Before she could think too deeply about it, she grabbed her phone from her nightstand and began to type.
Samir
Using a fork to avoid messy orange fingers, Samir carefully speared another cheese puff, popped it into his mouth, and chewed while a meteorologist on TV nattered on about the weather. Maybe the salt in these things would kill him before he needed to fly back home. He glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand in his hotel room. Five a.m. In three hours, he’d be on an airplane, flying west, back to Atherton. Samir closed his eyes and let his head sag back against the headboard. There was a weight on his chest, getting heavier and heavier—
His phone beeped with an incoming text. He frowned. It was only two a.m. in Atherton; it couldn’t be his mom. All communications from her ceased at nine p.m. her time and didn’t resume again until seven a.m. Samir set his fork down on a napkin that lay neatly folded on the nightstand and grabbed the phone.
But the text wasn’t from his mom. He read it again.
Wait, what?
Pinky: Hey you still in DC?
Pinky Kumar was texting him? But why? They really only communicated when Ashish was around. He was like the glue that held them together; when he was gone, they floated off in their own directions.
Um, yeah, he typed, confused. How’d you know?
Pinky: Ash told me. Sorry about your internship
Samir: Thanks
He paused, wondering if he should say something else. Ask her what she was up to or something, to be polite. But before he could, another text came in.
Pinky: I have a proposition for you
Samir: Huh?
Pinky: An invitation, a proposal
Samir: Yeah I know what a proposition is but wth are you talking about
Pinky: You don’t want to go back home I’m guessing and I need something you could give me
Samir waited, but she didn’t say anything else. This was getting weirder and weirder.
Okay…, he typed.
Pinky: I need…
Samir waited. She needed what? And why contact him? There was a beat of silence. Two, three.
Pinky: A boyfriend
Was she serious? Pinky and him in a relationship? The thought made Samir want to move to the wilds of Australia, be adopted by a pack of dingoes, and never come back. Snorting, he typed, Lmao okay haha
Pinky: ????
Samir: You’re joking right? This is some kind of weird burn that I’m not getting yet
Pinky: Omg dude this is not a joke. I’m serious. I need you to be my fake boyfriend this summer.
Samir studied the words, frowning. Your what?? That’s not even a thing
Pinky: If you pretend to be my bf it’ll be a thing
Samir: But… why??
Pinky: Because I’m tired of everyone looking at me like I’m a little delinquent
Samir: Yeah but you are
Pinky: Shut up. It’ll be for a month or maybe six weeks tops. And it’s at my parents’ gigantic lake house in Cape Cod so it’s not like you’d be slumming it
Samir: Don’t you have anyone else to ask?
Pinky: Let’s just say my mom has a type and you’re it
Samir’s frown deepened. He shouldn’t even be entertaining this ridiculous idea. He should tell Pinky to sleep off whatever she’d taken. He should put his phone away and get ready to go to the airport.
He found himself typing, What’s in it for me?
The response came quickly, as if she’d been waiting for him to ask.
Pinky: My mom’s looking to take a high school intern over winter break. I heard her talking to my dad about it. You’ll be with her at the lake house. Impress her and she’ll give it to you
Whoa. Pinky’s mom was Veena freaking Kumar, of Kumar & Strong.
Samir: But won’t she hate me if we pretend to break up at the end of summer break?
Pinky: I’ll tell her *I* broke up with *you*. If anything, it’ll just make her feel more sympathetic toward you. She’s always saying I make terrible decisions. I just need her to look at me this summer as if I made one good one
Holy crap. She’d thought this through. But… It was a ludicrous idea, right? Just plain out-of-this-world stupid. It would never work. He could never pretend to be her boyfriend. To be honest, he barely tolerated her, and the idea of having to be all lovey-dovey for an entire month, maybe more? Holding her hand and smiling while she went off on wild tangents about rebuilding beaver dams or whatever it was she did for fun? He felt bad that things weren’t going well for Pinky and her mom; he knew what that felt like. But he could never pull this off. Not without some serious acting lessons.
Samir: Okay fine
He stared at the words he’d sent, confused. He’d totally meant to say no. He’d meant to say he was heading back home in a couple of hours. But apparently his brain had other ideas.
Pinky: Omg. You’ll do it? Seriously?
Samir read her message. She… she really wasn’t joking then. She really wanted him to do this ridiculous, wild, laughable thing. But… but the thing was, he really, really didn’t want to go back home. Especially not stinking of failure. He knew what his mom would say: See? You should stay close to home. The world just holds disappointment. Stay here, stay with me, stay here. And he didn’t want that. Like, at all.
When do you need me there? he typed, his heart pounding, a small, slightly hysterical smile at his lips.
Right now, Pinky shot back. Today, if you can.
Samir hopped out of bed and headed toward the bathroom to get showered and changed. No problem.
* * *
There was no way this was happening. Samir sat in the terminal, waiting to board. He’d added in 10 a.m.: Fly to Nantucket to his planner and was waiting to check it off. He kept alternately grinning and sweating, like some back-alley murderer. Either this was going to be the best day of his life or the day that culminated in him getting a prison record and being disbarred before ever becoming a lawyer. And if that wasn’t possible, he was sure Veena Kumar would make it possible somehow, just to get her vengeance.
Samir knew lying wasn’t a good idea. Especially not if you planned to work for the person you were lying to someday. These kinds of things had a tendency to go south. But seriously, when the choices were between going back home or going to a summer lake house, pretending to be Pinky’s boyfriend, and then landing a dream internship—even more so than the DC one—what would anyone who wasn’t Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln or the pope do?
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and made the call he’d been putting off.
“Hey, Ma, it’s me.”
“Samir! How are you? How is the internship?”
There was a beat. The lie just wouldn’t come—lying was so not part of his DNA—but he forced the word out. “Fine.” His voice was just a notch too high, so he cleared his throat. “Um… busy. Good. Great.” Stop talking, Sam.
“Okay…” His mom sounded like she thought her only child might be having an aneurysm. “Are you… all right, beta?”
“Mm-hmm. Yep. Totally fine. Just… you know. Letting you know that it’s going well. And I’m getting busier, so I might not be able to call regularly. But don’t worry, okay?”
There was a pause, and Samir could tell she didn’t like this at all. But then she sighed. “Okay. I won’t worry.”