Page 14

The hostess practically snatches the mic away the instant the song ends. “Wasn’t that, er, energetic? Let’s give a round of applause to these two very brave guests.”

Scattered claps follow.

It doesn’t matter, because Harun and I barely make it back to our table before dissolving into raucous guffaws that summon disapproving tuts from the other customers sitting around us. Harun is looking at me like he’s seeing me in a new light and doesn’t entirely hate it.

Fair. Dalia likes to say I’m wonderfully weird .

It takes several minutes before we catch our breath enough for him to whisper, “Thanks. I don’t—I hate being the center of attention, especially with so many strangers.”

I bask in the warmth of something other than the lingering heat and adrenaline. It seems like he’s growing more comfortable opening up to me, too. “You’re welcome, partner.”

Only then do we notice Sammi isn’t there, though our orders have arrived. The white cheddar and broccoli soup I picked looks woefully tragic next to Harun’s fish and chips and Sammi’s braised salmon, but at least letting him pay for it while posing as a gold digger won’t dent my pride as much. With the complimentary breadsticks, it might even keep me full.

Our chaperone returns from where she was speaking to the waiter, putting her hands together in an apologetic gesture. “Sorry, darlings. I have to go.”

“Was our singing that bad?” quips Harun.

“No! You were great!” she lies. “But Bilal called. We have some surprise guests and they’re waiting for me. Don’t worry, though! You two enjoy dinner—on me. There’s no reason your parents have to know.”

With another wink, she’s gone, leaving behind a fistful of twenties and the faintest whiff of expensive-smelling floral perfume.

Harun and I turn to each other, then burst into a fresh round of laughter. Sure, we haven’t done a convincing job of proving to Sammi that we aren’t meant for each other, but I have a feeling she made up her mind about our compatibility before ever meeting me, simply because her cousin’s happiness was the most important thing to her. I can respect that.

“If she’s paying, we may as well order another app,” Harun says.

I fake-glare. “You rich people are terrible.”

He chuckles, but I can’t help stealing glimpses at him as I nibble on the salmon he slides toward me without another word, some unnamed emotion bubbling up inside me.

It isn’t true, no matter how much I once willed it to be. He isn’t terrible. He could have easily rejected his parents and me when this whole matchmaking thing came up, saving us both the trouble, but he didn’t, because he wants them to be proud of him.

Just like me with Amma.

“Are we friends?” I blurt.

Harun’s incredulous expression makes my stomach plummet, until he huffs, “Are you kidding me, Khan? No shit.”

“Oh, good.” I sag into the booth, at once relieved and thrown by his surety. “It would have been pathetic if my platonic feelings were unrequited.”

I expect him to retort with another snarky crack, but he becomes earnest. “I’m glad I’m stuck with you , Zahra. I don’t think I could make it through this godforsaken summer with anyone else. Even when you use SAT words like unrequited and platonic in casual conversation, I don’t hate hanging out with you.”

“I don’t hate hanging out with you, either,” I whisper, thankful that the restaurant’s mood lighting hides how rosy my cheeks are. “It’s been nice, getting to act like a real teenager again. Things changed when my dad died. Before this, I could probably count on one hand how often I’d been to a movie or eaten at a restaurant or sung karaoke with friends in the last two years.”

His expression softens. “I can’t imagine. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I murmur. “It’s not your fault. If nothing else, at least this farce of ours has given me the chance to experience those things again. My world was beginning to feel so small.” And it might go back to being small when he heads off to college, but I don’t want to be a downer, so I crook a smile at him, extending my hand across the table. “Friends.”

Harun dimples at me and we shake on it. He sneaks a few more peeks my way as we go back to our food, then says, “I think this has been good for me, too. I’d become a shut-in ever since”—he visibly considers his words, then settles on—“since graduation.”

Was that when he got his heart broken? I watch him through the fringe of my lashes, my voice quiet so as not to spook him. “Is that when you had that breakup Afa mentioned?”

“Sammi Afa exaggerates,” he rumbles, but doesn’t otherwise deny it, chewing so intently for the next minute that I figure that’s all I’ll get out of him. It’s plenty already, considering who he is, but then he adds, “We did date for a while, though. Years. So I may have taken it extra hard when she dumped me, but I’m getting to be okay again.”

I meet his gaze properly, stunned not only that he had such a long-term relationship before—the same broody Harun who loves robots, reptiles, nerdy jokes, and his family—but that he’s being forthcoming about it to me , of all people.

“That’s understandable,” I murmur. “To feel a little lost when someone is suddenly gone, when you’re used to them being there. I know what that’s like.”

That fear has clung to me like Saran Wrap since Baba died. I’m scared to lose any more of the people I care about, even though I know letting them go is an inevitable part of life.

Harun searches my face, perceptive as ever. “Jeez, it’s not even in the same ballpark as what you went through. I’m sorry if it’s hard to think about.”

“It’s okay.” I smile down at the grooved surface of the wooden table. “It’s actually nice to talk about him sometimes. Amma doesn’t do it much, so the rest of us avoid bringing him up too. But there are lots of great memories I wish we could reminisce about, you know?”

“Yeah?” Harun says, voice soft.

I smile sadly. “Amma and I always butted heads, but I could do no wrong in Baba’s eyes. Even when Amma would complain about bills, he used to wink and sneak me some money to buy snacks after school or get a book I wanted to read….” I chuckle, remembering the time I hid under the sheets reading my stash from the book fair, afraid Amma would find me out and be upset with Baba. But then I recall why we were talking about him in the first place, and clap my hands together, breaking the spell. “So your ex. Tell me about her.”

“Lily…” Harun sighs heavily. He’s frowning very determinedly at the french fry in his hand, as if there’s some golden ketchup-to-fry ratio he can’t afford to mess up. “It’s a totally different story. By the end, we brought out the worst in each other.”

“But you still miss her, right?” I ask, reading it in the subdued set of his shoulders.

He shrugs. “I… don’t know. I don’t think I know how to be without her yet?” His fingers tap across the tabletop, and I resist the urge to set mine on top of them, letting him find the words he’s seeking. “My cousin Shaad and I… We had targets on our backs at school from day one. New money, Muslim brown kids from one of the poorest cities in New Jersey at an academy like that, with the kids of politicians, celebrities, and CEOs.”

Here I’d assumed his private-school life must have been glossy and cosmopolitan, like something out of Gossip Girl . I level a sympathetic wince at him. “I never thought about what it must have been like for you.”

“It was miserable,” he admits. “I got the worst of it because Shaad was outgoing and funny and would turn things around so everyone was laughing with him, not at him. People couldn’t help liking him. But me? I hid away in the science building, feeding the reptiles and making Lego bots. Hell, I was probably asking for the bullying at that point.” I open my mouth to argue, but an imploring glance stops me. “Then, in high school, Lily Whitlock, hands-down the prettiest girl in our year, suddenly wanted to breathe the same air as me.”

“That’s not surprising,” I reply casually. “You’re, like, really good-looking, Harun.”

His lips twitch. “I guess. Looking back, that’s around when I had a growth spurt and joined the swim team. But it blew my mind. She decided I’d be her boyfriend, and everyone else started falling over themselves to welcome me into their social circles. That’s the way things were for the next few years. I was… happy, I guess.”

“You don’t sound so sure….”

He considers his words as he chews another bite. “Despite her best efforts, despite my best efforts, I didn’t fit into her world. I didn’t like her friends, who pretended they hadn’t treated me like dirt only a year ago. Her folks weren’t exactly rolling out the red carpet for me either. Did you know, in all that time, her dad never learned I wasn’t Indian?”

“Ugh.” I grimace as I try to picture Harun, who is painfully shy, struggling to figure out a way to correct someone without it seeming impolite. I come up short.

“Yeah,” he agrees, divesting himself of his half-eaten fry at last so he can comb a hand through his unruly hair. “But even though it was hard, I convinced myself I was lucky she gave me a chance. I thought I loved her. Maybe I did? It was enough that we agreed we should both go to Stanford together.”

An invisible fist squeezes my heart. If he’s here, obviously that didn’t work out. “What happened?”

Harun smiles, but it’s sad, and there’s a faraway glaze to his eyes. “I never introduced her to my parents. I—I don’t know why. Maybe I was scared that if they hated each other, everything would have to change. I kept putting it off and she kept pushing me. She always felt like I didn’t put her first, like I was under my parents’ thumb.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “No. Don’t be. She was right. I was a bad boyfriend. I didn’t even know how bad until college acceptances rolled out.”

“My mom’s always been a diabetic,” he continues, “and that spring, she had a bad hypoglycemic episode. Dad’s been busy with the restaurant for basically ever, especially after he got it in his head to open a second one in Paterson. I got home late from a date with Lily and found my mom just in time. It… scared me.”

“Oh, Harun…” I finally reach for his hand.

“I realized then that I didn’t want to go so far that I couldn’t drive back if they needed me,” he confesses, meeting my gaze like he’s desperately willing me to understand. “Shaad, Sammi, and Hanif all have siblings, but my parents only have me. When I tried to explain that to Lily, explain why I was choosing Columbia, even though I promised we could fly out to visit each other, she said she was tired of me being such a codependent loser and dumped me.”

Righteous anger flares in my chest. “What the hell? She could have broken up with you without being so—so—so rude.” Choicer words dance on the tip of my tongue, but I bite it and glance up to find Harun grinning at me. “What?”

He shakes his head. “Yeah, she was pretty harsh, but I guess I deserved it. If Stanford was some sort of test to choose her over my parents, I flunked it, big-time.”

“At… least you did well on the SAT?” I reply, in an effort to make him laugh.

Harun snorts. “Truth be told, it was the best thing for us both. I had grown codependent, but with her. I thought I should be grateful she even chose me, but I never stopped to consider why that was. When she dumped me, all I did was brood around the house like some kind of ghost.” His eyes dart to mine, crinkling at the corners. “And then there was you.”

“Me?” I squeak.

I wonder if he realizes how rom-com he sounds right now. Probably not, but that doesn’t stop my heartbeat from pulsing in my veins.

“Yeah, you, Khan.” He half dimples. “My folks probably figured they’d get me out of my funk by setting us up, but I didn’t realize until we met how badly I needed a friend who didn’t know Lily.” He sighs and then smiles apologetically. “Thanks for listening.”

“No need to thank me,” I whisper, suddenly feeling shy and looking down at my bowl.

Perhaps Harun also senses the shift in the air between us, because he coughs into his fist. “Anyway. That’s over. So you don’t have to worry about Lily coming after you or anything.”

The truth of his words sinks in, anchored to guilt.

Swallowing a mouthful of soup, I say, “I’m not dating anyone either, but… there’s this boy. Amma doesn’t know. She wouldn’t approve.”

Harun’s brows knit together, his expression unreadable. I can’t bear to look at him too closely, in case I find familiar judgment in his gaze. He isn’t the only one with far too few friends, and now that I have him, the prospect of losing him sooner because he thinks poorly of me makes me want to puke.

Technically, I’ve never dated like him, but though Islam has the same rules in place about romance regardless of gender, people have double standards for what brown boys and girls do. Perhaps he hid it from his parents too, but even if he didn’t, him dating is boys being boys, he’ll settle down eventually . If I do it without the parental stamp of approval, a long list of rules, and chaperones, will it ruin my reputation? Will he think less of me for it, like Amma and the aunties and uncles of our city?

Gossip is a sin, too, but somehow, retribution always blows back on girls.

Only girls.

Harun’s basket of french fries slides into my line of sight, prompting me to blink at him. His smile is kind. “If it makes you happy, you should go for it, Zar.”

“Zar, huh?” The sound of the nickname my best friends use, and his immediate acceptance of my feelings for Nayim, sends delight bubbling through me, but I paste a teasing expression onto my face. “Does that mean I can call you ‘Haru-moni’?”

“Shut up,” he laughs.

Although I don’t know if he’s right about Nayim, his conviction comforts me.

I accept a fry. A friendship fry.