Page 28

Unable to get Dalia’s ashen face out of my head, I end up at Chai Ho an hour before my shift Monday morning, hoping to strong-arm her into confessing whatever’s the matter.

Even the Mom Friend needs a mom friend sometimes.

As soon as I cross the street over to the tea shop, I become aware that something is wrong. Faint yelling echoes through the glass door, though there’s no one behind the counter. When I try the doorknob, I find that the door has been left unlocked, and I let myself in. Something crashes in the kitchen, jolting me into action.

Grabbing the first potential weapon within reach—a stainless-steel teapot—I charge through the kitchen door and shouting a war cry, only to find a puffy-eyed Dalia crouching on the floor, picking up shards of a broken teacup.

“Z-Zahra, what are you doing here?” she rasps.

But the source of the argument summons my attention: Dani and her father, shouting at each other in a combination of Urdu and English. Urdu and Bengali have only some terms and pronunciations in common, but because Dani has always spoken it more crisply than her sister, it takes me no more than a moment to decipher that they’re arguing about Ximena.

“Daniya, meri jaan—”

Dani cuts her father off with a screech. “No! Don’t call me that if your love for me is conditional , Abbu. If you and Ammu only love me when I’m being a dutiful little girl who does everything you say, I want no part of it.”

Mr. Tahir throws his hands in the air. “That’s not true. It’s because we love you that we don’t want you to throw your life away for some girl.”

“Some girl?” Dani barks. “Mena and I have been together since middle school. If you still can’t accept her or who I am—”

“You’re eighteen! What do you know about who you are?” her father fumes.

Dani’s jaw snaps shut. Both panting, she and Mr. Tahir stare each other down. At last, she says, “I know that legally, I can do whatever I want.”

I shrink at the ice in her voice, but when Mr. Tahir replies with an equally cool, “Go ahead, break your mother’s heart, you ungrateful girl,” the gravity of the situation sinks in.

The two of them march off in opposite directions, Dani slamming the bathroom door in time with the thud of her father’s private office door. All the utensils around the kitchen shake on their hooks, and another teacup falls and breaks. For a minute, Dalia and I are rooted in place.

Then she sniffles, and I drop to my knees next to her, putting my arms around her shoulders. “Oh, Dal. What happened? I thought your parents had come to terms with Dani and Mena’s relationship years ago.”

“Everything was going fine until the slumber party,” she mumbles wetly into the crook of my neck. “It was already hard enough for Dani to accept that Mena wouldn’t be coming to Rutgers with us, but now Mena wants to go back to the island.”

Oh no…

Guilt sweeps through me.

I never checked in with any of them after that conversation at the sleepover. If I’m completely honest, I may even have been envious of how sure they’ve always been of each other. Remembering the tight hug Ximena gave me a couple of nights ago, I recognize it for what it was at last: a goodbye. An attempt to etch me into her memory. What kind of friend am I that I didn’t stop her then to make her talk?

“What happened?” I whisper.

Dalia’s voice is equally soft. “Yesterday during the fair, Mena asked Dani to come with her if she wants to stay together. Going to Haiti and her summer helping at the wheelhouse made her feel like there are more important things she’s meant to do than go to college. Her uncle is opening a school in Pedernales and invited her to teach art there.”

I sigh. “Dani took it hard, huh?”

Dalia nods against my neck. “We’re supposed to move into our dorms in a couple of weeks. Tuition has already been paid. But she kept repeating how Mena said she still loves her. Dani thinks she can fix this if they just go together. She wants Abbu to give her back her half of our college savings for the trip.”

Oh, that must not have gone over well at all .

Like most Asian parents, Mr. Tahir is dead serious about his daughters’ studies. In fact, for as long as I’ve known them, I’ve known about the Tahir Twenty-Year Plan: the girls would go to college, get their MBAs, take over the shop together, franchise it, and make Chai Ho a nationwide name that would put Starbucks out of business, allowing Mr. and Mrs. Tahir to retire comfortably in Pakistan.

“Okay, we can fix this.” I help Dalia up and dust off her skirt. “You go talk to your dad and I’ll handle Dani. Once they cool off, things will be easier.”

“Do you really think so, Zar?” she asks hopefully.

I give her one last squeeze. “I know so.”

After releasing her, I advance into the den of the dragon—also known as the bathroom. Dani stands in front of the sink, splashing her tear-streaked face. She doesn’t see my reflection in the mirror but must hear my footsteps, because she growls, “Go away, Dalia. I don’t want to hear you make excuses for Abbu.”

“It’s not Dalia….”

“Zahra!” She spins around and wilts, but despite her next stony remark, I’m not sure whether she’s disappointed or relieved. “Oh, good. At least you understand how unreasonable he can be. How much of that did you hear?”

I shuffle next to her, close enough that she can lean against me if she wants. “Enough to know you need a friend. Wanna talk about it?”

Dani props herself against the rim of the sink, raking both hands through her bubblegum-pink hair in clear frustration. “Argh! He’s impossible . When I told him and Ammu about visiting Mena, she said we could discuss it, but Abbu immediately forbade me. It pissed me off so much, I told him I’d use my college savings to go. And why shouldn’t I? The world is already out there. What’s stopping us from experiencing it now, instead of in four or six or however many years it takes to get a piece of paper that gives us permission?”

I cringe imagining how that conversation played out.

Although she sounds like she’s reciting Ximena’s speech from the slumber party back to me, neither of them is wrong. But Dani and her dad have a similar temperament, and when you fight fire with fire, you tend to get a bigger flame. No wonder Dalia looks like a husk of herself.

Scooting closer to Dani so our hips bump and make her lips twitch, I say, “So do you not want to go to college at all? I know you love Mena. I’ll miss her if she goes too. But I thought you were excited about dorming with Dalia. You’ve been dreaming about being college roomies forever.”

What happened to the fairy lights and furniture? The posters of her favorite anime series that she’d convinced her sister to let her put up on their dorm room’s walls?

“I am! I was ! I—” Dani drags a palm over her haggard face. “I’m not like you or Dal or even Mena. You’ve always known what you want to do.” I shake my head, eyes wide, but before I can tell her none of my plans have ever worked out, she continues, “I was so amazed with the way you just… took charge after your dad died. Suddenly, you were a real adult with real adult problems, while the rest of us were still kids. But then college admissions happened and it became obvious everyone was growing up without me. Dalia has all these plans for herself and Chai Ho. Mena has her art. What will I have if she leaves me?”

That’s when it hits me that I’m not the only one who’s been terrified of what tomorrow will bring. No longer fighting the urge to hug her, I pull her into my arms and whisper, “Dan, you’d have us, no matter what. Even your parents will come around to it, whatever you decide. I’ve seen how much they love you. How much we all love you.”

“But love isn’t always enough,” she chokes out. “I don’t think Mena and I could survive a long-distance relationship. That’s why she’s giving me this ultimatum. Either we’re together or we find other people.”

I rub her back. “I know you don’t want to hear it right now, but your dad’s right about one thing.”

She tenses. “What?”

“You are only eighteen,” I reply. “You’ve got all the time in the world to figure out what you want to do. If you and Mena are meant to be, you will be. She’ll find her way back to you. The same is true of your family. If they deserve to be in your life, they’ll fight to stay in it. People who love you should want you to choose your own happiness.”

Nayim’s gorgeous face materializes in my mind.

Those honey-sweet eyes I could drown in. The spell of his voice, which dared me to be the boldest version of myself. His lips on mine.

Being with him was exciting, but excitement alone wouldn’t have made us happy when we both misunderstood one another so deeply.

“What’s going to make you happy, Dan?”

Dani and I rock together for a while, her head under my chin, until she emits a wobbly laugh. “Ugh. Here you are, having to comfort your friend choosing between college or travel, as if both aren’t out of reach for you.”

“You’ve always been there for me,” I argue, shaking my head. “I want to return the favor because I love you. Besides—” A bitter chuckle escapes me, prompting her to gaze up. “I wish I had everything figured out, but I’m more confused than I’ve ever been.”

Dani angles back enough to take me in. “What’s wrong? Is it the guys? I thought Harun was pretty cool when he came by, but if you still like Nayim and you’re telling me to be selfish, then you have to know it’s okay for you, too.”

“It is Nayim,” I admit, “but not the way you think.”

She and the others already know we broke up, but I didn’t think it was my place to expose his lies. Now that it’s apparent he might be gone forever, I fill her in about our fallout at the picnic. Her brown eyes bulge at the revelation that he’s not an orphan and ditched me when I refused to abandon my life in Paterson to run away with him.

“Holy crap,” she says when I’m all done. “I thought it was bizarre how he just vanished off the face of the planet over a breakup, but I never guessed that—”

“Plot twist?” I finish for her wearily. “Yeah, me neither.”

She studies me, a wrinkle between her brows. “Did you want to be with him? I—I know I keep telling you to be selfish, but the thought of you giving a second chance to some douche who left without saying goodbye seriously makes me want to throttle him.” The frankness of this startles a snort out of me. She holds up her hands in defense. “But for real, Dalia, Mena, and I—and even your family—would learn to live with it if that’s what you wanted.”

I don’t know if it’s true that Amma would understand a choice like that.

Maybe if we were as rich as the Emons, our reputation would matter less if I all but eloped. But even they seem to be trapped by ideas of status, wealth, and lineage that our ancestors carried across three oceans and hundreds of years. Otherwise, why would they agree to the arrangement between me and Harun in the first place?

But that’s not it, really.

Shaking my head, I murmur, “The boy I thought I had feelings for isn’t real. He lied to me and my family. To everyone . He looked me in the eye and let me think he knew what it was like to lose someone the way I did.”

Disappointment swells again in my chest. Only now, I know that I deserve better.

Know, even, what better might look like.

The memory of Harun helping me during the mela rushes back. He didn’t expect anything in return. He just stepped in where he was needed, silently promising me his presence.

Dani is quiet for a moment before saying, “I think I have to break up with Mena.”

A fresh spring of tears wells in her eyes.

I hold her. Support her. And we cry.