Samir smiled at everyone. “Thanks again for welcoming me into your home on such short notice,” he said, also scraping his chair back. “I really appreciate it.”
Oh God. He was so wholesome, they should put a little heart-healthy sticker on him.
“Leave the door to your rooms open when you’re in there!” her dad said, wagging a finger at them.
Pinky felt her cheeks get warm. “Oh God, Dad,” she muttered, tugging on Samir’s shirtsleeve and practically pulling him toward the stairs.
CHAPTER 6 Pinky
“So my room is this way,” Pinky said, walking down the carpeted second-floor hallway, past the gallery wall of family pictures. The photo frames had been replaced just last year; they were now all made from sustainable, recycled Styrofoam waste. Her mom had been about to buy a set at Target, but Pinky had managed to convince her to invest in these instead. It was one of those rare moments when her mom actually saw her side and agreed with it; if Pinky could’ve framed that, she would’ve.
Opening the door to her room, she walked in. “Just in case you need anything.”
“It’s nice,” Samir said, a little dubiously. As he set his suitcase down, his eyes took in the rose-hued walls (complete with a glitter border) and the lacy, bow-adorned curtains. “More Jojo Siwa than I expected, but…”
Pinky glowered at him. “That’s a remnant from when I was ten. I need to repaint it at some point.”
“Let me guess,” Samir said, walking to her windows and peering out for a moment before turning back around. “You’re going to paint it charred-heart black.”
“Ha ha,” Pinky said, walking over the furry white rug to her walk-in closet. She opened the door and knelt down, pulling out the little nest she and Dolly had made out of a cardboard box for the possum baby. “Hello, little one.”
“What the hell is that?”
Pinky looked over her shoulder at Samir, who was staring at the possum like he’d never seen a marsupial in his life. “It’s… a possum?”
Samir chuckled mirthlessly. “Right, of course. A closet opossum. You know, I read in Architect magazine that all the fancy houses come with those nowadays. What version do you have because mine’s a 2.0.” He walked forward and the possum fell over, its legs sticking straight out. “What!” He jumped back, like it had leaped out at him instead.
“Will you relax?” Pinky said, glaring at him. “Your negative energy is really messing with her. She’s just playing dead. She has a tendency to do that.”
“Right… and how long have you had it? Um, her?”
“Only a couple of hours. I found her this morning.”
Samir leaped back again. “So it hasn’t been tested for rabies.”
“Possums can’t get rabies!” Pinky said. “Why are you such a scaredy-cat?”
“Oh, I’m sorry I don’t want to die at age seventeen from preventable and communicable diseases,” Samir said. “What a coward.”
Pinky shook her head and pushed the box back into the closet. The possum wasn’t waking up anytime soon. “This could take several hours,” she said. “I’ll come back later with some snacks.”
“Seriously, you need to take that thing to a vet. Get it some shots.”
“I’m researching vets. We’re keeping our options open.” Taking an animal to a vet was a serious decision. First she needed to be sure the vet wouldn’t just call animal control or something. It wasn’t a decision she could rush into. Jeez.
She could tell Samir thought she had problems. But instead of listing out what they might be, he raised his hands in surrender and walked to the door to pick up his suitcase. “All right. Maybe just show me to my room, then.”
“Fine,” Pinky said, striding past him and back out into the hallway. Vet, vet, vet; could he seriously not say anything else about the fact that she was rescuing a helpless animal? How could someone her age be that much of a boring, risk-averse adult? And he’d only been here about two hours. This was the most one-on-one time they’d had, and she was already beginning to rethink her whole summer fake-dating plan.
It was clear Samir was going to get the better end of this deal. The way, way better end.
Samir
Great. It was pretty obvious he was going to come out the loser at the end, when all was said and done. Was an internship with Veena Kumar really worth all this?
Samir glanced at Pinky as he followed her back down the family-picture-studded hallway to his room. There seemed to be a few pictures of a very chubby-cheeked Pinky when she was young. He didn’t have time to study them, though. She was stomping quickly ahead of him, letting her annoyance at his sensible suggestions drive her. Jeez, did she have to be so caustic all the time? It was like she thought every single thing he said was ridiculous. Anyway, he just needed to keep his eye on the prize. He may be a husk of a man by the time the summer was done, but at least he’d have a totally sick internship with Veena Kumar. It was obvious that as much as Pinky hated him, her parents were just about ready to adopt him as their son, even the Shark. He side-eyed Pinky. He couldn’t really blame them.
“Okay, this is your room,” Pinky said, flinging open the door.
Samir walked in and looked around. It was a big, bright room, although not as big as Pinky’s and much lower on the Jojo Siwa meter. He walked to the closet and peeked in. “Oh.” He raised his eyebrows at Pinky. “No complimentary closet rodents?”
She smiled the fakest smile he’d ever seen. “Not right now, but I’ll see what I can rustle up for you, sweetie pie.”
Scoffing, Samir turned to examine the rest of the room. The walls were a soothing sea blue that matched the sky outside perfectly, with sand-dollar and seashell paintings and sculptures dotting them. The crisp, fresh covers on the bed had a nautical vibe too—navy and white stripes. Someone had left a window open; a balmy, lake-scented breeze blew in, fluttering the gauzy white curtains.
He set his suitcase down at the foot of the bed and took a deep breath. “This is nice. Thank you.”
“Yeah, and you have your own bathroom,” Pinky said, jabbing her thumb in the direction of a closed door in the far corner.
“So I think all of that went pretty well, don’t you?” Samir said, since apparently she had no intention of thanking him in return. “I mean, I really won your parents over right away.”
“Seriously?” Pinky put her hands on her hips. “You don’t think forgetting when we met or who asked who out first were huge red flags?”
“Those were minor details,” Samir said, unlacing his shoes, toeing them off, and then setting them neatly inside his reach-in closet. Turning back to her, he said, “I don’t think anyone noticed.”
Pinky’s nostrils flared and she stepped forward, somehow kind of looming over him as he shrank back. “Are you serious? You don’t think anyone noticed? Samir, maybe this is just about an internship to you, but this is my whole life we’re talking about, okay? It’s extremely important to me that we get it right!”
Oh, crap. This was it, wasn’t it? She was about to go all Black Widow on him. Samir glanced longingly at the door, but it was too far away to make a break for it.