They are sitting side by side on the curb outside of the party not speaking. Danny knows he should feel grateful to Mindy for stopping him from making an idiot out of himself in front of half the school (well an even bigger idiot than he'd managed to be in the few short moments before she'd rescued him) but he doesn't. As he peeks at her covertly, all he feels is embarrassed, and he's surprised to realize, angry. "Why have you been ignoring me?" He barks at her at last.
Mindy gives a start at this, clearly not expecting the hostility in his tone or for him to so bluntly bring up her recent coldness towards him. "I haven't been ignoring you," she returns icily staring straight out into the mostly deserted street.
"Yes you have. You're doing it right now!" Danny insists in frustration noting she still won't look at him.
"I don't know why you care," Mindy mutters looking at the ground and poking at a bit of loose asphalt on the road with her shoe, "It's not like we're friends anyway." She says all of this so quietly Danny can barely hear her.
No, he thinks. They're not really friends. At least she's not like any friend he's ever had before anyhow. But if they aren't friends than why does it bother him so much that she's avoiding him? "I just want to know why you're so angry with me?" He asks sincerely.
She gives a long-suffering sigh before beginning reluctantly, "Listen, I know that I don't have this perfect, skinny, hot, body. I'm not tall and blond with blue eyes like Christina and all the other girls you probably date. I don't need to hear it from you, okay? It's nothing I haven't heard from every other mean girl in the school before."
She says all this over her shoulder looking away from him so that for a moment he wonders if she's started a conversation about something totally different with someone else. But a shy glance at him a moment later confirms that this little speech, though out of left field, is for him.
"You're self-conscious?" He asks, genuinely surprised. In the short time he's known Mindy he's never once suspected her of being insecure. On the contrary, he's had to encourage her to stop writing 'Mindy Lahiri, future hot doctor' on all of their lab reports. "But you're always, you know, so confident about yourself."
She gives a small huff and folds her arms defensively around herself. It's a move meant to protect but it just leaves her looking more vulnerable than ever. "Yeah well confidence and self-esteem aren't always the same thing," she states sulkily.
"They're not?" Danny feels himself falling further and further out of his depths with this conversation. He looks over to Mindy, sitting so small and dejectedly alongside him and wonders what has happened to the bubbly, sometimes infuriatingly so, girl he's come to know.
"Just cause I know I'm great, doesn't mean everybody else knows it too," she supplies sadly. And then with a tone of accusation turning to look at him at last, "Doesn't mean some people wouldn't be embarrassed to date me."
Danny could almost laugh. "Is that what this is about? When I saw you in the dressing room?" He asks in relief. "Mindy, I didn't mean to see you naked. I thought you knew that." He chuckles quietly to himself. "Besides, Pete just sent a naked picture of me to the whole school, so we can be Even Steven anytime you like," he adds.
"Danny," she says accusingly, "I heard you tell that clerk you'd never date me. It's like you were embarrassed by even the idea of it," she finishes looking down at her hands again
"Mindy," Danny starts eagerly. Now that he knows what the issue is he is anxious to put her mind at rest. "You have no reason to be self-conscious. I mean I wasn't really looking; I'm a gentleman" he qualifies quickly, "but from what I saw you looked good."
"So why did you say you'd never date me?" He's encouraged to see she no longer looks angry, only curious.
"I don't know," he stalls, not anxious to start a new argument with her so soon after she's begun talking to him again. "You kept asking the dressing room attendant for different sizes and she had to shush you for singing along to the background music a couple of times…" he trails off.
But apparently finding Mindy's personality embarrassing is a far lesser offense than being critical of her body, because Mindy just shrugs this explanation off with the remark, "If they don't want people singing along, they shouldn't play so much Katy Perry."
Even as he's shaking his head at how absurd she can sometimes be, he finds himself smiling fondly at his ridiculous friend. In an uncharacteristic gesture, he leans into the space between them and gives her a quick kiss on the cheek.
"I may not have asked for it Mindy, but I'm glad we're friends."
