Page 43 of The Love Match

He chuckles. “Maybe later. I was hoping we could go somewhere more special tonight.”

I catch my lip between my teeth and don’t miss the way his eyes dart to it. My ears flush as anticipation and anxiety war inside my belly. Of course I want to go with him, but what if someone sees us together and reports back to Amma? What if the Emons hear? It would end my need to fake a relationship but unearth a million other problems I’d rather not deal with.

Good Bengali Muslim girls shouldn’t be alone with boys.

Harun’s words return to me:You should go for it….

I meet Nayim’s gaze, resolved to tell him no, but when his imploring eyes land on mine, the rejection seizes in my throat, an insect confined in the amber of his irises. I swallow and try again. What comes out is a weak, “I guess since we finished work early, Amma doesn’t expect me home….”

“Perfect!” He beams. “We won’t need long.”

I follow him at a distance as he leads me to the special place in question. By the time we make it to Hinchliffe Stadium, the graffiti-stained baseball field between Public School No. Five and the Great Falls National Park, I have a hunch where we’re going, but Nayim’s long strides don’t slow until we’ve tramped past the grass and the gravel-covered pavilion across from the small brickwork wheelhouse Ximena called from earlier.

At the winding path that leads down to the historic factory Alexander Hamilton once built, he turns and extends his hand.I hesitate for only a second more, before taking it. Sunlight glints off the construction equipment of the Emons’ partially erected cliffside second restaurant, but the crew, busy packing up for the day, is too far away to pay us mind.

The recent drizzle also deters most aunties and uncles from lurking, so I let Nayim usher me to the colossal stone stairway monument, which overlooks the old factory, the wooden bridge that connects one end of the park to the other, and one of the larger waterfalls.

“It’s breathtaking here, isn’t it?” Nayim’s eyes bore into me rather than the view.

I nod, hyperaware that he hasn’t released my hand. “It’s easy to forget because I’ve lived here most of my life… but yeah, it is. My father used to bring us here. He’d read all the plaques on the statues in the area and take us to the Paterson Museum.”

Ignoring my half-hearted protests, Baba would pick me up by the waist so I could join a then-much-younger Arif and Resna on one of the rusty locomotive displays that represented our city’s industrial history. He’d snap photos until his camera roll filled up, a good third featuring his thumb. Later, I would grumble while deleting those.

What I wouldn’t give to go back.

Nayim studies my suddenly stricken face. “He sounds like a great man.”

“He was,” I reply. “He was always so proud to have gotten us to the US. He wanted us to have more than he did.”

The reminder makes me ache.

Even now, the falls are somewhere I like to come when I need to be alone. I can almost sense Baba’s presence when I close my eyes here, but what would he think about my present company? Would he see some of his own drive for a better life in Nayim? What would he think of my choices? That he worked himself to death so I could study and be somethingmore, only to end up doing exactly what he never wanted for me?

The fact that Nayim brought me here of all places makes my heart thump so hard in my chest, I worry that it will burst through a crack in my rib cage and fly to him. Or at the very least, that he can hear it, see the sheen of tears in my eyes, and must hate me for ruining whatever special thing he wanted to show me.

Instead he smiles at me with such tenderness that my knees turn to jelly. Before I can sit down, he blurts, “Wait!”

I gape as he retrieves a red-checked blanket and a picnic basket from the gym bag, as well as a fancy-looking bottle of apple cider with a shiny foil label and two tall glasses from Chai Ho. My jaw drops when he lays out all the food on the step just below us and pats the now-blanketed spot at his side.

“You—how—why—?”

“It just rained,” he murmurs, as if that’s the reason for my shock.

“You did this for me?” I whisper.

He nods, taking out paper plates, plastic utensils, and oyster-pail containers with the logo of the nearest halal Chinese restaurant stamped all over the boxes. I spot dessertsfrom the tea shop inside the basket too. In my head, I do a mental calculation of it all.

A box of fried rice, another of lo mein, yet more of prettily crimped dumplings, and then there’s the clearly expensive cider among all the desserts. The snobby customers who’ll someday dine at the cliffside Gitanjali would never bat an eye at this humble fare, but even with our employee discount, I know the sheer number of things he’s purchased had to have cost over a hundred dollars.

“Nayim…,” I breathe. “This is way too much. You can’t afford to splurge like this. All you ever have for lunch are Maggi noodles and rice with dhal. How will you feed yourself? Pay this month’s rent?”

Save up for his guitar shop?

A hand covers mine as he shakes his head, eyes never once leaving my face. “No, Zahra. It’s not nearly enough.”

Oh.

No one but my immediate family or best friends have ever done something like this for me. Even Harun has only paid for our dates because of his code of chivalry and our colluding. Or maybe pity for the poor girl with the dead dad.

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