As I climb into Alex's dark grey Volkswagen Jetta, I can't help registering in the logical area of my brain that my parents would be uneasy with my present decision.

"Okay, which way?" Alex asks with upbeat energy.

I point to the right, and he turns out of the parking lot. Alex plugs in his phone to connect the stereo system, then continues fiddling with it as he's driving—something I would never dream of doing. He continues poking buttons on the screen haphazardly, scrolling through his Spotify playlists. Eventually, he lands on Shawn Mendez.

"Señorita" is my current favorite song. Either Alex selected this music as something he thought I might enjoy, or he listens to Shawn Mendes, and both of these possibilities cause a brief flicker of tingles in the tips of my fingers.

"You slayed it today in practice," Alex informs me, and my stomach does several somersaults.

"Thank you."

"So..." he begins, drumming the steering wheel as if attempting to uncover a topic of discussion from his imagination. It's not a nervous drumming but rather a cool and carefree fidgeting.

"What do you do besides volleyball and school?" he asks me.

"I also play basketball."

"Yeah, I remember that. You were shooting the ball that one day."

Right. They ran an intensive summer volleyball training program for us, and one day I mixed up the times and arrived almost an hour early. The coaches were laid out on the stage (one of our gyms doubles as a theater auditorium), napping between training sessions; I didn't want to bother my mom to pick me back up, so I just shot a volleyball around in the basketball hoop for forty-five minutes until the other girls arrived.

My face flushes at the memory.

"Besides sports, any hobbies?" Alex presses.

"Um, yeah—I play the piano," I answer softly, a frog in my throat.

"Really?" he responds with enthusiasm. "That's awesome! How long have you played?"

"I've been taking lessons for about eight years."

"Wow, you must be really good."

I'm out of breath from this conversation and working to control the amount of air entering and exiting my body so Alex doesn't notice. He bops to the music and sings a phrase or two, airy—not a care in the world. He smells like sweat and cologne, and it's intoxicating. I'm praying the stench of my sweaty sneakers doesn't waft across to his side of the car.

"What about school? You have a favorite subject?"

The amount of questions is surprising, and normally such an interrogation would cause my soul to slowly shrivel inside. But there's something about his demeanor that makes me feel almost like... I can handle this conversation. I'm vaguely aware that I should be reciprocating the questions, but that level of human engagement is beyond me.

"Hm," I say, pausing to consider. "Maybe English? Also math, though. And Spanish. Actually, this semester my favorite class is probably psychology."

Alex chuckles. "So, every class then is your favorite then."

A one-second giggle escapes my mouth.

"You're lucky. I freaking hated my classes in high school. I was a terrible student, just terrible." He shakes his head as he says the last part.

A pang of disappointment fizzes in my stomach, followed by a very sarcastic internal eye roll. It doesn't matter, Natalia; you're not dating him.

"What did you study in college?" I shock myself, the question out of my mouth before my head has fully processed that I'm considering speaking.

"I'm actually in community college now–just locally here at ARC. Computer programming. Where did you say to turn?"

My head is spinning. If he's in college, how young might he be? He could potentially be just a couple years older than me. Or, since he's just admitted how much he hated school, he could be in his late twenties or early thirties for all I know, having just returned to college after a long gap.

"This one here–go left," I indicate.

"Cherry Avenue," Alex muses. "That's lovely." Something about the word "lovely" is so endearing, it almost does me in. Actually, I nearly burst out laughing, because it doesn't match his personality at all, and I can't tell if he's being sarcastic, goofy or sincere. My emotions are all jumbled up.

"It's this one on the corner," I tell Alex, pointing. He pulls in and parks. Camila Cabello and Ed Sheeran's duet of "Bam Bam" is now playing. I'm completely obsessed with this song.

"Thank you for giving me a ride," I say, awkwardness again overtaking me.

"Anytime, Nati."

For the first time the whole car ride, I turn my head to look directly at Alex, and the golden specks of his eyes burn into mine like embers sparking. He lets out this little chuckle, his dimple denting his cheek for a brief second, and his honey-tanned face glows pink like he's blushing the slightest bit, but I don't know why he would be.

* * *

Kelsey ties a blue ribbon around my pony tail as we prepare for our first match the next morning, and now every girl on the team has a ribbon matching our jerseys. My jersey number is three, which I was given at random since it was one of the larger sizes, and I'm one of the tallest girls on the team.

My English teacher is obsessed with pointing out the symbolism of the number three in literature, so I was ecstatic to receive this jersey. I've always assigned a sort of cosmic meaning to tiny coincidence such as these; my imagination darts around to crazy places, conjuring up the magnificent outcomes sure to come from such serendipitous randomness.

"Let's go!" bellows Steve, already supremely irritated with us at 8:15am. "Get on the court and start warming up! This isn't a beauty pageant." Since I was the most recent girl to receive a ribbon, I take the comment personally. It's early to be receiving my first douse of embarrassment, and dread gurgles in my stomach as I acknowledge to myself that it's going to be a long day.

My legs and arms are cold and stiff as I jog laps around the court with my teammates, and I recall last night's dream in which I was sprinting miles and miles without any physical exhaustion or shortness of breath, only lightness. Against all reality, a part of me honestly believes that one day, I'll experience running that way in real life.

My first warmup serve doesn't even make it to the net, which is humiliating. I pray no one has noticed. As we run through a series of drills, I review the left hitter rotation I learned yesterday in my head.

The game begins; there are no bleachers since there are six teams packed into the gym playing three separate matches, so the bench players are lined up on the sideline with Steve and Alex. I can barely make out the line delineations, since we're playing on modified tournament courts, and all the noise, people and chaos around me are slightly overwhelming.

I'm watching the game intently to ensure I sub in at the correct moment, except I quickly realize I have no idea when I'm supposed to rotate in. Nothing looks familiar from the day before at practice. My body lurches forward twice, mistakenly thinking it's my time, and I try to play it off like I was just cheering or fidgeting on the sideline. When it's finally my sub, I don't move swiftly enough; Steve has to cue me, which I know pisses him off. Shit.

I'm immediately in the wrong spot on the court, and Kelsey guides me on where to stand. She then serves the ball into the net, so we take our defensive positions. I remember from yesterday where to go, and the next play runs smoothly. I manage to make a decent hit over the net, and we gain the ball back.

Somehow, I again have no idea where to stand, and my mind is running desperate circles attempting to figure it out. My brain cells dart around, grasping for any connection to yesterday's practice, but everyone is standing in a different place. It's like I've memorized the lines to Romeo and Juliet, but everyone else is performing MacBeth.

Megan subs in for me when I reach the back row, and it's clear from her hesitancy that she isn't entirely sure on the sub rotation either. She appears unaffected, however, serving five whopping aces straight in a row and scooping up several digs.

"Natalia, pay attention to the subbing. Be ready to move—I shouldn't have to tell you when to go," Steve warns me. The problem is, my nerves are now amped up, blocking my brain from processing information. I'm attempting to keep track, but the formation still looks unfamiliar compared to what we've run yesterday, and panic is clouding my ability to count how many rotations have occurred so far.

It suddenly dawns on me that we only ran defensive drills at yesterday's practice. We didn't practice offense, did we? That's why I'm utterly lost right now. Mother fucker.

Steve, standing next to me, turns my way, and I impulsively misinterpret his motion and jolt forward to sub in. He literally grabs my shoulders to hold me back.

"No, no, no," he says impatiently. The layers of shame are piling on me one by one, burying me. The next play, I see Megan make the substitution symbol, uncertain, glancing towards me and Steve as she circles her wrists. She's as lost as I am, but I get the impression Steve is only frustrated with me.

"Go!" Steve yells at me, but it's too late, and the next play has commenced before Megan and I can switch. She remains in to play my position in the front row. By the time I get back on the court, my legs are shaking and I'm an absolute mess on the inside. I'm seconds away from bursting into sobs.

Which is exactly what I do the moment the match finally ends. I rush to get away from everyone, knowing there's no place in this enormous gym where I can break down in private. It's like a giant, echoing box of cheerful teenagers, and I'm a blubbering, red-faced, snotty mess exposed in the middle of it.

Alex grabs me by the elbow and leads me to the far corner, near an open door where there's fresh air.

"Sit down." He practically pulls me down with him as he slides his back against the wall and plops onto the hard, polished floor.

"Why are you crying like this?" he asks. The tone is not one of judgement or any other emotion that conveys he needs me to stop crying; it's more an open curiosity. He scoots closer to me, so our bodies are practically touching side-by-side. We're both sitting with our legs bent into triangles, feet on the ground.

I'm not able to respond for a while, due to the uncontrolled sobbing.

Finally I sputter, "I feel so stupid."

"You're not stupid," he responds matter-of-factly. "You're the smartest girl on this team."

I know that, which is why this is so infuriating.

"Look, whatever happened out there—if you played badly or messed up the rotation—so what? It's just volleyball, you know?"

His words soothe me. The thing is, I'm not crying about volleyball. I'm not planning to go pro; I don't even plan to play in college. My tears, selfishly, have nothing to do with causing the team to lose and everything to do with my own ego.

"I hate being embarrassed," I say, the words dropping out as subtle wisps.

"No one cares about you screwing up, okay?" Alex assures me. "It's already forgotten."

It's bizarre, and when I think back to it, I'm not convinced it actually happened, but in the next moment Alex leans his leg against mine. A rush of comfort and dangerous thrill runs between my knee and my thigh where he's made contact, and the electric energy pulses into my chest and stomach.

"Okay now?" he asks me. His tone, insistently carefree, gives me no choice but to agree. Oddly enough, I am okay. The wave of emotion has subsided as quickly as it overtook me.

Alex springs up from the dusty gym floor, breaking our physical contact, and the notion that his leg was against mine seconds ago crumbles into fragments of doubt. Was it accidental? Was he merely comforting me? Did I imagine it?

But I can still feel every nerve ending on the outer side of my left leg stinging with the sweet heat of a deliciously spicy chili pepper.