When the Spinach Hit the Racket

Maya's life had exactly two speeds: running and asleep. Cross-country captain, scholarship hopeful, definitely not the type to embarrass herself in front of the entire varsity tennis team. But here she was, standing on a padel court in jeans, clutching a borrowed racquet like it might bite her.

"You're overthinking it," Tyler said, flipping his hair in that way that made half the school swoon. The other half just rolled their eyes. Maya was proudly in the second half.

"I'm thinking about how I have a meet tomorrow and I'm standing here instead of running intervals."

"Live a little, Gray." His smirk was infuriating. "It's just padel. It's basically tennis's chill cousin who smokes weed sometimes."

Her phone buzzed in her pocket—probably Coach asking where she was. Instead of checking, she swung at the ball and missed completely. The ball ricocheted off the back wall, bounced over the fence, and nailed someone's spinach smoothie on the adjacent bench. Green explosion everywhere.

The entire court went silent.

Tyler stared at her, then at the smoothie casualty, then back at her. And then he cracked up. Not a mean laugh—a genuine, doubled-over, can't-breathe laugh that made Maya's chest do something weird and fluttery she refused to examine.

"You just assaulted a smoothie with a padel ball," he gasped. "That's genuinely impressive."

Something inside her cracked open. Maybe it was the pressure, always running, always performing, always being Cross-Country Maya with the perfect splits and the perfect GPA. For the first time in forever, she laughed too—really laughed, ugly and snorting and.

"I'll buy you a new one," she called to the smoothie victim, who was blinking green droplets off their eyelashes.

"Nah," they yelled back. "I was gonna skip practice anyway. This is way better."

Tyler wiped tears from his eyes. "So, Cross-Country Maya, you gonna finish this game or what?"

She adjusted her grip on the racquet. Not running away. Not running toward something. Just standing there, spinach-smoothie casualty behind her, cute boy in front of her, and for the first time in forever, not in a hurry to be anywhere else.

"Serve it, Williamson."