“Oh my gosh, finally, a voice of reason.” Dimple stepped up so she was beside Pinky and then read her poster board. “What’s this? Are you going to a protest or something?”
“We just finished one up,” Pinky explained. “I was about to go home.”
“Oh.” Dimple’s sharp brown eyes seemed to be assessing the situation. “Or you could come with us to the escape room if you want. Break up the numbers a bit so we’re definitely not on a couples’ date?”
“That sounds like fun, actually.” Pinky flipped a piece of green hair out of her eyes, and it joined the other multicolored strands on top of her head. “I’m pretty good at escape rooms.” She paused. “Wait. It’s not going to have some cringey theme like Sleuthing Sweethearts, is it?”
Dimple snorted. “I don’t think so. But I really like how your mind works.”
They began to walk toward the escape room, which was located up some stairs over by a Starbucks.
“Um, you want to get rid of that?” Rishi pointed to Pinky’s gigantic poster board, which she was still lugging but couldn’t see over. She was using the group to guide her past potential life-threatening barriers.
“They don’t have a recycling bin big enough here. I’ll just walk it to the recycling plant later.”
Dimple beamed at her. They were obviously going to be lifelong friends after this.
“Ash?”
They turned toward the male voice to see a tall, Gap commercial–looking dude in a tan sweater and dark jeans. He was holding a to-go cup of coffee. Ah. The childhood nemesis.
“Samir.” Ashish raised a hand. “What’s up?”
“Just getting some java.” Sam held up his coffee. Then, taking in Pinky’s board, he said, “Whoa. You guys getting ready to stage a protest?”
“No, I just got done,” Pinky explained again. In the next moment, her gimlet gaze zeroed in on Samir’s coffee cup, and she gasped. “You don’t bring your own reusable travel mug?”
Samir slowly looked down at his cup. “No?”
Pinky shook her head at him, as if she were gathering steam, but before she could say anything else, Ashish jumped in to divert the conversational flow. “Hey, uh, we’re all headed to do an escape room. Wanna go?”
Sam smiled around at everyone. “Oh, sure. If you guys don’t mind. I didn’t really have any plans today.”
“And once again, we’re in pairs,” Pinky muttered, and Ashish and Sweetie exchanged amused smiles.
* * *
They turned into the escape room facility, Samir going first and Ashish being the caboose. Ashish wasn’t even in the building before he heard a chorus of groans and gripes, which mainly seemed to be coming from three members of the group.
“Are you kidding me.” Dimple.
“Nauseating. Lots of nausea.” Pinky.
“This is definitely… not… what I thought it was going to be.” Samir.
And then Ashish crossed the threshold himself and stopped short. “Oh. I… Wow.”
Sweetie giggled, and he wanted to dip her and kiss her, but he didn’t think the rest of them would appreciate the display. Especially considering they were apparently on the verge of throwing up.
The escape room facility had definitely gone whole hog into the Valentine’s Day, love-makes-the-world-go-round thing. In fact, there was a giant poster of the world on the wall, in which every continent was shaped like a heart. There were treasure chests scattered around, and giant gold necklaces with blue heart-shaped pendants spilling out. There was even a huge fake ship set up in the center of the warehouselike space.
“What is this? Pirates of the Caribbean in love?” Ashish asked, thoroughly confused.
“I’m not sure,” Rishi replied as they waited in line to talk to the employee behind the desk. “But I’m thinking they had stuff left over from Halloween that they wanted to reuse.” He pointed to a pirate flag on the ship; someone had given the skull heart eyes.
“I think it’s cute!” Sweetie looked around, beaming. “In a kitschy kind of way.”
“Of course you do,” Pinky muttered, and Ashish glared at her. “What? You have to admit, this is pretty vomitus-inducing.”
“Give it a chance, will ya?” Sam said from beside her. Apparently he didn’t get the concept of a line.
Pinky rolled her eyes and dragged her poster board forward as the line moved. “Oh, big surprise. Mr. Ralph Lauren here kowtows to the corporation.”
“I’m not kowtowing,” Samir replied heatedly. “I never kowtow.”
Pinky studied him blankly. “You don’t know what ‘kowtow’ means, do you?”
“I scored higher on my SAT Reading and Writing than you did,” Samir shot back.
“Weird flex, dude.” Pinky shook her head, while Samir rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed.
It wasn’t strictly totally nice, but Ashish derived great amusement from how wrong-footed Samir always seemed to be around Pinky. It took his Sam-perfection down a notch or two, brought him down to a more human level.
“Miss? Miss?”
Ashish poked Pinky’s shoulder, and she turned to the dead-eyed employee who’d been trying to get her attention for a while.
“I’ll see you and your boyfriend now,” the employee said, gesturing to her and Samir.
Pinky sputtered for a good five seconds before saying, “This is not my boyfriend! We’re all here as part of a group!”
“Yes!” Sam put in, turning an entertaining fuchsia. “This is a group outing, not a group date!”
Ashish grinned at them and stepped forward to help out the beleaguered employee who literally did not give a crap about who was dating whom. “You guys get really riled up for two people who aren’t dating,” he said, just to needle them.
“I’ll show you riled up.” Pinky raised the poster board to jab Ashish in the ribs before Samir stopped her.
“Not bad.” Dimple looked impressed. “Using what you have on hand as a weapon. I never would’ve thought of that.”
“Don’t give her ideas.” Rishi groaned. “She’s already terrifying enough with this Krav Maga class she’s been taking recently.”
“So we’re all in a group, like they said,” Ashish told the bleary-eyed, barely-alive employee, whose name badge said, very incongruously, HI! MY NAME IS TOBY! “It’s six of us, total.”
“You guys can have a room to yourselves,” TOBY! said in a monotone. “Six also qualifies for our group discount.”
“Great.” Ashish pulled out his credit card. “So, what’s the theme of the room?” he asked when Toby did not provide any more information, likely because he had fallen asleep with his eyes open.
“Sail the Sweetheart Seas,” Toby replied, like he was reading out the numbers of pi.
There was a chorus of groaning behind him, and Ashish smiled soothingly at Toby. “Don’t worry about them. They’re all very excited. This is just how they show it.”
Toby’s eyes wandered to Pinky’s gigantic poster board. “She can’t bring any signage into the room.”