Page 67 of The Love Match

Chapter25

Nayim absconds from the picnicwithout telling Mr. Tahir, which I don’t hear the end of for the whole bus ride back. But when he doesn’t show up to work the next day or the following or the one after that, even our gruff boss starts worrying.

“His phone is disconnected,” Mr. Tahir tells us after making a tenth attempt at contact. “The imam says he suddenly decided he had to go back home.”

He ran away without me. The fact that he could disappear from my life after insisting we were meant to be together sends me reeling through a cycle of emotions—from despair to anger to disdain and back again. Still, I can’t help missing him whenever I go to the pass-through window at Chai Ho and don’t find him there.

And I can’t help wondering if he’s okay.

After three days of my moping around and shooting constant, fretful glances at my phone, hoping to hear that he’s not dead in a ditch somewhere, my friends reach their breaking point.

On Tuesday night, as I steel myself to walk home alone at half past five, Ximena pops up with her arms crossed like a bouncer’s at the entrance to Chai Ho.

Her presence startles me, since Dani has been lamenting how hard it’s been to pin her down for most of the summer. When I risk a peek over my shoulder, I find the Tahir girls hovering behind me, Dalia with a duffel bag over her arm, Dani with both of hers outstretched like a zombie who’s found premium brains on sale.

I gulp at the three of them. “What’s going on?”

“We’re kidnapping you,” Dalia says cheerily.

“We thought it was time for another epic sleepover at la casa de Tahirs,” Dani adds, then pauses, deliberating over her words. “Or is itde los Tahirs?”

Ximena glares. “You promised you’d practice your articles, babe.”

“I will, I will!” Dani grins. “I’ll knock the socks off your abuelita one day with my Spanish, I swear. Can’t say the same about Creole yet, though.”

I groan. While I’ve always loved visiting the Tahirs since I was a kid, because they grew up in an actualhousethat their parentsowned, and I’m relieved Dani and Ximena seem to have made up, the last thing I want right now is to watch them bicker like an old married couple when my own love story is a joke.

Nayim has vanished off the face of the planet. Although Harun hasn’t ghosted me outright, he’s been standoffish sincethe night of our fake-up. I tried to broach the topic of the dinner to apologize, but he dodges the subject every time I bring it up.

I’m not good at statistics, but I’m 98 percent sure I’ve betrayed him to the point of ruining our friendship for good. That, or he didn’t mean what he said about being friends in the first place.

Either way, sorrow twinges in my chest every time I send him a math meme or ask how Rabeardranath Tagore and his cousins are doing, only to get a monosyllabic response. Should losing a friend I’ve had for a month hurt so much?

“There’s too much going on right now,” I tell the friends I still have.

“Which isexactlywhy you need a sleepover,” Ximena argues.

I shake my head. “Look, I appreciate you going out of your way to put this together, but it’s super last-minute. My mom will expect me home for dinner—”

“We already told her,” Dalia singsongs, giving the bag a jostle. “She let me go over and pack your pj’s, khul balish, and toothbrush during my break. I even snagged your copy ofTo All the Boys, in case you want to complain about the changes while we marathon the series.”

“So stop doth protesting too much, lady,” says Dani, utterly unashamed of her terrible ye olde English grammar. “You have zero excuses.”

My eyes grow round, then abruptly brim with tears. All this time, I’ve been afraid of them abandoning me for college, yethere they are, considering every possible way to accommodate me so I have a good time.

“Oh, Zar,” Dalia says.

“If you don’t wanna go, you don’t have to,” a panicky Ximena adds.

“No, I want to,” I blubber. “I just—I love you three so much.”

“We love you, too,” they chorus, moving to squish me into a group hug.

That’s when Mr. Tahir lumbers out of his office, sees us, and sighs. “This is going to become a ‘thing,’ isn’t it?” We nod in tandem. “Will you ladies be requiring a ride, then?”

Still gripping each other, we nod a second time.

I’m glad I relented to the slumber party, because it ends up being just what the doctor ordered, the perfect prescription for my bruised and battered heart.

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