Page 27 of The Matchmaker

“I’ll get paint!” She races to her room, and I grab the butcherpaper. Unrolling it, I tape it to cover the coffee table as I hear her rattling her paint box for the right palette.

Settling onto the couch, I reply to a few messages and text Darcy that I’ll ring her once I’m in the car. Then I glance around the empty room. I shouldn’t do this. This is the exact sort of thing I tell my own clientsnotto do. But I can’t help it. I click Azar’s inactive social media profile. It’s still gathering dust, as it has for years. When I go to Zayna’s profile, there are loads of photos. She’s at a cooking class with girlfriends. Posing in a forest with hiking poles. Raising a medal in the air—the New York City Marathon banner billowing behind her. Suddenly, my heart feels like it’s stopped beating.

There’s a photo of them. Azar and Zayna.

She has well-executed winged liner and a pretty red dress. Brown layered hair falls past her shoulders. Azar’s arm is around her. She’s gorgeous.Theyare gorgeous. My chest constricts at the tagged location: Hayakawa.

That’s our favorite sushi place. He’d spotted an article about it our last year of college and had saved up for months so we could go. Even though the bill amounted to more than two weeks of tutoring gigs, we’d pretended money was nothing but a number that last night.

Was it the afterglow of that dinner that had emboldened me as we unwound later that evening in his dorm room, sitting on his bed, watching television? Was that the reason I’d nearly kissed him?

I laughed when he jerked away. “Oh my God, the look on your face.”

“What look?”

“You thought I was going to kiss you, didn’t you?” There, I said it.

“Nur,” he began. “We should talk about it.”

“But maybe we don’t have to.” My cover of cool cracking.

“Nur,” he began.

“Please, Azar?” Tears formed in my eyes. “You’re…you’re like a brother to me. Can we pretend this never happened?”

He looked at me for a moment. Blinking. Thinking. My heart felt like it was seizing in my chest. The terror I felt in that moment—that I might lose him, that our friendship could be over—that free-falling feeling can still grip me now.

He slowly nodded. “Consider it forgotten.”

All these years, it had been one thing to accept that Azar was simply not one for relationships—but it turns out I had it all wrong, didn’t I? Azar wasn’t a commitment-phobe. He’d just been waiting for the right person.

“I got the paints!” Lilah sings as she heads down the stairs.

I exhale, grateful for the distraction.

“I can’t wait to see your masterpiece,” I tell her as my phone buzzes. A text reply from Darcy.

We really need to talk.

I frown. This must be serious.

“Lilah, I have to take a quick call,” I tell her. “I’ll be back in a second.”

“Can I start painting?”

“Make sure you wear your apron. We don’t want to make a mess.”

“No mess!”

I sit down on a wicker chair on the back patio. Darcy answers on the first ring and cuts straight to the chase.

“I was checking our messages. Logan called.”

“Logan? I thought it was something serious. I’m at my aunt’s.”

“Thisisserious.” Her voice is strained. “He wants a comment on Avani and Dev’s wedding implosion.”

My stomach turns. This was inevitable, wasn’t it? “Do you know if Avani’s talking to him?” I ask her. “I know she posted a few days ago about the wedding getting canceled.”

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