10 Things I Hate About Pinky - Sandhya Menon Page 0,107

voice wooden. “Completely lets her heart dictate what her brain should do. Number two, impetuous.” Her heart squeezed and squeezed in her chest; the pain was indescribable. She didn’t know what else to do, so she kept reading. Her eyes ran down the list, taking in each thing Samir had meticulously numbered and written, each thing that he hated about her. “Hardheaded. Bullish. Nonconforming.”

“Pinky.” Samir knelt beside her, his voice breaking. “Pinky, no. I wrote that a long time ago. Please, it’s not… I’m not even sure why I kept it—”

“Everything’s a fight,” she read, her voice now barely more than a whisper. When she looked up at Samir, he shimmered through the veil of her tears. They stared at each other.

“Please,” he said again, sounding stricken. “You have to believe me. I didn’t mean to… This isn’t even true anymore.”

She shook her head, smiling just a little bit. “No, that’s the thing,” Pinky said as fat, hot tears rolled down her cheeks. She didn’t think she’d cried in her entire life as much as she’d cried tonight. “None of this is wrong. Every single thing is precisely true.” She swallowed. “It’s all the things that make me me. And you hate them all.”

“I don’t!” Samir said, taking her cold hands in his. “I really—”

“It’s right there at the top of the page in your handwriting,” she said, almost wanting to laugh at his ludicrous denial. “Of course you do. It’s okay, it’s fine. You’re not the only one. I’m sure my mom has a very similar list.” Pinky stood, ripping her hands from his, and went around him. Still facing the door, she added, “I just want to know one thing, though. If you really hate all these things about me, why the hell did you even go out with me? Why the hell did you tell me you liked me?”

“Because I do like you!” Samir said, his voice rising. “Don’t you get it? Pinky, I don’t feel like that anymore!”

She looked at him over her shoulder, smirking. “Right. Is that why it was so easy for you to make the decision to give me up?”

And finally, to that, Samir had no response. Pinky turned around and walked out of his room, leaving him behind.

* * *

The pain exploded in her chest, in her bones, in her every cell, once she’d closed and locked her door behind her. She flung herself on her bed, buried her face in her pillow, and wept, her chest heaving, feeling as if her entire world were raining down on her, piece by piece.

The crazy thing was, she’d expected this of her mom. Pinky’d figured her mom wouldn’t understand why she felt the need to save the habitat, and although she’d hoped that her mom might come around once she remembered the good times they’d had there, it hadn’t been a total surprise that she hadn’t. That was her mom. They’d never seen eye to eye. It was the whole reason Pinky had hidden the big protest from her in the first place.

But Samir… he’d stuck by her side; he’d been her unlikely ally from the beginning. He was like no one else she’d ever dated. He was sweeter than she’d expected and more confident. She’d understood him and he’d understood her.

She had thought.

But now she saw that whatever this was between them had never been to him what it had been to her. Pinky had opened her heart to him fully, completely aware that he had the power to hurt her, never believing for one moment that he would. And the entire time, the entire time, he’d been thinking, Well, this is fun, but there’s no way it’s going to last. I’ll get what I can here and go home. My real life will resume and Pinky will be just a distant memory. Or maybe he’d envisioned a friends-with-benefits type of situation. She clenched her pillow with angry fists, wanting to scream into it.

How dare he. How dare he treat her like some kind of throwaway doll. The entire time she’d thought Cash was the douche, and she’d had no idea she had one of those under her own roof. That she’d invited one to the lake house for the summer and then fallen in love with him.

She turned her red, hot, wet face to the side, breathing hard, staring out the window at the darkness. Fallen in love with him? Yes, she realized. She was in love with Samir. And the tears