There's Something About Sweetie(34)

“I texted you yesterday,” Izzy said, looking a little hurt. “You never responded.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” Sweetie took a deep breath. “Sort of a lot happened over the weekend and I just needed time to process, you know?”

“Hello?” Kayla’s eyebrows were up in her hairline. “That’s what we’re here for.”

Arrrgh. The guilt. Sweetie folded her arms on the table and put her head down. “I know. I’m sorry.”

She felt Izzy’s hand on her back. “What’s going on?”

Sweetie sat up again but kept her eyes on the faded wood grain of the table. “So, um. I guess I’m kind of dating Ashish now.”

“You what?” they all said together.

Sweetie looked up at their thunderstruck faces and couldn’t help but smile. “Wow.” Sniffing, she continued. “Yeah. Um … it was this big thing, and I don’t think you guys want the nitty-gritty, but—”

“Um, I think I speak for all of us when I say we want the nittiest of the gritty,” Suki said. The others nodded.

Sweetie looked from one face to the other. She’d never kept anything from them. But this? She felt a little weird telling them not just about how Amma had said she was too fat to date Ashish, but the fact that she and Ashish were going along with his parents’ plan at all. Other people tended not to understand that. Even Suki. She listened to her parents and considered their opinions more than the kids whose parents had been born in America, but she was still allowed more freedoms than Sweetie. Although, it would be nice to have someone to talk about all this stuff to besides Anjali Chechi, who, let’s face it, had her own life to worry about.

“Okay. I’ll tell you.” And she did, detail by detail, starting from the time Ashish’s mom came up to Amma’s stall at the farmers’ market.





CHAPTER 13





When she was finished, there was complete silence.

“Oh … my … frakking … God,” Kayla said finally. Her brown eyes sparkled in the sun. “You’re going out with Ashish freaking Patel. I’m so frakking jealous.” Kayla always said “frakking” a lot when she was in the throes of emotion, because her parents cut her allowance when she cursed.

Suki put her hand on Sweetie’s. “I’m really glad you didn’t let your mom decide who you’re good enough for,” she said seriously. “It really sucks that she tried to do that.”

Sweetie felt a lump in her throat and swallowed. She just nodded; she couldn’t say anything else.

Izzy came over and enveloped her in a hug that smelled like sweet fruit, Izzy’s signature perfume. Then, sitting back, she grinned, her braces glinting in the sunlight. “This is amazing. Like … whoa. How do you feel? I mean, he’s your first-ever boyfriend.”

Sweetie laughed. “I really don’t know how to feel. I mean, on the one hand, it’s great that he’s so cool and we just instantly clicked. On the other hand, his parents and the list of dates, oh my gosh. On the other, other hand, his experience.”

“So you have three hands now?” Suki said, snorting, but Sweetie ignored her.

“Eh?” Kayla asked. “You lost me. What experience?”

“You know!” Sweetie waved her hands around in a vague gesture. Her friends continued to stare blankly. “His experience?” she said more quietly. “Like, with girls?”

“Oh, you mean sex!” Suki said in a completely normal, completely loud tone of voice.

Sweetie looked around. “Shh! I don’t want the whole world to know, okay?” Kayla, Suki, and Izzy looked unperturbed. “Guys! I’ve never even kissed a boy.”

“Now, that’s not true,” Izzy said, laughing. “What about Toby Stinton?”

Sweetie glared at her, and her smile faded. “That is not helping.”

“This is the kind of thing you figure out together,” Kayla said, putting her arm around Sweetie. “Ashish and you.”

“Yeah, except he’s already kissed, like, a billion girls,” Sweetie mumbled. “He’s probably going to think I’m a total freak.”

“He is not,” Suki said. “I promise he’s not going to be thinking of his experience or your lack of it or anything else when you’re together. Trust me. He’s just going to be totally focused on you and how he gets to kiss you.”

Sweetie sighed. She wished she could be half as confident as the other girls that things were not going to go humiliatingly wrong and blow up in her face. “Okay, thanks. But I kinda just want to change the subject now. So, how was the concert?”

After a pause, during which they apparently decided she really did want to stop talking about it, Suki said, “It was fabulous. But we really missed you.”

“I missed you guys too. I saw your pictures on Insta, and oh my gosh. So jelly.”

Izzy grinned. “Also, Kayla had an amazing idea.”

“Oh yeah?” Sweetie looked at her. “What?”

Kayla straddled the bench so she could face Sweetie, the zippers on her gold shirt clinking together. “Okay, so you know how we’re always saying we wish we could get better track jerseys for the girls’ team, and the school’s always saying they don’t have any money?”