A Girl Like That(34)

I approached the warehouse with caution, keeping an eye out for police cars, pleased to see that there were none around. “There,” I said. “Happy now?”

“Rizvi’s car,” she said softly.

“What?”

“Rizvi. Our head boy.”

A black car was parked several feet away from the warehouse, an M3, from the looks of it, dust lightly coating the back wheels and the trunk. In the front sat a guy around my age, maybe a little younger, sunglasses on his handsome face. Next to him sat a girl who appeared to be crying.

“Interesting,” Zarin said, but her eyes, I could tell, were on Rizvi and not the girl.

“Is that his girlfriend?”

She shrugged and turned away. “Was his girlfriend, probably. He’s a bit of a heartthrob around school. Half of the girls in my class have his yearbook picture saved on their phones. Even the teachers drool over him.”

I heard the words she wasn’t saying and felt the inside of my chest tighten. Instead of making a U-turn and heading back in the direction of my building, I kept going straight, ending up in an area I did not know that well, resulting in a much longer drive than I’d originally intended. I had not wanted to pass the black car again. I had not wanted Rizvi to turn around and see us—see her. But it did not seem to matter. Seeing the boy had sent Zarin back into a daydream. One that made lines appear on her forehead and turned her mouth soft and contemplative. The sun was now setting, and the sky was awash with different shades of red.

“You look beautiful,” I said, hoping to distract her from her thoughts.

It worked. She stared at me and for a moment she looked bewildered. Then a car behind me honked. I glanced at the speedometer: I was driving at least ten kilometers below the limit. No wonder my car wasn’t rattling.

Zarin covered her mouth with a hand, shoulders shaking. I tore my eyes away from her and sped up again, focusing on the road once more.

It isn’t the first time a girl has laughed at you, I told myself. I was fifteen the first time I’d liked a girl at my old school in Mumbai. I still remembered her twinkling brown eyes and neatly plaited hair. The one time I’d tried to approach her in the school corridor, I’d slipped on the freshly mopped floor and fallen flat on my face. Everyone had called me Bozo for weeks afterward because of the way my face looked—pale like a clown’s with the exception of my nose, which had a nice big red bruise on it, and my burning cheeks. She and her friends had never been able to look at me again without giggling.

Thankfully, Zarin wasn’t like that. After a few seconds she stopped laughing, her face calm and controlled once more, even though her eyes were still bright. I decided to keep my mouth shut and keep driving. We didn’t speak until I was parked once more outside her apartment building.

“Thanks.” Zarin turned in her seat; her belt, I saw then, had never been buckled. “That was a nice drive.”

“Really?” Somewhere inside me, hope bubbled.

She stared at me for a few seconds and then sighed. “Look, Porus. You’re a good guy and maybe we can be friends. But don’t get any ideas about me, okay? Meaning I’m not going to be your girlfriend. Ever.”

“What do you mean?” I blushed. “Maybe I want to be friends with you.”

She laughed. “You’re joking, right? The whole Shirin story at the deli, talking up my masa and masi, calling me beautiful … yeah, right, you want to be just friends.”

“You haven’t even given me a chance yet,” I protested, not knowing where my sudden boldness came from. I took a deep breath. “I may look like Bakasura to you, but you don’t know me that well. I may surprise you, you know.”

“Okay, you need to stop taking my words so seriously. You don’t really look like Bakasura. I said that because you annoyed me.” She frowned then and stared at my face for a few seconds, almost as if she was seeing it for the first time. She shook her head. “But that isn’t even the point. I’m seeing someone, okay? I have a boyfriend.”

A boyfriend. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to me that someone like her should have one, but I felt the sting anyway. “If you have a boyfriend, why are you here with me?” I challenged.

“You have a car and I needed to get away from Masi and her muttering.” She shrugged. “What else?”

“My boss, Hamza, has a car too,” I pointed out. “So does that pervert cashier, Ali. I don’t see you out with either of them.”

She scowled at me in response, but the corners of her mouth twitched. It was that slight movement that gave me hope, that hint of amusement on her lips that propelled me to go on and say: “You know what? I think you will go out with me again. Maybe as a friend or whatever you call it. But even then, it will have more to do with my charm and conversation skills than this rusty old car.”

“Yeah.” She rolled her eyes. “Okay.”

“Great, so that’s settled, then,” I said cheerfully. “I’ll come see you again next weekend. Maybe one day I can win you over and you will leave that boyfriend of yours for me.”

She stared at me for a second and then burst out laughing—a real laugh this time, not a sarcastic one. “You, my friend, have clearly lost your mind.”

*

A week later, an unknown number flashed on my phone.