“Myra, stop,” Dadu admonishes in English, whacking the top of my head with a dish towel, making me laugh harder. She switches back to Bengali. “He brought you soup.”

“You just said you could have made me soup!” I say in protest.

She harrumphs and leaves the dining room after flicking me gently on the ear. I grin after her as she heads upstairs to pray Asr. When I turn back to Ace, he’s still staring at the mountain of food on his plate.

“Am I supposed to eat all of this?”

“Hey, you’re the one that wanted to impress my grandma,” I say, shrugging a shoulder. “Back to my friends threatening you. What exactly was said?”

“I was told if I revealed anything about our conversation, my balls would be stapled to a tree,” he says, poking his tuna kebab. “Ahmed, this is so much food. What am I going to do with all of this?”

I sigh. “As Dadu said, you’re a growing boy, you need to eat.”

“Did she actually say that?” There’s a pained expression on his face. “I guess I have to eat it all, then.”

“That’s the spirit,” I say, clapping him on the back. “If it helps, it tastes delicious.”

He sighs but takes a spoonful of food.

Unsurprisingly, after he takes the first bite, the rest go by much faster. I wasn’t exaggerating. Dadu is a great cook, and pulao is her specialty.

Halfway done, he turns to me, his head tilted. “Why did your grandma call you Myra?”

“In Bengali, we have two names,” I say, forking a piece of chicken. “One is our official name that’s on legal documents. Mine is Karina, obviously. But we have another nickname of sorts that we call each other within the community, and mine is Myra. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of my younger brother, but he’s in the same year as Mia. His name is Rafiq Ahmed, but I call him Samir, because that’s his community nickname.”

“That’s cool,” Ace says. “So only other Bengali people can call you Myra?”

“No, I guess anyone can, but most people don’t know it’s an option.”

“It’s a pretty name,” he says and reaches forward to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers brush my skin, and a wave of heat descends over me, but I manage to retain eye contact. “But I like Karina better.”

“And yet you only ever refer to me as Ahmed,” I say, teasing. “Perhaps I should start calling you Clyde.”

Ace makes a face, his spoon halfway to his mouth, and I burst into giggles.

“Let’s stick with Ace,” he says, but there’s laughter hidden in the twist of his mouth. “And I’ll call you by your name, too. What do you think, Karina?”