Thunderpool & Orange Crush

The orange bikini had seemed like a good idea at the store. Bright, confident, a statement-piece for Maya's end-of-summer pool party that everyone—literally everyone on sophomore year's Instagram story—was going to.

Now, standing at the edge of the concrete deck while Jake Henderson and his friends did cannonballs that sent water spraying everywhere, I felt like a construction cone. A construction cone with zero chill.

I'd been quasi-stalking Jake's profile since June (low-key spy work: no likes, just thorough story-watching), which was pathetic but also? Necessary intel. He liked ska-punk and vintage band tees. I owned both. The pieces were there for a perfect meet-cute.

Instead, I was doing that thing where I pretended to check my phone every thirty seconds while secretly observing everyone having actual fun. I was basically swimming in my own social anxiety at this point.

"Yo!" Jake surface, water dripping from his hair like some movie moment. "You joining or what? We're doing chicken fights."

My stomach did that full-body swoop thing—like, physically swooped.

"Yeah," I managed. "Just, uh. Applying sunscreen. Responsibility first."

Smooth. Truly the words of a cool and composed individual.

Then the sky ripped open—not rain, not yet. First came this jagged slash of **lightning** that turned the whole backyard ghost-pale for one second, like someone hit a cosmic filter button. A heartbeat later, thunder actually shook the ground beneath my flip-flops.

"INSIDE!" Maya's dad roared from the patio.

Everyone scrambled—towels abandoned, phones snatched, wet feet slapping against pavement in a thousand directions. I grabbed my phone and made a break for the house, but someone grabbed my wrist.

Jake. His hand was warm, wet. My brain short-circuited.

"You got this," he said, pointing at the mass of people squeezing through the sliding glass door. "We're gonna be stuck in the basement for like an hour. You know they've got Mario Kart down there?"

"I've never played," I blurted, which was technically a lie but also I had never played while a boy held my wrist and the sky crashed open behind us.

He grinned. All crooked teeth zero hesitation. "Perfect. I'll destroy you, but like. Nicely."

We ran through the rain together—my orange bikini now completely irrelevant in the chaos of twenty wet teenagers squeezed into a basement, laughing at each other's terrible Mario Kart skills and the way lightning flashed through the tiny basement windows, making everything flicker like glitch footage.

I came in last every single race. Jake fell off the couch laughing when I accidentally drove Donkey Kong off Rainbow Road for the fifth time.

And honestly? I'd never had more fun being terrible at something in my entire life.