Page 69 of The Love Match

I shake my head as I dig my palms into my eyes, scooting away to put some space between us. “No, please, don’t let me spoil tonight. I feel like I’m always crying lately, and I don’t know why. It’s so cringey.”

The Tahir girls trade a helpless glance from either side of me on the carpet, while Ximena digs her fingers into the cotton of her shorts, still standing over us. She’s the one who breaks the silence first, with a heated, “No offense, but that’s bullshit, Zar.”

“Mena, what?” Dani gasps, her sister equally stunned.

Ximena’s brown eyes blaze at us. “We’ve got to stop pretending everything’s all right all the time. It isn’t, and it’s okay that it isn’t.”

“Mena…,” I whisper.

Her harsh tone takes me aback. I recall how she implied at the furniture store that I was being shortsighted, mourning something I couldn’t have rather than appreciating what I do.

When I tense, she softens and sets a hand on my knee. Her skin is smudged with paint and charcoal in a few stubborn spots, a comforting and familiar sight. “We’re your best friends, Zahra. If you can’t be real with us, who can you talk to? If the reason you’re sad now is because of what you told me downtown, then Dani and Dalia deserve to know too.”

The twins gaze at me pleadingly.

I know they won’t push me if I refuse to explain, but in thatmoment, I realize how right Ximena is. They want to know, they want to help, and it isn’t fair that I’ve been building this wall between us without giving them a chance to find a ladder.

“Ever since we started getting our college acceptances, I’ve been scared,” I tell them. “Maybe even before that.”

Maybe since Baba died.

“Scared of what, Zar?” Dalia broaches gently.

I take a deep breath, then divulge every insecurity that’s been eating away at me since spring. “Of… losing you. All of you. You have all these adventures waiting for you in college, while I’ll keep living the same sorry life. I’m terrified you’ll make better friends when you’re there. I’m terrified to be without you.”

Quiet follows. I take a quick breath in and hold it.

I can’t look at them, because I’m afraid to see how selfish they think I am reflected in their expressions. While they’re planning slumber parties to cheer me up, I’m resentful of the opportunities they have.

Except that isn’t so.

Iamhappy for them. I’m just tired of being sad for myself all the damn time, and so desperately scared of letting anyone else slip away.

Dalia hugs me first, bowling me over onto the floor like a kingpin. “Zar, you could never lose us. Maybe we can’t be around all the time, but you’re stuck with us for life, no matter where any of us might go, so please, please, please stop torturing yourself with something that won’t happen.”

“Yeah, what she said,” Dani adds, squirming into my other side, her fiery hair splayed around us on the cushy carpet. “It’s true that I can’t wait to go to college. I’ve daydreamed about Dalia and me having our own dorm room for years. But those dreams have always included you, Zahra, college or otherwise.” She levels a dead-serious look at me. “Hell, you could decide to sell hyperrealistic unicorn figurines instead of going to college, and I’d support the crap out of you.”

“Um, I might have a question or two first,” Dalia says, “but me too.”

A hysteric giggle bubbles up my chest, at odds with the rivulets of teardrops that continue to glimmer down my cheeks. My friends are somewhat teary-eyed as well.

Tugging them both closer, I murmur, “Thank you. Love you.” Only then do I notice Ximena loitering above us, rubbing one of her biceps while frowning at our pile of gangly limbs. I flash her a smile. “You too, Men. Come here.”

She wriggles between Dani and me right away, burying her nose in my neck. Her breath tickles when she says, “I love you all, too, but…”

Dani props herself up on one elbow. “But?”

Ximena turns to lie on her back, staring up at the ceiling. “But I don’t think I want all that anymore. College. I meant what I told you at the furniture store, Zahra. There are other options out there, and… I think I want to explore them.”

“What does that mean?” Dani asks, curling to face her.

Ximena swallows and licks her lips. “I’m not sure yet.”

Another long stretch of silence follows, where none of us are quite sure how to react, until Dalia says, softly, “I know it’s scary, but things are changing. That’s why we’re having this sleepover in the first place, isn’t it? One last hurrah before they do?” One by one, the rest of us nod. “Then maybe… it’s okay not to know everything, and just have a good time with each other, like we first planned? Even if only for tonight?”

Netflix choosing that moment to loudly blare the opening of the next show on the twins’ queue makes our decision for us.

We finish the rest of the now-cold pizza and cheesy bread, squeal over brown girls in ball gowns on the Kate Sharma season ofBridgerton, and stream an episode of some Marvel show Dani’s been dying to watch, before the other girls succumb to exhaustion sometime close to two a.m.

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