Page 36 of The Love Match

God, he’s beautiful. Polaris in his own right.

His long, graceful fingers strum a chord, but he soon pulls them back, laughing nervously. “Sorry, I’m a bit rusty.”

I wave my empty notebook. “Hello. Girl who hasn’t written a word in two years here. No judgment, Nayim. Seriously.”

That makes him grin again, in that irresistible, lopsided way. “All right. I’ll try to play if you try to write. Deal?”

“Deal,” I reply, sounding more confident than I am.

He strums more and more chords, until they become a yearning melody I’ve never heard before. Something he’s written? It sends a thrill through me like I’ve touched a live wire. This is the sort of “rusty” that treasure glints beneath.

I tear my gaze away only when his eyes rise and catch mine, my ears burning, but as I frown at the blank first page of my notebook, I realize it no longer feels like an insurmountable mountain to climb, because I’m not alone on my quest anymore. Bringing my sparkly pen to the paper, I start to write.

Nowhere near as bewitching as Nayim’s song.

Nonsensical things, about raven hair and golden eyes, siren songs and sumptuous lips, but soon I’m stringing them together into sentences, into a story.

A love story.

He’s right: having the right muse makes all the difference.

Chapter13

Harun picks me up forthe second of our eight dates, but he’s not alone.

I do a double take at the drop-dead gorgeous woman in the passenger seat of his BMW. Curly hair cut in layers with ombre highlights shot through them frames her heart-shaped face, spilling in elegant waves down her shoulders.

Long-lashed brown eyes take me in from head to toe while I squirm on the sidewalk in front of our building, before her lips curve into a crimson smile. “Harun, you dog! I didn’t know you snagged yourself such a cute new girlfriend.”

Harun glares, but she’s too busy stepping out of the BMW to notice. She takes my hand in both of hers and presses it against her sequined bosom, oblivious to my bashfulness. “Zahra, right? My name is Sharmin, but everyone calls me Sammi. I’m Haru-moni’s oldest cousin, and I’ll be your chaperone tonight.”

I blink.Haru-moni?

Ice prince Harun has such a cutesy dakh-nahm?

For his part, Harun groans and thunks his forehead against the steering wheel. Sammi ignores the ensuingbeeeeeepto help me into the passenger seat. “Don’t worry, I know you two would rather be together. I can chaperone fiiiiine from the backseat.”

“Um.” I self-consciously buckle the seat belt over the tunic Amma beaded for me. “What happened to Hanif Bhai?”

“Oh, that stick-in-the-mud?” Sammi flaps a manicured hand. “He’s probably at some symposium to discuss the reproductive habits of worms.”

Harun frowns again. “Or something.” To me, he explains, “Hanif Bhai went to a retreat planned by the Muslim Student Association of NYU.”

“Close enough,” Sammi mumbles.

Harun breezes right past her snarky comment. “Anyway, my parents thought it was for the best. They think we can ‘get to know each other better’ with Sammi Afa.”

Sammi leans over the center console to wink. “I’ve gotcha, babes.”

Harun grimaces like her proximity is giving him a headache. I wonder if Pushpita Khala and Mansif Khalu have somehow seen through my—our—ploy to avoid exactly this scenario. Days of texting new ways to make Hanif clutch his pearls, going so far as to draw up ascriptfor us, have gone out the window.

Guess the students haven’t quite surpassed the masters.

There’s no time to freak out about it, though. Meeting his gaze with resolution in my own, I nod once, an unspoken message:We just need to make it through tonight. Nothing has changed with Operation Zahrun.

Sammi’s squeal as she pops her torso between us again nearly causes Harun to swerve on the highway. “Oh my God, you two are precious! I can’t take these lovestruck stares!”

“L-lovestruck?” I stammer.

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