There's Something About Sweetie(7)

“Not the same,” Samir muttered, but Ashish didn’t think his mom heard him.

“You could do your senior year at Richmond,” Ashish said, taking a cookie.

Samir opened his mouth to reply, but his mom cut him off with her laughter. “No, no,” she said. “Richmond is very nice for you, Ashish, but Samir likes to study at home with me. Na, beta?”

“Haan, Mummy,” Samir said, but his eyes were sort of bleak.

“Dude, you wanna go shoot some hoops outside?” Being around Deepika auntie sometimes made Ashish feel like he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t even imagine what Samir felt like.

“Sure.”

They headed outside to the full-size basketball court Pappa had installed on their property freshman year, when it became clear basketball was going to be a serious thing for Ashish.

Ashish got a ball out of the ball holder in the corner and began to dribble. “So … you know you can just tell your mom you want to play at Richmond.” They’d had this conversation many times. Ashish knew it wasn’t apt to suddenly change Samir’s mind, but he couldn’t help it. Samir, as annoying as he was, was still one of his oldest friends.

“Nah, man. You know I can’t.”

Yeah, Ashish knew. Samir’s mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer seven years ago. She’d beaten it twice, but it had come back. She was now in remission again, but her overprotectiveness had started when she was first diagnosed and Samir was very young. Now that he was older, he felt too guilty to say anything. They’d never talked about it openly, but Ashish had read between the lines. “Yeah, but … still. Dude, it’s obvious you’re not happy with the current situation.”

“Are you gonna flap your gums at me or are we gonna play?”

Ashish narrowed his eyes. “Fine.”

They played some one-on-one for about thirty minutes straight, and then Ashish tossed the ball to the side and shook the sweat from his head in a spray that doused Samir.

“Okay, seriously disgusting!” Samir grabbed a towel and a water bottle from the cart on the side that the groundskeeper restocked twice a day. They walked over to the bench to sit together in the shade of an old oak tree after Ashish had done the same.

Samir checked his watch. “We only played for thirty minutes. That’s a record low.”

Squeezing some water from the bottle into his mouth, Ashish shrugged, trying not to let show how much that bothered him. He used to love basketball. No, he used to live basketball. And now it was just like … an orange sphere that you slam into the ground over and over? What was the point?

“Don’t you have a game this weekend? You should probably practice a little more.”

“We’re playing Osroff. I don’t think it’s going to require more than fifty percent of what I can give.”

“If you do say so yourself.”

Ashish shrugged, staring off into the distance at the swimming pool enclosure. “I know my strengths.” Then, glancing sideways at Samir: “At least I have strengths.”

“Pssh. You’re just jealous of my baby-faced beauty.”

“I’d rather have a rippling, masculine physique than baby-faced beauty,” Ashish said. It was their usual way of ribbing each other, but this time it felt flat. Even his teasing mojo was gone. Damn Celia. She’d taken all his best skills.

“You’re like some cardboard-cutout version of yourself, bro,” Samir said, frowning. “I mean, I don’t even care, but seriously. If you don’t want to repel people more than you already do with your relentless body odor, you should probably do something about that.”

Ashish focused on drinking his water. He could feel Samir staring at the side of his face.

“Damn.”

“What?”

“I didn’t know you were in love with her.”

Ashish didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.

Later, when Samir and Deepika auntie were on their way out the door, Samir turned to Ashish and said, “Think about it.”

“About what?”

“Asking your parents.” Ashish stared at him blankly, and Samir leaned in. “You know. About setting you up.”

Ashish rolled his eyes. “Are we back to that again?”

“What’s the alternative? You zombie-shuffle your way through the rest of the year? Does that really sound fun to you?”

Ashish opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. To be honest, this mojoless feeling was the literal worst thing he’d ever felt. His entire world felt off-kilter, like he couldn’t quite get his balance. It sucked.

Samir punched him on the arm. “Didn’t think so.” Then he turned and left.

Ashish walked back inside and headed upstairs to his room after telling Ma he had homework to do. Asking his parents to set him up was such a Rishi thing to do. Ashish found his own way around girls. He was born winking at the cute doctor who delivered him. He didn’t need help.

Then he thought about this morning with Dana Patterson and felt a vague cringing inside that he knew would be full-on, cheeks-burning, armpits-sweating humiliation if he didn’t wall it off immediately, which he did. He’d done his fair share of being both the breaker-upper and the breaker-uppee, but at no point had he or the girl in question ever felt bad about it. All his relationships had been window dressing, just a way to pass the time for both him and his girlfriends. Until Celia, of course. And that had turned out so well.