10 Things I Hate About Pinky - Sandhya Menon Page 0,80

short, sharp pants. “I told you to let it go!”

Cash’s jaw was set, a defensive thrust to it. “I wasn’t the only one in this conversation.”

“No, but you’re the one continuing to poke and prod,” Dolly said. “Can’t you just be nice? For once?”

He glared at Dolly. “I thought you liked not nice. I thought it turned you on. I guess it only works for you when your friends aren’t around.” And then he pivoted, swam quickly to the pier, and got out. He shook out a towel, draped it around his broad shoulders, and stalked off without looking back at any of them.

Dolly turned to Pinky and Samir, her cheeks pink. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

Pinky shook her head. “It’s fine.” She glanced at Samir, questioning.

After a pause, he nodded too. “Yeah. Fine.”

“No, it’s not.” Dolly’s voice wavered. “He said some nasty things to you, Samir, and I’m really sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” he said, and he meant it. “Seriously. It’s not the first time some jerk’s made a joke about my being homeschooled, and it won’t be the last.”

“It’s not just that.” Dolly sniffed, her eyes pink around the edges. Was she about to start crying? Samir looked on in concern and vague discomfort. “It’s that… I’m putting him in your periphery and bad stuff keeps happening. Like first with the barn and then the Uno game, and now with those comments he made…”

“You feel guilty,” Pinky said.

“Yeah.” Dolly blinked fast. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Probably,” Pinky replied. “I mean, I have. I’ve been in your situation many times, Dolly. It’s not like you have the corner on making stupid mistakes with stupid boys, you know.”

Was it Samir’s imagination or did Pinky look at him when she said that last thing? So now he was a stupid mistake and a stupid boy?

Samir felt himself bristling. “I’m just going to, ah, do a few laps,” he called over his shoulder as he launched himself into the water, into exercise, into a few good minutes of lung-burning, brain-quieting activity.

* * *

“Are you okay?” Pinky asked later, in Samir’s room.

They were back home, and they’d all showered and changed and were basically killing time before dinner. The sun was setting and Samir had the windows in his bedroom open. He loved what dusk did to the world, like a soft, rose-gold paintbrush had swept over it.

He looked up from his bed, where he was reading a law magazine, his wet hair dripping droplets of cold water down his neck, cooling him. “Fine.”

“Yeah…” Pinky walked in and perched on his windowsill. Her legs looked extra long in that tiny skirt, but Samir forced his eyes to his magazine. “I don’t think so. You’ve been acting weird since that whole thing with Cash. He get under your skin?”

“Nope,” Samir replied, trying hard to control the flash of temper he felt, so alien to him. He turned a page and kept up the appearance of reading. “I’m just reading.”

There was a beat of silence, two. Pinky sighed. “Sam…”

He looked up at her tone, part gentle, part frustrated. It was the “gentle” that always got him. Pinky being gentle, being soft, was almost impossible to resist.

“It’s okay if he did,” she continued. “I mean, he kind of got under my skin and he wasn’t even talking to—”

Samir tossed his magazine aside and got off his bed, striding to where she stood, her back to the window. When they were toe-to-toe, he said, quietly but firmly, “No. Cash didn’t get under my skin.”

Pinky

Pinky swallowed. She could smell the citrusy soap he’d used in the shower; she could see a single drop of water rolling down the side of the smooth skin on his neck. She could feel the heat of his skin, wafting to her, wrapping her up and holding tight. “Oh,” she said, her voice scratchy. “Then… what?”

They continued staring at each other, not talking. Her heart was hammering so hard, she was suddenly afraid Samir could hear it. She should tell him to back off, but… she didn’t want him to. She wanted him to continue standing exactly this close. She wanted to continue to be lost in those brown eyes. And she was fully aware that how she was feeling was completely and utterly at odds with her “let’s just focus on our goals, Samir” speech out on the deck the night she’d turned him down.

“You,” he said, almost angrily. “You’re the one getting under my skin.”

Holy hell. If she’d ever thought Samir was soft, or weak,