She wouldn’t get it. He stood and walked to the roof’s edge, his stomach flipping lightly with anxiety at the height. The lights danced on the water in the distance, and the lake-scented breeze played with his hair. Slipping his hands into his pockets, Samir closed his eyes for a long moment.
He opened them when he felt a brush of soft skin in the dark and realized Pinky was standing beside him, her hand searching for his. Heart thumping again, Samir slipped his hand out of his pocket and let her take it. Her hand felt good in his, small and firm and sure. “Is this okay in the fake-dating rule book?” he asked, trying for a laugh, but it came out all shaky and wrong. She’d knocked him off-balance—with her questions, her strange ability to see inside him, her beauty, her surety—and he wasn’t sure how to recover.
Pinky didn’t laugh or acknowledge his question; she just pressed closer to him. Samir’s heart thumped louder, more insistently. “Have you thought about getting therapy? Both you and her, I mean.”
Samir felt his heart sink. He barked out a laugh to cover up the feeling. “Oh, so you think I need professional help?” He tried to pull away, but Pinky’s hand tightened on his.
Pinky turned to him, her eyes warm, soft, and open. A magenta curl caressed her glimmering cheek. “That’s not a judgment. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with therapy.”
“You would say that,” Samir said. “Your uncle and aunt are therapists.”
“That’s true,” she allowed, “but I also believe it. What would you do if you fell off this ledge right now and broke your back on the ground?”
Samir raised an eyebrow. “Uh… Is that a threat?”
“No, seriously. What would you do?”
“I’d hope you’d call an ambulance for me.”
“Right. Exactly. You’d get medical help for a medical problem, right? So why is it any different to get help for a life problem that’s causing you so much grief? Why will you accept one professional’s help but not another’s?”
Samir studied her a second and then shrugged. He couldn’t argue with the logic. “When you put it like that…”
“There’s just such a stigma about mental health and asking for help,” Pinky said. “And it’s really bad in the Indian-American community. But there shouldn’t be.”
“Yeah. I guess. I just wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“There are community centers and stuff with low-cost clinics if you don’t want to use your mom’s insurance. My school website has a bunch of resources.”
Samir shrugged again. “Maybe. I’ll think about it.”
“Okay.”
They stood in silence, watching the houses in the distance, crouched down with the darkness wrapped around them like a blanket, as if they were readying themselves for sleep.
Samir glanced sidelong at Pinky, her glowing face in silhouette, his feelings in a tangle. He’d never seen her quite this soft, quite this concerned before (except with DQ). To be honest, he hadn’t realized she could be so soft and concerned with another human. She was an iceberg—the wild hair and the eyebrow ring and the “don’t give a damn” attitude were the tip, and the concern for others and the vulnerability about her own parents and her path in life were the submerged 95 percent. Did that make him the Titanic? He opened his mouth to tell her some of this or all of it or maybe something else entirely, but he was interrupted.
“Jeff, you better slow down or I’m gonna fall flat on my face!” Taking her hand from his, Pinky looked at him, her eyebrows raised, as a slurred, Southern-accented female voice floated up to them. A well-dressed couple was making their way to the parking lot, their voices clear in the quiet night. “I had way too many of those gotdang margaritas!”
“Well, maybe you should’ve been conducting yourself in a more ladylike manner, Annamae,” a guy—probably Jeff—said in an equally thick Southern accent.
“I’ll tell you what you can do with that attitude, and it won’t be ladylike,” Annamae said.
Pinky snorted and then clapped a hand over her mouth. Samir was making such a monumental effort at holding in his laughter that his shoulders shook uncontrollably.
Jeff grunted in response. Then he said, “Well, that’s some news about that old butterfly habitat down the road. Guess they’ll be putting in some luxury condos. About time, too. Think that’ll bring in more business? This location’s always been an underperformer.”
“Maybe,” Annamae replied. “People always need insurance, that’s what I say.” Then her slurred voice turned elated. “Oh my God! Look at