Page 40 of The Love Match

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 withyou, 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 gobackto 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’splentyalready, 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 tome, 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 atotally 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 ofGossip 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?”

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