Page 75 of The Love Match

“That Shakespeare play?” His brows furrow. “How?”

“Well, it’s called the cursed play, and this place sounds pretty damn cursed if it practically wiped out an entire family,” I reply, casting an uneasy glance around us and recalling that I didn’t have a chance to do Maghrib prayers before leaving with him.

Harun chuckles. “I mean, yeah, I guess you could see it that way. Me… I think it’s a monument to the Roeblings’ dedication to helping people cross the river. Once it was built, rumors started spreading that the bridge would collapse, but it’s been standing over a century now. P. T. Barnum even sent a whole circus’s worth of elephants across it a year after its completion to test the rumors, and it never once shook.”

I sneak glimpses between him and the rosy sky. The setting sun glints off the steel and glass of the skyscrapers, refracting pink and red and iridescent light across the profile of his face. The arc of his cheekbone cuts a sharp line down to his jaw, but with his contented smile and the wind running invisible fingers through his hair, he feels approachable.

My fingers twitch on the railing. Our arms are touching again. All at once, his skin feels warm and electric against mine.

I glance back out the window.

It’s quite possibly the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

Although we’re surrounded by other tourists snapping pictures and cycling across the bridge, I feel closer to Harun than ever before. There’s definitely a metaphor in here somewhere.

“Thank you for bringing me to your favorite place,” I tell him.

“It’s even nicer in winter,” he replies. “I like walking around the botanical garden nearby after visiting the bridge. I remember what you said about your world feeling small, butthisis our world too. It’s right at our doorstep if you’re willing to go. Maybe we could come back?”

My head whips toward him. He’s looking pointedly at the shifting river below, but the sky isn’t the only thing that’s gone red. What does it mean that he wants to come back with me, so long after our facade has ended? After he goes to college?

Does he mean as friends? Do friends hold hands so often?Do they hang on every word the other speaks? Do they plan special outings like this? I don’t think I can lie to myself anymore, even if I’m not yet ready to speak it aloud.

Harun has become one of my best friends, but he’s something else, too. I feel things for him that I don’t with Ximena or the Tahir girls.

Heart pounding at this revelation, I manage a faint, “Sure. I’d like that. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He dimples, and my stomach does another flip. “But I can tell I’ve talked about bridges for too long. I promise that’s not all I had planned for tonight. Ready?”

I nod.

Fingers intertwined, we complete our trek across the bridge and find ourselves at the park on the other side, lush with trees and flowers. Bees and butterflies flutter in the air. We buy food from a Halal Guys cart and walk until we reach a stretch of lawn overlooking a pier, teeming with people sitting on picnic blankets, waiting for a large projector to play a movie.

SABRINA, reads the poster, portraying a black-and-white image of Audrey Hepburn, with one man gazing at her yearningly while another kisses her cheek.

“It’s a romance,” Harun says. “I thought you might like it.”

A teeny-tiny part of me squirms at the love triangle depicted on the poster—haha, universe, I get it—but the consideration he’s put into all this fragments my resolve.

“I’m sure I will.”

Chapter27

The Bangla Mela falls onSunday just a few days later, giving me no time to angst over boys—well, a certain specific boy—since Amma and Chai Ho have stalls at the festival.

While my mother and grandmother push to complete as many individual pieces of clothing to sell as they can the day before the mela, I text Ximena to request her help in making an eye-catching banner. She comes over, and it’s the first time we’ve hung out alone since school ended.

As we laugh watching Resna add colorful handprints around the borders of Ximena’s creation, I find that I’ve really missed spending time with her, but I’m not sure what to do about it. She gives me a very long hug before she leaves, perhaps thinking along the same lines.

Later that night, Mr. Tahir calls to say, “Consider yourself on reserve during the festival, Miss Khan. I have the girls assisting me. Your mother needs you more.”

I appreciate this, because the festival begins booming withactivity bright and early. The aromas of curries and kebabs, mishti and sanasur, float through the air, which pulses with the beating of drums. Police cruisers block off both ends of Union Avenue, from Totowa to Wayne. The everyday shops are shuttered and parked cars have been moved, replaced by hundreds of stalls selling everything from jewelry and henna designs to street food.

At the very heart, a tall stage has been set up with speakers arranged around it. A growing crowd gathers there, waiting for whatever shilpi has been flown in from Bangladesh to perform. Tiny children with bangles tinkling on their wrists and bells chiming on their ankles dance to the music the DJ plays, while their parents clap.

Other children, like my own sister, tear through the swarming bodies in vibrantly colored face paint and papier-mâché masks that make them look like packs of tigers, flocks of birds, and other wild beasts, out-of-breath chaperones—Arif, in Resna’s case—at their heels. People from the neighborhood watch and whoop from their patios. Nanu, who can’t walk for too long without her arthritis flaring, accompanies one of her fellow grandmas in doing exactly that.

Meanwhile, I’m stuck with Amma, who’s still stubbornly giving me the silent treatment. I refuse to be the first to break, so it’s through a series of grunts and meaningful glares that we communicate enough to get her garment stall set up—a foldout plastic table Meera Khala found in her shed, with Ximena’s banner flapping above.

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