to her locker to pass his homeroom, who notices he started listening to that indie band I mentioned—casually, supposedly—last month.

"You're spiraling," Lena said when I showed her my third spreadsheet of Tyler's possible music preferences based on his Spotify activity. "This isn't healthy, bestie."

"It's research," I protested, but she gave me that look.

The breaking point came at my padel tournament. Tyler was watching from the sidelines, and I froze. My racket felt like a stranger's hand. I double-faulted three times, and when I finally nailed this perfect down-the-line shot—my first real moment of something like joy—he was checking his phone.

After the match, I found him by the snack machine.

"You played good," he said, all casual, like he hadn't just destroyed my focus by existing.

"Thanks." Something shifted. Maybe it was the adrenaline. Maybe I was just tired. "I saw you liked my story."

He blinked. "Oh. Yeah."

"You listened to that band?"

"They're chill." He shrugged, like that explained everything. Then—because the universe has a twisted sense of timing—his phone buzzed. Someone else's name lit up the screen. His smile changed. Got real.

"I gotta bounce," he said. "Catch you later."

He walked away, and I stood there by the vending machine, watching him go. A goldfish memory, my mom used to say—that's what I had. Forgetting what hurt, coming back for more. But not anymore.

Lena found me five minutes later. "You okay?"

"Yeah," I said, and it wasn't a lie. "I think I'm done spying."

"So... padel tomorrow?"

"Padel tomorrow."

Some stories end before they begin. Some begin the moment you stop watching everyone else and start playing your own game.