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Sleep will always elude you at the worst moments.
When we get home, we go to bed right away. The bus will be here early in the morning to pick us up, and there’s no way we can miss it.
But as I lie in bed, I find myself unable to fall asleep. I roll around for a while, kicking the blanket I stupidly lay down with off but then pulling it back over my body. I growl, low in my throat, and pull the blanket over my head despite the fact that I’m now ten times hotter.
“Please stop moving,” Sarfaraz’s tired voice calls from his spot on the floor. “I can hear every noise you’re making.”
I huff, dragging the blanket down my face. “I’m sorry, but you know I don’t sleep well.”
He doesn’t say anything after that, and I nestle deeper into the mattress. Eventually, my back starts to hurt, and I turn on my side with a barely stifled grunt. I flop onto my back and stare at the ceiling. Why is this mattress rock-hard? How did Salama’s daughter sleep on this thing?
Sarfaraz groans, then stands up. I lift my head, about to ask him what he’s doing, when he picks up his pillow and lies down next to me. The bed is so small his shoulder touches mine. My face flushes, and I’m grateful we’re plunged in darkness. My body stills. “What are you doing?”
He settles into the bed comfortably, and a pang of envy hits my chest at how easily relaxation comes for him. “If you’re going to be moaning and groaning so much that I can’t sleep, I might as well be comfortable.”
A few minutes tick by, but neither Sarfaraz nor I sleep. I know he’s not asleep because his breathing is short and shallow, and he won’t stop moving. I can’t sleep, either. As if I weren’t having a hard enough time before, now I’m too warm. I’m warm from the extra body in the bed, and from the fact that it’s Sarfaraz, and from the fact that I want to grab his hand, but I know I can’t.
I have to distract myself. There’s something I want to ask him, but I’ve been too afraid to be this vulnerable with him. He’s someone I barely know, yet in a strange way, I feel like I’ve known him forever. It’s dumb, and I know it, but I can’t help how I feel. Plus, I know that tomorrow, once we reach the bus station in Karachi, we’ll go our separate ways. I don’t want awkwardness to be what’s between us when we part. So, in a tiny voice, so soft he’d miss it if he weren’t lying beside me, I ask into the darkness, “What’s marriage like?”
He starts, his body shifting slightly on the bed. I expect him not to answer, but he responds, “You really want my opinion? My marriage ended terribly, and I work with dysfunctional families and handle divorces for a living.”
“Well—” I fight the urge to squirm “—that’s how I know you’ll be honest with me.”
He goes quiet again. I want to know what the expression on his face is, but I’m too tense to look at him, afraid of what I’ll see. Then, after a beat, he says, “Marriage is...hard. Even with love in it, it’s hard.”
I hesitate, but decide to be brave and ask, “You never said—was yours a love match?”
“Yeah,” he answers, his voice heavy, wistful, like his mind has wandered back in time. “I told you we met at university. I wanted to wait until I finished law school to marry her, but her parents didn’t like the idea of a long engagement. So, we got married, but I was always so busy with school and cases that I didn’t give her as much attention as I probably could have.” A tiny shudder racks his body, moving the bed. “So, she went and found that attention from someone else. Our marriage ended by the time I graduated law school.”
“That’s awful,” I breathe. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” I wait for him to add more, but instead he asks, “Why aren’t you in a love match?”
My heart stutters. “What?”
“You’re smart, pretty, tolerable,” he lists off. “Why didn’t you meet anyone before you subjected yourself to an arranged marriage with a guy you barely know?”
My stomach clenches at the reminder, but I ignore it by latching on to something else he’s said. “You think I’m tolerable?” I ask, hoping for a light tone in my voice but unsure if it’s working.
He laughs into the dark. “That’s what you focus on? Not the fact that I called you pretty?”
If I focused on that, I would never focus on anything else again. Cheeks burning, I nervously ask, “Do you want me to focus on the fact that you called me pretty?”
“No,” he replies hastily. “I’m just saying.”
I save us both from this nightmare by moving on. “It’s my curse,” I say. “It’s doomed me to a life without a love match.”
“Maya, this whole curse thing is...foolish,” he says, in the same matter-of-fact tone he uses when he doesn’t think he’s going to be contradicted. “There’s no such thing as curses.”
“I think there is,” I grit, irritation blooming in my chest. “It’s fine if you don’t, but I do. You can’t look me in the eye and tell me that after everything we’ve been through since that first plane ride that I don’t have the worst luck in the world.”
“I don’t think it’s the curse you’re worried about,” Sarfaraz says instead. “There’s something more that’s bothering you about being in a relationship that you don’t want to admit.”
I frown at the ceiling. At this point, I want to look at him, but the cowardly instinct in me keeps me firmly on my back. “You’ve known me for like, a week. How much do you really know about me?”
“Enough to know that you’re running from something,” he says, and his words cut deep into my gut. “Trust me, no one can recognize a runner better than another runner.”
I sink my teeth into my lower lip. “So, what are you running from, then?”
