“No, I mean the fact that you already know what you want to do and you’re basically like this tiny version of my parents.”
Samir raised an eyebrow. “Tiny?” He gestured to his muscular body. “Excuse me?”
“Hmm, maybe not tiny,” Pinky said, her gaze sneaking off to trace his broad shoulders without her permission. She forced herself to look away. “But young, I guess.”
“I’ve always known what I wanted,” Samir said, the sun glittering off the lake and casting patterns on his face. “I don’t know, I guess it’s strange. It just feels normal for me, though.”
Pinky studied him. She’d brought this up at the lighthouse and it didn’t go well, but… ah well. She was nothing if not a jump-in-with-both-feet kinda girl. “And it’s not because of… you know. Your mom and her cancer? How being in control helped you take care of her back then?”
Samir gave her a sharp look. “Your parents are way too far ahead. We should catch up with them.”
Hint taken. “Yep.”
* * *
“I can’t believe we’re lost. How did you get us lost on a lake? It’s an open body of water, enclosed on all sides, for crying out loud.” Sweat was dripping off Samir’s forehead in steady dribbles. He’d taken his shirt off fifteen minutes ago, about the same time Pinky had taken off her T-shirt. leaving her in just her bikini top and shorts. Rivulets of sweat were now running down the center of Samir’s bare back. His back that had more muscles than Pinky knew any back could have. Seriously. Sailing boats at the country club and shooting hoops with Ashish gave you that kind of musculature? Maybe she should accompany her parents to the country club more often.
She forced her brain back to the problem at hand. Samir. Irate. Lost. “Right. We’re not lost. It’s just confusing because it’s so big and there are all these little islands and things. You need to go that way around that bend and then stick a right past that gnarly-looking tree and we’ll find them. I texted my dad.”
He spared her a withering glare. “We’re here because, as I recall, you wanted to go look at that ‘endangered frog’ you saw that turned out to be a pinecone. So forgive me if I stick to my sense of where we are.”
“No, we’re here because you wanted to paddle right when we were supposed to go left. Probably should’ve recorded that in your planner.”
“No, you were supposed to—ow, crap.” Groaning, he reached one hand behind his shoulders.
“What are you doing?”
“I have this spot on my back between my shoulder blades that always gets sunburned.”
Pinky leaned back to take a peek. “Holy moly, yeah, that’s, like, bright red. I guess that’s what you get for being so fair-skinned.”
Samir chuckled. “We can’t all have perfect, smooth bronze skin.” Pinky could tell he’d tried to say it lightly and flippantly, but it had come out like he was hitting on her. His smile slipped off his face and his eyes went wide with mortification. “Ah, I mean, not that, like—”
Pinky felt her cheeks warm and reached into her tote bag to hide it. “Um, I have some sunscreen.” She thrust the tube at him. “Here.”
He looked down at the tube and then back up at her as they drifted past the same scraggly-looking tree they’d passed a few minutes ago. Her dad was going to send an extraction team if they didn’t find their way soon. The water sloshed lazily against the paddleboat, rocking them gently in their seats. “I can’t really reach that spot; that’s the problem.”
“Oh.” She glanced down at the tube in her hands and swallowed. “Um,” she said, not really meeting his eye. “I could… I could smooth it on for you.”
There was a weird expression on Samir’s face all of a sudden.
“Or not,” Pinky said quickly, her cheeks flaming. Thank the goddess for melanin. Disguising, discreet melanin. “It’s just, like, you know, a suggestion. I’ve heard skin cancer is a real—”
“N-no, no, I mean, yeah. That’d be good.” Samir licked his lips while focusing on the lake in front of him like he had to memorize every ripple. He looked about as awkward as she felt. The awkwardness was super weird, for her, because she’d had more boyfriends just last fall than most people have during their wild college years. “Thanks.”
“Really? I mean, you’d be paddling on your own for a few minutes.”
He gave her a look. “I have a feeling I’ve been pretty much paddling on my own this entire time anyway.”
Pinky snorted. “Okay, I didn’t know you knew that. I’ve pretty much just been sitting here, pretending to work.”
She scooted over to the center seat, which had previously been empty, her slender dark-brown thighs sliding right next to Samir’s much thicker, golden-brown ones. She squeezed a bit of sunblock onto her fingers and twisted her torso so she could more easily reach Samir’s back. “Um, I’m just gonna… um, touch you. Now.”
“Okay.” Samir was still staring straight ahead, and he nodded his head vigorously without looking at Pinky. “Yeah, that’s… yep.”
Jeez, it wasn’t like she’d never touched a boy before. And this wasn’t like the cringesome, weird thing that had happened in the lighthouse where she found herself holding him while gazing into his eyes. She couldn’t even see his eyes from here. And anyway, this was a medical necessity. So why the heck was she acting like some twelve-year-old kid? Pinky forced her fingers to make contact with his back, rubbing the lotion in circles, pretending not to notice the way Samir’s muscles first stiffened at her touch and then relaxed. She realized that her face was really close to his. In fact, if he were to turn his face, they’d be kissing distance apart.
Samir glanced at her sidelong. He had really long eyelashes. Thick, black, silky. “Thanks. That feels good.”
Pinky kept on rubbing the lotion in, though she was pretty sure it had all worked its way off her fingers. “Good. I’m glad that feels good.” The smell of sunblock and water and something that was very specifically him tangled in her nostrils, filling her senses.
The boat juddered to a stop, the tremors rolling through its body and hers. Pinky shrieked and tried, unsuccessfully, to grab the side. She wasn’t sure exactly how, but in the next second, she tripped and began to go down, flat on her back. She saw Samir’s face register shock and then alarm, and before she knew it, he’d reached one of his arms behind her to catch her. And then she was gazing up at him like a dancer who’d been dipped by her partner, her hair streaming down to the floor of the boat, Samir’s face just inches from hers. They could’ve kissed.
They didn’t, though. Obviously. They just stared at each other, both of them breathing slightly hard. Pinky found herself gazing into those eyes again, which, in the sunlight, had a bit of gold. Her arms were gripped tightly around his bare waist to keep from falling, and she realized how hot his skin was. As if he were a mini sun himself.
And then Samir cleared his throat and helped her up in a very gentlemanly manner. Pinky stood up straight, going completely wordless again, as she tended to do in close physical proximity to Samir. What the hell was that about? She didn’t even find him that attractive; he was so not her type!