Now, Pinky held on to DQ’s leash. As they got closer to the lake, she tied it around a skinny tree trunk close by. Samir glanced at her occasionally, but she made no move to talk about their latest kiss. The girl was like a closed book—with some of the pages ripped out. He blew out a silent, frustrated breath, and she looked at him, one eyebrow raised, eyebrow ring glinting. “You okay?”
Okay, so maybe it hadn’t been so silent. “Yeah, fine.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Where are we supposed to be meeting them anyway?”
Pinky pointed to the water. Cash and Dolly were already in the lake; they came swimming up when they saw Pinky and Samir.
“Hey,” Dolly said. “Glad you guys could come. I just thought it’d be nice, you know, if the four of us could hang out a bit more. Make this summer a little more fun.” She smiled kind of desperately.
“Sure.” Pinky smiled stiffly at Cash. “Hey, Cash.”
Too cool to be verbal, he just tipped his head at her.
“Hey,” Samir said, slipping into the water.
“So, you staying the whole summer?” Cash asked, doing a lazy backstroke.
“I think so,” Samir replied, treading water.
Pinky splashed into the water and emerged beside him just as Dolly said, “Oh yeah. Everyone loves Samir. I think both our parents are going to be really sad when he leaves to go back home. They’ve kind of adopted him.”
Samir laughed. “I don’t know about that.”
“Really?” Cash said, his blue eyes steady on Samir. “That’s cool, man. Do you go to Pinky’s school?”
“No, I’m homeschooled,” Samir said, feeling that familiar warmth in his cheeks. People made all kinds of assumptions, none of them nice, when you told them that.
Cash was no different. He smirked. “Seriously?”
Samir met his eye coolly. “Yeah. Seriously.”
Cash shook his head. “Dude.”
Samir knew it shouldn’t affect him—Cash was irrelevant—but he felt his pulse kick up at the judgment in his voice. “ ‘Dude’ what?” he asked, his voice hard.
Pinky and Dolly exchanged a glance. “Why don’t we get our inner tubes—” Dolly began, but Cash cut her off.
“I don’t know, bro,” Cash said, a lazy, insolent smile on his face. “Being homeschooled is kind of… weird. Are you in some kind of cult or something? Like, do you have to impregnate your mom when you turn eighteen?” He chuckled at his own wit.
“Cash,” Dolly said, her face livid.
When Samir spoke, he made sure his voice was quiet and controlled, but firm. “Don’t ever talk to me like that.”
Cash swam closer to him, so they were almost nose to nose. “Oh yeah?” he asked, still smirking, though Samir could see the anger twitching just under the surface. “That supposed to scare me?”
Samir just stared at him, willing himself to not resort to anything physical, telling himself he wouldn’t be the first to lay a hand on this asshole. But he also wouldn’t be the first to look away.
And then Dolly was yanking Cash back, her face red.
“Stop it!” she said, looking up at Cash as she treaded water. Her breaths came in 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?”