The Summer We Cut the Cord

The first time I kissed someone, my palm was sweating so much I thought I'd short-circuit the moment. Not that Maya would've noticed—she was too busy staring at the TV we'd just disconnected from the cable.

"So what now?" she asked, and I could tell she meant the TV but also everything.

We were sixteen and bored and doing that thing where you hang out in someone's basement because it's too hot to be anywhere else. My dad had been bugging me about baseball tryouts all week, going on about how I needed to get off my phone and find something real. But real felt like trying to solve a vitamin deficiency by eating nothing but gummy bears.

"We could go outside," I said, even though the mere suggestion felt like admitting defeat.

Maya laughed. "You? Outside voluntarily? What's next, you're gonna start running marathons?"

She didn't know I'd been waking up at 6 AM every morning to run around my neighborhood, training for something I wasn't sure I even wanted. She didn't know a lot of things about me—like how I secretly liked her weird indie music, or how I actually enjoyed playing baseball when my dad wasn't making it all about scholarships and character building.

The basement was quiet except for the hum of my laptop charger. I looked at Maya, really looked at her, and realized my sweaty palm wasn't about the kiss. It was about the suddenly terrifying possibility that she might actually see me.

"I hate baseball," I blurted. "Like, actually hate it. I only do it because—"

"Because your dad?" She raised an eyebrow. "Bro, I've known you since third grade. I literally saw you cry over a broken Wii controller. I know your dad's whole thing."

I stared at her. "You never said anything."

"You never asked." She grabbed her backpack. "Come on. Let's go to the park."

"Now? It's like ninety degrees."

"Exactly. Perfect weather for doing absolutely nothing." She paused at the door. "Also, you ran into the wrong classroom twice yesterday. I figured you were training for something."

My face burned. "You noticed?"

"I notice everything about you." She said it so casually, like it wasn't the most terrifying sentence I'd ever heard. "That's kind of how friends work."

Friends. The word landed somewhere between my stomach and my throat.

"What if I wanted to be more than friends?" The question was out before I could stop it.

Maya froze. Then she smiled, slow and careful. "Then we'd have to talk about why you've been running every morning like you're training for a zombie apocalypse."

"Or maybe," I said, finding courage I didn't know I had, "I just finally decided to stop running from what I want."

That's when she kissed me—no sweaty palms required.