Page 74 of The Love Match

Ignoring the bubbly warmth his words cascade through me, I continue, “Did you always want to be an engineer, or was it something your parents pushed you into choosing?”

“If it were at all up to my mother, I’d be a doctor,” he says. “I think that’s why she keeps telling people I’m studying biomedical engineering, so she can brag that I’mboth.”

“That does sound like Pushpita Khala Logic.”

His eyes flick toward me again. “I guess I do likeengineering a lot, for the same reason that I like Rab and swimming. It isn’t… complicated.”

I pull a face. “I beg to differ. I barely passed algebra, and I’d sink like a stone if we went to the beach.”

Although I’m joking, Harun gnaws on his full bottom lip, fingers tightening on the steering wheel. “I was never… good with words, the way you are. In fact, I felt pretty damnbadwith them when I first started private school. The other kids thought it was hilarious to fake Apu accents anytime the teacher called on me or my cousin. Shaad never let it bother him. I quickly learned it was better to keep my mouth shut.”

“Harun…”

Not for the first time, the urge to hunt down and throw my shoe at some prissy private school kids assaults me.

He frowns at the road ahead, the glass-beaded tasbih around the rearview mirror casting shadows across his lenses. “It was awful for a while, and I couldn’t even tell my parents. How could I when they worked so hard to get me in? But then I joined robotics. Everything else kind of fell into place. Math makessense. There’s only one answer. When I’m doing calculations, I don’t think about anything else. It’s the same way I feel when I’m underwater. There’s no judgment for once. Is that weird?”

I think of all the voices I’ve been battling with in my own head.

Amma’s and the aunties’, with so many rules for being a good Bangladeshi, Muslim girl. I think about their groupchats, worrying about what secrets they know. My characters’, fighting with me over every word. Professor Liu’s, utterly silent. My friends’ and the fear of losing them. Nayim’s, brimming with such disappointment.

An endless list of impossible choices.

My head shakes instinctively. “It isn’t weird. Writing is like that for me. Thank you for trusting me.”

Harun considers me through his periphery, as if he’s gauging how honest I am. I sit up straight and peer back, hoping to convey that I mean every word. At last his shoulders sag, and his voice grows so soft, I almost don’t hear it over the whir of traffic.

“Can I show you one more thing?”

The fact that he still thinks to ask sends affection rippling through me. Before I can talk myself out of it, I extend my arm until it brushes his next to the gear shift. “Please.”

Swallowing audibly, he refocuses on the road, but his arm doesn’t move away from mine. Moments later, we’re parking the BMW in a ridiculously expensive garage. Harun shyly offering me a hand distracts me from the exorbitant prices, the stately city hall building at our rear, the roar of cars all around us, and the distant squeal of the subway below.

The Brooklyn Bridge arcs grandly above us.

My pulse thumps against his palm as he escorts me up a stairway to a cordoned-off pedestrian walk. Behind us, people mill out of the subway entrance, but though some sidestep us impatiently, Harun and I continue our stroll at a leisurely pace.

Cars zip by on either side of us on the busy highway roads, but it isn’t until we reach the wooden planks that feed into the bridge that I realize how far up we are. The boards below our feet creak and wobble as tourists jostle and skateboards zoom past. I cling to Harun’s arm, mindful of every step. No wonder he wanted me to wear sturdy shoes.

Then we stride onto Brooklyn Bridge proper and vertigo swoops through my belly. I’m suddenly hyperaware of the fact that only a thin wooden layer and a wide railing separate me from a violent death beneath a hundred oncoming wheels. It’s narrower and less metallic than I would have pictured too. One well-placed push from a stranger is all it would take.

But when I turn to Harun, he’s glowing again, the bulbs studding the cables of the bridge shimmering across his black hair and eyes through his glasses.

“This is my favorite place in the whole world,” he says, guiding me over to a large patio where my legs grow steady once more, surrounded by walls and windows on every side.

I follow his gaze and gasp.

We can seeeverything.

Clusters of skyscrapers. The Empire State and Chrysler Buildings. The glass triangles that comprise One World Trade Center. Beneath our feet, the cars, and even farther below, boats sailing across the East River. The Statue of Liberty raising a torch to the blushing sky on Liberty Island.

Other bridges pierce the balmy mist that wisps around us. Harun points them all out to me: “The blue-gray that gets lostin the storm clouds when it rains is the Manhattan Bridge. You can see the train lines from there. And that almost pink one? That’s the Williamsburg Bridge. But the Brooklyn Bridge is my favorite.”

When he’s like this, it makes no sense to me, what he said about not being good with words. Gently, I ask, “Why?”

He regales me with the history of the bridge. How it’s one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. How its original architect died before its completion from an injury. How his son took over but was forced to watch the completion of the bridge from afar after contracting caisson disease, unprepared for the atmosphere. How his wife finished the project and was the first to walk the bridge.

I wince. “Sounds kinda Macbethian.”

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