There's Something About Sweetie(56)

“Do you think we have enough?” Sweetie laughed as they walked into the field proper, dodging streams of laughing, yelling people. Ashish was having trouble with the packets; as soon as he got his grip on one, another would begin to slip down. Sweetie reached out and snagged the peacock blue before it hit the ground.

“Always be overprepared, Nair,” Ashish said. “It’s the only way to survive one of these things. Look at them, milling around all innocently. But once the countdown is done, they’ll morph into brightly colored, merciless hit people.”

Sweetie raised an eyebrow and looked around at everyone, a mix of Indian people and people of other cultures. “I don’t know. … They look fairly innocuous to me.”

“Oh, you’ll see,” Ashish said darkly. “You may have been told Holi’s the festival of colors, the festival of love, the symbol of spring and new beginnings. But there’s a much more sinister side to Holi. At its heart, it’s a cutthroat, bloody competition that’s rarely talked about.”

Sweetie laughed. “Well, I like how blended it is. Look at all these people—there must be, like, at least ten different ethnicities here.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool.” They walked forward, close to the stage where the emcee would count down to when people could start throwing powders at one another. “Five more minutes.”

Ashish’s phone rang. “Dang it.” He tried to get it, but his hands were full. Sighing, he dumped the powders on the ground. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled it out, and frowned at the screen. “Hello?”

Sweetie watched him go from confused to serious.

“Hi, Deepika auntie. … No, no, just at the Holi Festival … Right. I know. Yes, that’s right. … Well, you know, Samir doesn’t really make it easy to—” He listened for a few seconds, then sighed quietly. “Okay. I can come over and speak to him in a little bit. Maybe later this evening … No, I won’t tell him I’m coming. Okay, bye … You’re welcome. Bye.”

Sweetie watched as he picked up the Holi color packets in silence. “Samir’s mom?”

“Yeah. She wants me to go over there and talk to him. Apparently, he’s been moping around the past few days and she’s getting worried.” He rolled his eyes. “She seriously treats him like he’s a baby.”

Sweetie pursed her mouth but didn’t say anything.

“What?” Ashish sounded genuinely curious about what she had to say.

“I think when people act out of the ordinary like that, they usually have an important reason. Like, we might not see it, but to her … maybe there’s something she’s afraid of, you know?”

Ashish studied her for a long moment. “She had cancer quite a few years ago,” he said quietly. “She beat it, obviously, but her diagnosis was when things really changed. Samir dropped out of fifth grade to be homeschooled by her.” He shook his head and stepped closer to her. Her heart raced. “You’re a really kind person, aren’t you? Like, deep down.”

Sweetie’s heart thudded even harder as she looked at him, their eyes meeting over packets of color.

“Damn,” he said, and chuckled.

“What?”

“I really wanted to smooth your hair away, but my hands are full. And dropping these things on the ground before doing it just didn’t seem that romantic.”

Sweetie laughed. “That’s okay. You still get romantic points.”

“Yeah?” He held her gaze and her smile faded.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, people! The time has come! The moment you’ve all been waiting for! It’s tiiiiime for the countdoooowwwwwn!!!!”

Ashish blinked and stepped away from her when the emcee’s voice filled the air. It was almost like he’d been in a trance or something and had shaken himself out of it. “I really don’t deserve any romantic points. Anyway, it’s time to start.”

His voice sounded a little duller now, and Sweetie frowned. What had just happened? They’d totally been having a moment, and now it was just … gone. And it wasn’t about being interrupted, either. There was something else.

“Five …,” the announcer said.

All around them there was the excited rustling of packets as people ripped theirs open. Ashish was working on his without looking at her. Sweetie opened her mouth to say something, to ask him what had happened, but closed it again. Had she totally misunderstood the vibe between them? But how was that possible? He’d said he was trying to be romantic, right? So he wanted this to go in the same direction she did.

“Four!”

Sweetie ripped open her packet of yellow powder. “Hey,” she said. “Everything okay?”

He looked at her and smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. It wasn’t the smirky smolder, just a garden-variety fake smile. “Yep.”

“Three!”

“Ashish.” She stepped closer. “You can tell me if something’s bothering you.”

“Two!”

But he just kept giving her that fake smile. “Nope, nothing’s bothering me.”

“One!”

She quirked her mouth to the side. “Okay, then. You asked for this.”

He frowned and cocked his head just as the emcee said, “Holi ayyyiiiiii! Powders ahoy!”