“Well,” Samir said, wiping a trickle of sweat off his forehead. He glanced nervously at the house looming behind Pinky, hoping no one in her family would choose this moment to step outside and see what she was up to. “We’ll need to get our stories straight. For instance, how long have we been dating? Where did we meet? Who asked who out? What was our first date like? Is it okay for me to hold your hand?” He raised an eyebrow. “Kiss you?”
Taking a step back from him, Pinky looked outraged. “You wish!”
Samir laughed.
“What?” she asked.
“Your self-confidence never ceases to amaze me,” he said, still chuckling. “Anyway. Have you thought any of that out?”
Pinky regarded him pensively, drumming her sparkly polish-doused fingers on the railing. Of course she used sparkly polish. Nothing about Pinky was ever plain. Or easy. “No, but it’s just like making a Sims character, right? How hard can it be? Okay, so to answer your first question, we’ve been dating a month. That’s why I haven’t told anyone. I wanted to make sure it was going somewhere. We met at Ashish’s place and you asked me out. I was really skeptical at first, but I said yes because I felt sorry for you.”
“Really?”
Her fingers stilling, she made some extremely challenging eye contact. “Really. This is my plan. I get to say what goes.”
Samir sighed, shook his head, and sat on the almost painfully warm wooden seat running around the interior of the gazebo. “All right, whatever. Keep going.”
Apparently satisfied, Pinky took a seat opposite him and continued. “Our first date was at… a restaurant. That fancy seafood place Ashish likes so much. What’s it called?”
“Poseidon?”
“Yeah, that one.”
Samir scratched his jaw and tapped his foot on the wooden boards beneath him. “Huh.”
“Problem?”
Shrugging, Samir said, “It’s just that I don’t think I’d be that unimaginative. I mean, I’d take you somewhere really memorable on our first date, not to a seafood restaurant my friend likes. Plus, I don’t really like shellfish.”
“Really.” Pinky raised an eyebrow. “And where would you take me?”
Samir considered her, his head cocked. “Somewhere that fits your vibe. Like a cool underground art showing by an avant-garde artist no one’s heard of yet. Or, like, a guided tour of the city’s best graffiti or something.” He laughed. “I know those sound kind of pathetic, but that’s all I could come up with on the spot.”
Pinky was staring at him.
Samir frowned, narrowing his eyes. “Or maybe I’d take you to a circus. What? My ideas not cool enough for you?”
She blinked and looked away, out toward the burned barn. “Nothing. You’re right. Those are, um… Anyway, this is fiction. It doesn’t matter where we’d really go on a first date.”
“Sorry, sorry. I thought we wanted this to be believable. Continue.”
She turned back to him. “So, as for the holding-hands stuff, let’s just play it by ear, okay? If my parents warm up to you, it’d be okay to, like, take my hand on a walk or something. But absolutely no kissing.” She paused and leaned forward on her seat, her shirt falling open just a bit, showing a hint of brown skin. “No matter how much you want to. None.”
He looked away and leaned back against the railing behind him. “Please. It’s not like I’m dying to kiss you. You’ve probably got a poisonous film on you, anyway. To repel humans.”
Pinky rolled her eyes. “Anyway, my cousin Dolly and her parents are here too. So, are you ready to go in and meet everyone?”
“Yeah,” Samir said, standing and grabbing his suitcase. “Before I melt would be nice.”
“Get used to the heat,” Pinky said, flashing him a fake sweet smile. It transformed her face to something cherubic. How disturbing. “There’s a record-breaking heat wave on the Cape this summer, and you just signed up to wallow in it for the next six weeks.”
Pinky
Pinky kept darting sidelong glances at Samir as they climbed the stairs to the house. He was effortlessly carrying what looked like a very heavy suitcase. It was taking her aback, how… grown-up he looked in his business attire. The tie complemented his brown eyes, and that button-down shirt strained just slightly against his biceps and shoulders. “Handsome” was the word some other people might use, but not her. She just thought he looked sort of nice in a super-boring, overly starched way. If she went for that kind of thing, she might think he looked dashing. Thank Kali she had more sense than that.
“Wait,” he said, trailing after her. “What do I call your parents? Uncle and Auntie?”
“Yeah, or Mr. Yeung and Ms. Kumar—whatever floats your boat. Definitely don’t call them Howard and Veena, though; they reeeally don’t like that.”
Behind her, Samir made a soft gasping sound. “I would never do that.”
Pinky laughed. “You’re hilarious.”
“I’m glad I could amuse you.” But the way he said it, it was clear he wasn’t glad at all.
Pinky opened the sliding glass doors on the deck. “After you,” she said, sweeping her hand through the air. “And good luck.”
He mumbled something like, “Yeah, I’m gonna need it,” and then stepped over the threshold into the cool air inside, his fist tight around his suitcase handle.
Pinky pointed him toward the dining room, but then, unable to contain her excitement, elbowed him out of the way and entered first. Her entire body was simmering with energy, effervescent bubbles of anticipation popping in her stomach. Hells to the yes, she was ready for this. This would show her mom. Now she’d see she’d been totally wrong to judge Pinky so quickly and harshly and then not even be sorry about it.
“Everyone!” she said, clapping her hands. They were all in the dining room/kitchen area, Abe and her dad getting vegetables together for what was probably going to be a salad and her mom and Meera Mausi sitting at the table with Dolly, all three of them sipping iced tea. A pitcher of the stuff sat sweating on the table. “I have someone I want you all to meet!”
They all looked expectantly at her. Relishing the moment, Pinky smiled and stepped aside, allowing Samir to enter. He walked in, set his suitcase down, and immediately smiled a congenial, I’m-so-polite-I-help-old-ladies-with-groceries-in-my-free-time-and-you-can’t-help-but-immediately-like-me smile. Already he was lapping all her other boyfriends.
“Hello, Uncle, Auntie,” he said, looking at both sets of adults. “And you must be Dolly. I’ve heard so much about all of you.” He held out a hand, and Dolly shook it, looking a little blindsided by his J.Crew good looks. “I’m Samir Jha. I hope it’s not a terrible inconvenience that I’m here, but my internship for the summer fell through and—”
“And his mom’s out of town, so I told him it’d be fine for him to come here,” Pinky put in, looking around at her parents. “Mom, Dad, Samir is my boyfriend.” She couldn’t help but put a little emphasis on the word “boyfriend.” Be cool, Pinky, she thought. She could feel her eyes sparkling in her head. This was so great. Look at their faces! They were completely surprised. She could practically hear the thoughts from the adults, clamoring for space: