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Sensing the imminent defeat of Team Parents, Amma strikes the next blow, but the waver of her voice betrays her nervousness. “You’ve worked so hard, Afa. Khoshto theelam. Can I help serve?”

Pushpita Khala shakes her head. “Na, khoshto arbar keetha? I prepared appetizers to tide us over until dinner. It wouldn’t be Eid without those, would it?”

She lifts the gold-plated lids off an array of painted ceramic tureens: cool, pink custard flecked with chunks of strawberries and bananas; mishti doi with a delicate crust of brown sugar and date molasses that must be cracked to reach the yogurt, steaming hot chotpoti with tamarind chutney, boiled egg halves, sliced onions, and whole chilis in smaller metal containers around the main bowl; shredded beef swimming in the golden broth of haleem.

So many appetizers, I could happily give up dinner for the rest of my life.

My stomach utters an unseemly grumble. Paying no mind to the heat that crawls up my neck, I grab one of the stacked, empty glass bowls next to the tureen containing custard and pour some of the dessert into it. A little sweetness will make this night a less bitter pill to swallow.

Pushpita Khala beams but hesitates before handing me a spoon. “Harun told me you don’t eat away from home often, Zahra. If you’re not comfortable using a dessert spoon, I can get you a ladle to sip out of? We wouldn’t want you to spill on that beautiful dress your mother made.”

Hanif’s thick brows vanish into his hairline. Mansif Khalu chokes on his own bite of haleem, but manages to cover it up with a sputtered, “Whatever Zahra prefers is fine.”

“What!” Amma exclaims, in time with Arif’s mouthed, Afa, what the heck?

Harun flashes me a smirk. The glower I shoot back at him is less fake than the others, although we both agreed we’d accept any humiliation levied tonight to make our disdain for one another appear that much more authentic.

Before my mother can disabuse the Emons of the misunderstanding, I push aside the offered spoon and slide my bowl closer, a patented Good Bangladeshi Daughter smile plastered on my soon-to-be-smudged lips. “Thank you, Khala. I prefer eating with my hands.”

“If Api is eating with her hands,” Resna announces, slamming a tiny fist, “I want to too!”

Amma buries her face in her palms.

Nanu cocks her head at me, as flabbergasted as anyone else, then says, in her best impression of a referee, “Zaynab, don’t fuss. Eating with our hands is the Bengali way.”

In spite of this, I note she and the rest of my family do accept spoons.

I almost regret not doing the same when I realize how slippery each fruit has become in the gloopy custard. It takes every bit of my hand-eye coordination not to stain my dress, but I stubbornly refuse to stop shoveling it into my mouth with my fingers, going so far as to lift the bowl to my lips to slurp out the last dregs.

Then I slam the bowl back down onto the table. In the reflective glass of the showcase across from me, I spy a mean custard-stache on my upper lip, accompanied by a slowly dripping custard-beard and a blot of custard on my nose.

Turning to Harun sweetly, I say, “Can you pass me some tissues from that roll over there? My napkin is already messed up.”

His face scrunches up in passable disgust at the grungy cloth I wave in front of it, but the faintest hint of a smothered laugh is at odds with his ire. “Why’re you asking me? They’re closer to you.”

“Zahra, shuna, let Amma help you,” my mother interrupts in a reed-thin voice I can tell is on the verge of snapping. She practically throws a wad of paper towels that she must have torn off the roll on the table while I was focused on Harun.

I bite my lip to keep from laughing.

It’s working! Operation Zahrun is finally working!

We both know our parents enough to target their Achilles’ heels.

The Emons want a mild-mannered daughter-in-law from a reputable family, so the rest of the community stops looking down on them for their own checkered family history. Amma desperately wants a rich son-in-law who’ll take care of me.

We’re showing them the polar opposite.

And it’s time to hammer the final nail into the coffin.

Fuming, I shove my face an inch from Harun’s and poke his chest. “No, I don’t want it from anyone else. I want it from you, asshole. You couldn’t do one nice thing for me?”

He jerks back, chair scraping and pupils blown wide. “N-not when you’re getting this crap all over my face. What the hell is wrong with you? Princess thing getting to your head?”

“Me?” I seethe, jabbing him again. “ You’re the spoiled rich boy.”

We both hold our breath as time freezes around us for an instant, waiting, waiting, waiting for the inevitable thud of the other shoe dropping. For our parents to acknowledge that this was a terrible mistake. For Amma to take me home and chew me out about humiliating her, but have no choice aside from letting me have my chance with Nayim, since a future with Harun will be out of the question.

It’s not what I hoped for when we began this.

I wanted her to respect my efforts to please her and trust me to make my own choices. If anything, my antics tonight might prove to her I’m not just the opposite of what Harun’s parents want, but the opposite of someone who can make good decisions for herself, like what her future career should be.

I never anticipated falling for Nayim when all this happened, but once I fix things with him, I can figure out how to glue everything else back together again, like I always do.

I can .

The tension is broken by yet more custard.

Harun yelps as a gloop of it is pitched right into his open mouth by my sister, who is now standing on top of the table like a rampaging sugarplum fairy. Arif’s grip on her knobby knees does little to tame her, the custard smearing her own face transformed into war-paint.

She points at my date and shouts, “Stop being mean to my api, you big jerk-face!”

Harun looks at a genuine loss for words. The one eye that I can see behind his smeared glasses is bigger than the dishware.

I haven’t escaped the custard-splatter either, but the beginnings of a toothy grin are stretching across my face, because this must be it.

The point of no return.

There’s no way any of our parents can salvage this wreckage.

“Perhaps,” Amma says tightly, “I should take my children home.”

Pushpita Khala tries to respond but manages no more than a nod, while her husband replies, “Ahem, that might be best.”

If it didn’t mean getting found out, I would fling my arms around Harun and do a victory dance. One corner of his lip twitches beneath all the custard in acknowledgment of the glee that must be glinting in my eyes.

But before the triumph can truly sink in, my mother continues, “I don’t know what’s gotten into Zahra tonight. I think she was upset with me and took it out on Harun, but that’s no excuse. Afa, Bhai, amare maaf kori deo.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” Pushpita Khala answers, smiling tentatively back. “They’re very young and have only been on a few dates. Harun was the one to ask to try this until the summer ended, but clearly, that was a rash decision.”

“Why don’t we see how things are coming along at the grand opening?” Mansif Khalu adds, prompting his wife to clap her bangled hands together, clearly pleased at their ingenuity.

Hanif slams his hands on the table and rises to his feet. “Khala, Khalu, hold on! Hasn’t this gone on long enough? This girl—”

But the rest of his words grow tinny and distant as my stomach plunges to my feet. How can the Emons still want to keep going with this sham of a relationship after tonight? My eyes take in the blurry shapes of the figures around me.

Harun grimaces at this blow, but doesn’t otherwise object.

Resna hides her face in Nanu’s neck while Arif wags a finger at her.

And Amma…

Relief dawns across her face like a sunrise, brightening her rouged smile and flushed cheeks. After everything that’s happened, she has the gall to be happy that the Emons will give us another chance. Despite every awful thing Harun and I said and did to each other.

Despite how I begged her to stop.

It’s not that I can’t stop it myself. That I’m some shrinking violet in an ATN Bangla tragedy where brown girls are forced to bend to others’ wills. I could have ended this farce at any time. But I’ve been desperately waiting for her to finally look at me, see me, and understand me. To say, of her own accord, that she has faith in my choices and will support me no matter what.

It would be easy to tell Amma, once and for all, that I’m no longer playing this game with Harun and the Emons, and she would have to live with it.

Would forgive me eventually, and things would return to normal.

But I’m tired of always taking the high road. I want to know what exactly it will take for her to decide I’m worth more to her than the wealthy son-in-law of her dreams.

The fire I’ve been bottling in my chest since she first tricked me into going on that blind date with Harun erupts from my lips like molten lava as I whirl to face her, unable to contain my own words: “Enough is enough, Amma! I can’t do this anymore. Tonight was miserable enough, but I refuse to spend the rest of my life with someone who’s still in love with his secret ex-girlfriend!”

My tirade silences everyone else at once.

Somehow, during the course of it, I’d screwed my eyelids shut without noticing, but open one now to find myself face-to-face with my ashen mother, who whispers, “That can’t be…”

“Harun, is that true?” a still-seated Hanif asks quietly.

“What?” Mansif Khalu booms, while Pushpita Khala shakes her head and says, “Na, na, na, na, my betta would never do that. He wouldn’t keep anything like that from us, nai ni, Harun?”

I bite my lip, pupils flicking to Harun as the realization of what I’ve done sinks in. His lips part in shock, then press together so tightly, it’s obvious they’re trembling. The hurt he wears is blatant, and so is the fact that I’ve majorly messed up.

“Harun, I didn’t mean—”

He ignores me, his sole focus on his livid parents. “Ma, Abba, we’re not—we didn’t—we broke up already. I’m not—”

“So there was a girl?” his father challenges.

His mother’s dark eyes film over with tears. “You hid her from us, betta? For how long?”

“Harun,” I attempt again, reaching for his arm. “I’m—I’m sorry—”

“No.” He cuts me off with a shake of his head, voice growing frigid even as his fists quiver at his sides. “No, go on. Tell them. It means getting what you want, doesn’t it? So do it.”

I peer between him and Amma, who is clearly waiting for an explanation. Harun’s parents and cousin are tense with anticipation too, while the rest of my own family gawks.

Although we never discussed using this particular leverage, we did agree to do whatever was necessary. I guess that makes this okay, but guilt curdles in my belly as I explain, “He had a girlfriend he’d been seeing for years. A girl he knows from school.”

“An American girl?” his father asks, pivoting toward his son again. “Is that what the tuition money I worked seven days a week to afford went toward? For you to fool around with bideshis? To mortify me now?”

Pushpita Khala speaks more gently, but the pain in her words makes Harun flinch. “Is she the reason why you’ve been so withdrawn from us? This whole time, I thought it was something we did, but you… This girl…”

“Lily.” Her name is a weapon on Harun’s tongue. He directs the blow at me, curling his upper lip in disgust. “At least she’s studying to be a doctor. You think I’m supposed to beg to support some freeloading starving artist for the rest of my life?”

I flinch away from him and hiss, “Low blow, Emon.”

“Well, that’s all you know how to take,” he retorts.

Okay, ouch.

Before the situation can escalate further, Mansif Khalu steps in with a brisk, “That’s enough.”

“I think it’s time for our guests to go,” adds Pushpita Khala, coming to stand between me and Harun. “We have some things we need to discuss as a family. Clearly.”

This time, there’s no underlying warmth or understanding in either of their responses, but Amma wriggles her way toward us with her palms up in surrender, nonetheless. “Ji, of course that would be best. We can discuss this more once everyone’s cooled off?”

That infuriating note of hope remains in the query.

Pushpita Khala’s smile grows stiff. “Dekha zaibo.”

It’s not a no, but certainly not a yes. A polite dismissal.

Harun refuses to so much as look at me as we plod past him to the door, but Hanif glares daggers that I almost expect to slice me.

This is what I wanted.

What we wanted.

An irrefutable win.

But if I’ve won, why don’t I feel like celebrating?