Page 71 of The Love Match

Harun’s eyes grow round. “Really?”

His blatant disbelief is a punch to the gut. I bob my head with a frantic nod. “I know neither of us wanted to be set up, but I didn’t lie when I said our dates were some of the most fun I’ve had in years. I almost wish we could keep doing it.”

Maybe it would be best if we said goodbye now, because Harun deserves better, but I don’t want to let him go.

So, instead, I need to do better.

Be better, for him.

Harun is quiet as he processes this new information, pupils flicking in the direction of something out of my line of vision. I take the opportunity to observe every detail, my pulse thrumming for reasons beyond his answer.

His lower lip is plump and full as he chews on it, the glare of the phone screen in the dimness casting the fringe of his lashes in stark relief over his sculpted cheekbones. When his attention returns to me, it pierces right through me.

“I miss you, too, and I’m sorry,” he admits, tentatively hopeful. “I never should have said what I did about you and your writing. Whatever happens with college, you’re the smartest person I’ve ever known. Almost scarily smart, Zar.”

Pure, sunshiny delight courses through me, and I can’t keep the ear-to-ear grin off my face. “Then… maybe we can do something together soon?”

Harun hesitates. “We’d have to sneak around. I don’twant to come between you and your mother again. Not if everything’s finally cool with you and Nayim.”

I do my best to keep a straight face, but the truth is, I don’t want to hear Nayim’s name on Harun’s lips so soon after I’ve been waxing poetic over the shape of them. Don’t want the reminder of the boy who’d jilted me to taint my reconciliation with Harun.

If Nayim comes back tomorrow, I don’t know how I’ll feel. No one knows better than me how slow time can be to erase scars left by someone you’d gifted a piece of your heart to, but I meant what I told him in the castle. The Nayim I fell for isn’t the Nayim I met then.

And now, part of me resents him for being the reason Harun and I fell out.

“This is pretty embarrassing, considering the lengths I went to at your folks’ Eid party,” I admit, eyes trained on the bottom of my screen to avoid Harun’s, “but there is no me and Nayim anymore. He wasn’t who I thought he was, and I… I hate that I let him come between us.”

A beat goes by.

I forcibly meet his gaze, reminding myself that Harun has never judged me before. Even so, the bashful smile that alights like a sunrise across his face shoots a funny thrill through my chest. “Okay. That’s… okay. That’s good. Maybe we can do something Thursday?”

I beam. “I can’t wait!”

“Me neither…”

We’re content to sit in the dark, smiling goofily, until Harun suddenly yelps. “Ow, Rab!”

He must have dropped his phone because the world suddenly tilts on its axis. I hear the soft thump of the device hitting his sheets and find myself looking up at Harun rather than face-to-face with him.

When he raises his palm to cover his earlobe, I notice that his bearded dragon has scrambled its way up his shoulder to take a chomp out of it.

A laugh escapes me, so loud I have to slap a hand against my mouth. “Has he been crawling around this whole time?”

“He was helping me build a model plane,” Harun grumbles, rubbing his red earlobe between the fingertips of one hand while holding the unrepentant culprit in the other. “Guess he got tired of waiting for bedtime.”

I laugh again, soft and fond. “You’re cute, Harun Emon.”

“What?” comes his garbled reply. “Um. Well. Anyway… good night!”

He hangs up.

Warmth saturates my chest, and I don’t bother attributing it to my phone or quilt for once. I crane my neck to grin up at the ceiling. That not-lizard has grown on me. He isn’t the only one.

Even though I’m not ready to start writing tonight, for the first time since Nayim left, sleep drags at my eyelids. Wandering over to Dalia, I give in to its spell with a muffled yawn, wishing Harun an equally peaceful slumber.

Chapter26

Wednesday finds me a nervouswreck.

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