Page 7 of If I Loved You Less
She looks at me with wide brown eyes. Something about her makes me want to take her under my wing.
“After you, Humaira,” she says, holding her arm out to keep the elevator doors from closing. I cock my head to the side.
“No, I don’t think so,” I say, pressing the close button. She pulls her arm back and the doors close.
“Wha—”
The elevator takes us back to the ground floor, and I exit.
“Well, come on, then,” I say, looking over my shoulder at her.
“Bu—” She has a split second to make a decision, and as the elevator doors go to close once more, she jumps out. “Where are we going?” she asks, falling into step with me.
“I could kill for some cake and tea at the moment,” I say.
“Bu—”
I wave a hand. “Oh, don’t worry, you won’t get in trouble. This is an important errand conducive to our work. How can our brains function without dessert?” I grin wickedly.
Shanzay smiles at that. She has a sweet face. She is of medium height and thickly built, and I think she could be rather pretty, with a few key adjustments made to her appearance. She is wearing her hijab in a rather old-fashioned way, the way many Pakistani women do, with an unflattering undercap and too many pins and layers and folds. We’ll need to remedy that.
My scarf is pinned beneath my chin and thrown over my shoulders; it is very easy breezy that way.
“Let’s go,” I say, opening my car door. She blinks, then gets in. We drive to a bakery nearby. The bakery is small, but it isn’t very busy, since it’s a weekday and the middle of the day. There’s a young mother on one table with a little girl, who looks too young to be school-going. My heart warms at the sight. I love seeing mothers on dates with their children.
It reminds me of going out for afternoon tea in the city with Mama after a shopping spree at Bergdorf's. Naadia and I were too little to have proper tea, but we’d have sweet milk and eat loads of pastries and cakes, Mama sitting across from us and teaching us how to properly apply clotted cream and jam to our scones.
While the memory brings a flood of warmth, it also brings an undercurrent of pain. I miss Mama, always, but now I miss Naadia, too. We used to go out to cafes all the time in high school and college.
But no matter. Nothing a good piece (or three) of cake can’t fix.
When our server brings over our orders, I finally get the details from Shanzay.
“So you moved here at the beginning of the summer?” I ask, biting into my slice of tres leches. “Where did you stay? Was campus open?”
“Yes, I came at the beginning of June,” she replies, not touching her slice of carrot cheesecake. She’ll need to be quicker about that before I eat it all. “I stayed with a family friend at their house.”
“Oh, who?” I ask, sipping my Earl Gray tea (which isn’t Fortnum’s, but it passes muster). “Perhaps I know them.”
“The Rajas?”
It is a common last name, but I feel as though I know who it is she speaks of. “How many children do they have?” I ask.
“Four,” Shanzay replies. “Two young boys, a girl in college ... and an older boy.”
Her cheeks turn pink at this. Actually pink!Hmm.
“Is the girl’s name Madiha?” I ask. Shanzay nods.
“Yes!” she replies, seeming to loosen up and talk more freely. “She’s at John Hopkins University for biomedical engineering, but she was home for the summer. She’s so sweet, I love her.”
“Yes, she is,” I say, knowing just the family she’s referencing. “They’re tenants of Fawad – my sister’s brother-in-law.”
The Sheikh family owns a lot of property, and since Uncle retired a few years ago, and Asif is a lawyer, Fawad handles all that business. He does a lot of investing and reinvesting, making more and more money out of money. Sometimes he even advises Papa on his accounts, his eyes positively alight as he explains multiplication and growth rates.
What a terrible nerd. I mean, who seriously likes math that much? If there was any doubt in my mind regarding his peculiarity, this would eliminate it.
“I’ve met Fawad Bhai on a few occasions,” Shanzay says. I nearly laugh at the term of respect she’s used. It’s justFawad, for God’s sake. “He is very quiet, but kind. He gets along with Huzaifa?—”
