There's Something About Sweetie(52)

“Yeah, well, they’re not so solid anymore,” Ashish blurted out before he could stop himself.

“What?”

“They broke up. Damn it, I shouldn’t have said anything. Just forget you heard it, okay?”

Samir shrugged. “And Pinky … I mean, I actually like her. I think she’s really cool. No one else I know has the guts to try and pull off that shade of green.”

Ashish threw his hands up in the air. “Well, you don’t say any of those things! You just berate us and laugh at us and poke and prod at the thing we don’t want to think about. It doesn’t feel good natured, Samir. You just come across as a jackass.”

Samir was quiet for a long moment. Then he laughed. “You know what’s funny? Until the thing at Roast Me, I would’ve said you were my best friend. I mean, I knew Oliver, Elijah, and Pinky were probably top three for you, but I definitely thought I came in fourth. We’ve known each other a long time.”

“Yeah. And you’ve tormented me that whole time.” Ashish scoffed. He couldn’t believe Samir had actually deluded himself into thinking they were best friends.

Samir glanced at him, his near-black eyes glowing softly in the light from the garden. “Right.” He sighed. “I hope you know I am sorry about that. Really sorry.” He got up and smiled a little, but it was a muted thing, not at all his usual annoying grin. “I’m gonna go.”

Ashish held up a hand and listened to Samir’s footfalls grow fainter as he wound back through the garden and went around the side of the house to the driveway out front. That was definitely weird. Samir was never humble or open or vulnerable or any of that stuff. Ashish felt momentarily bad, like maybe he should’ve gone easier on him. But man, the dude had definitely had it coming. And after the day Ashish had had, with basketball being awful and Elijah going off on him? Samir was lucky he hadn’t just tossed him into the pond.

Ashish’s phone beeped, and he fished it out of his pocket.

Sweetie: Unicorns or narwhals?

What? Grinning, he typed back, Definitely narwhals. You?

UNICORNS 5EVER

He laughed and then stopped, amazed at the sound of it tangling with the breeze in the quiet garden. Wow, he typed.

??

You just totally made me forget about the shot day I just had

Lol the shot day huh

Stupid autocorrect

I’m sorry you had a shot day. But I’m glad I made you forget

Five more days

Ready to get your Holi on?

Yeah sweaty and covered in multicolored powders is just a regular Saturday to me

Give it a chance, Ashish!

I will, Sweetie. But only because you’ll be there with me

Incorrigible flirt

Incorrigible beauty

I’m going now

K but smile

Why? You can’t see me

But I’ll feel you. It’s like that Titanic song

GOING NOW





Ashish put his phone away, still smiling, and shook his head. Ridiculous. There was no way that text exchange could’ve traded his foul mood for this sparkling, happy one. Just no way. He must be light-headed from lack of food or something. Yeah, that was it. He needed food. He got up and made his way inside, purposely not taking notice of how he was skipping a little.





CHAPTER 19





Sweetie sat cross-legged on her bed, looking up in the lamplight at Jason Momoa. Okay, it was his poster, but still. “Jason,” she said. “You’ve never steered me wrong. Should I do this?

“Mm-hmm.” Then she turned to Hrithik Roshan, her Bollywood heartthrob. “What about you? What do you think?”

She waited a moment and then sighed. “It’s two a.m. and I’m talking to paper.” Lying on her side, she tucked a pillow between her knees and looked out the window at the moon. She’d made a million pro/con lists, and she was no closer to making a decision.

“The problem is,” she said, her voice too loud in her silent room. “The problem is, I know how badly this might go. But I also know how much this would help me prove a point about what fat girls can and can’t do. So is the payoff worth the cost? How can I make that decision without being able to see the future?”

Suddenly Sweetie sat up and scrabbled in her nightstand drawer. She pulled out what she was looking for, and there in the darkness she shook that Magic 8 Ball like her life depended on it. “Should I sing at Band Night?” she asked, and then, hands trembling, looked at the answer bobbing slowly in front of her.

So that was that, then.

Sweetie took a deep breath and turned to her friends at the lunch table. “Signs point to yes.”

Izzy didn’t look up from her cell phone, Suki grunted as she read her book, and Kayla raised one eyebrow. “Eh?”

Really? Talk about anticlimactic. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and huffed. “Okay, I’ll do it. The stupid Band Night thingy.”

That got their attention. All of them sat up straighter and stared at her. “Really?” Kayla asked, her voice gleeful.

Sweetie nodded. “Yeah, I thought about it a lot, got some, um, psychic intervention, and decided that … I can’t leave you guys hanging.”

“No, you can’t!” Suki reached over the table and grabbed Sweetie in a hug, her bony arms pushing into Sweetie’s back. “I knew you wouldn’t!”