but really—”
“Pinky.”
She turned to her cousin, her brain pinwheeling. “What?”
Dolly was shaking her head slowly. “Oh. My. God. You like him. Don’t you? You really, really like him.”
“What?” Pinky said, leaning back a bit. The crickets chirped their own questions. “No, I don’t!”
Dolly laughed. “Uh-huh. Okay.”
Pinky closed her eyes. “Dolly. I can’t like him.”
“Why not?” she heard Dolly say. “Why the hell not?”
Pinky opened her eyes. “Because! What would it say about me if I did? I’m the free spirit of the family. I’m the one who does the thing everyone else is scared to do. I’m the one who thinks outside the box. I’m the creative, rebellious one! If I date someone as staid and steady and even-keeled as him, someone my parents approve of, for God’s sake, what would that say about me?”
Dolly studied her for a long moment. “Who cares?”
Pinky stared at her, feeling kind of hurt. “What?”
Dolly shook her head. “Who cares? Who cares what it says about you? Who cares if he’s the kind of guy your parents would pick for you? Who cares if you like staid and steady and even-keeled?” Dolly leaned forward. “What do you want, Pinky? Forget what everyone else would think or what it might say about your identity. What does your heart say? What does your soul say about Samir?”
For one tempting moment, Pinky wanted to say the first thing that flew into her mind: My soul says it was waiting for him. But in the next moment, she had swallowed the thought. That was foolish, impractical, ridiculous, two a.m. talk. Pinky had been in enough relationships to know what kind of boy her soul needed. Her soul must be broken or something at the moment. “It’s not that easy,” she whispered.
“But it could be,” Dolly pressed gently. “It could be if you wanted it to be.”
Pinky didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing. She wanted to have Dolly’s easy belief in love and dating, but she didn’t. She and Samir were not meant to be together. That was it. What else was there to say?
Dolly studied her for another moment and then sighed. Scooting over on the wooden bench, she put her arms around Pinky. “I get it,” she said softly. “I totally get it. Sometimes we have to find our own path forward. It doesn’t matter what anyone else says.”
Pinky closed her eyes, relieved that, at least for this moment, she didn’t have to explain herself to anyone.
Samir
Pinky sat with her legs crossed on the striped couch in a Rashida & Alexandria & Ayanna & Ilhan T-shirt. “I’ve been talking to Gloria.” Almost two weeks had passed since the Cash fiasco, and the adults were out at some Saturday morning farmers’ market in town. She, Dolly, and Samir had commandeered the living room. “And it looks like the people we have the best chance of reaching with this petition are south of Hennickport Street. She said we should start there with our canvassing efforts.”
“Okay. When are we doing this?” Samir was trying really hard not to look at her too often. He found that when he did, his gaze lingered, and then she looked at him, her eyes going wide and soft. It just seemed like she was sending him all these mixed signals. And so, ever since their conversation in his room, when he’d told her she was getting under his skin and then been interrupted by Dolly, he’d decided he’d let Pinky come to him. He’d decided that before and then wavered, but now he was holding strong. This was it. He was done reaching out. A man had to have some self-respect.
Pinky tucked a lock of pink hair behind one ear. “Tuesday. Gloria said the people south of Hennickport Street are kind of the old-timers. You know, people who’re likelier to be resistant to Ellingsworth becoming the new Nantucket, that kind of thing. She said we should start there with our petition. I figured it’d be good if we could dig up some old photographs of our family hanging out at the habitat. They might be a little wary of the summer people, but I figure if we can show them our commitment to this place, how much it means to us and all that stuff, they’d have to come around, right?”
“That’s a really good idea.” Dolly nibbled on her lower lip. “Okay, how about this? I’ll go scope out that area, just kind of get an idea of how many houses