Page 61 of The Love Match

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?

Chapter23

We hover awkwardly in frontof the Emons’ gate for our Uber, avoiding the stares of their dog-walking and barbecuing neighbors.

Although I’m sweating buckets in my long-sleeved dress outside the house’s central air, the summer heat is preferable to staying in there.

It was worse than anything I imagined leading up to tonight.

That should be agoodthing, but I already find myself missing how things were before. Pushpita Khala sending us home with leftovers to replace the original contents of our Tupperware. Harun’s offers to drive us back. Meeting his gaze in the rearview and sharing a secret glance, a smile no one else was privy to.

We both got what we wanted… right?

It takes every ounce of my willpower not to sneak a peek at his bedroom window.

In all fairness to my mother, she’s the picture of calm that entire time—unnervingly so, in fact, while the rest of us squirm on the sidewalk, cicada song suffusing the silence.

The instant we enter the minivan, our Decidedly Not Harun driver closes the partition separating us, bopping his head along to Egyptian house music. Nanu shoos Arif and Resna into the very back seats alongside her, affording Amma and me a modicum of privacy in the middle passenger seats.

Amma pounces on me. “How could you do that?”

“Do what?” I ask, crossing my arms.

A blotchy flush flares across the bridge of her nose even as her lips whiten from being squeezed together so tightly. “Amare keetha faiso? Do you take me for a fool, Zahra?”

I heave a breath.

Despite acting so flighty, and often doubting her own ability to take care of our family without Baba, Amma is one of the smartest and most resilient people I know. Which is why it bothers me all the more that I’m the one puzzle she either can’t figure out or doesn’t want to.

“No,” I murmur at last. “I know I was acting weird—”

“Your behavior was completely unacceptable,” she interrupts. “Since when could you notuse a spoon? You made our family seem so backward in front of them. How can I ever show my face in town again? I did not raise you to behave like such a—a—”

Behaya, beshorom, be-other qualities I’m lacking because I’m such a flagrantly disrespectful daughter and person.

“Iknow, okay?” I proclaim before she can choose one, so loud that the startled driver meets my eyes in the rearview disapprovingly.Get in line,I glare back at him. Harun’s words cut me deep enough for tonight, fake or not, and I don’t have any room left for Amma to rub salt into that wound. “I just… it was all I could think to do. No matter what Harun or I said or did in there, you and the Emons seemed dead set on us being together. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

She’s quiet for a moment, playing with the lids of the half-full plastic containers in her lap that Pushpita Khala returned earlier. I wince when she says, in thatI’m not mad, just disappointedhollow voice that’s somehow worse than getting yelled at, “If your behavior wasn’t appalling enough, what you did to that boy was wrong, Zahra.”

“What?” I gape at her, unable to believe what she’s saying. “I tell youhe’s been with some white girland you still find a way to blame this on me?” I whip toward the window. “I should have known all that mattered to you was his money and not how I feel—or how he feels, for that matter. What kind of sexist garbage is this? He can do no wrong and I’m just supposed to accept—”

“Oh, stop,” she says, frowning. “This isn’t about any of that.”

“It is, though,” I reply, scowling at her again. “You’re fine with him dating whoever he wants, because he’s a boy, but when I told you I liked a boy, you—”

A sharp shake of her head interrupts me once more. “No,Zahra. No matter what you might think, this isn’t about Nayim. It’s about Harun. I’m not sure how you learned about his girlfriend, but you shouldn’t have flaunted his secret that way, in front of his parents and cousin. You did more than embarrass our family. You humiliated and hurt him.”

“That was pretty messed up,” I hear Arif whisper from the backseat.

“Messed up,” Resna’s squeaky voice agrees, though whether she comprehends the situation remains to be seen.

---