“You’ll never believe what’s in my junk folder,” I said when she finally picked up. “How soon can you get over here?”

Prayers Answered

“His phone bricked . . . Lost all his contacts . . . Got your email from your school website and has been trying to get in touch with you ever since . . . I just . . . I just don’t believe it,” Tania kept muttering under her breath as she read through each email. “We all just assumed he wasn’t interested.”

“You said he ghosted me!”

“I know, I know,” Tania said, shaking her head. “All the signs pointed towards it being a classic case of ghosting. But really, he zombied you instead!”

“Zombied? Wh-what does that even mean?!”

“It means he came back from the dead. Popped up out of nowhere. He resurrected your relationship—”

“Okay, okay,” I interrupted, feeling a headache coming on. I stared at the screen, rubbing my temples. A month ago, this was exactly what I had wished would happen. That Zain would come back into my life. That I would finally receive an explanation for why he had vanished. That he would whisk me away from a life of arrangement, so we could live out the ending to our Bollywood fairy tale. But now that the answer to all my prayers was staring me in the face, I didn’t feel the elation that I once thought I would.

“So what do I do now?” I asked, facing Tania. “Do I seem like a total jerk for not responding all this time? Should I message him to explain? Or should I just let it . . . dissolve?”

“I don’t know.” Tania bit her bottom lip. “I mean, this has never happened before. At least not to anyone I know.” She knitted her brows in deep thought. “We need to really consider what this means.”

I nodded, scrolling through all the messages once more.

“What if he’s at the party tonight?” Tania asked. I hadn’t even thought about that possibility. I knew my parents had invited Yasmeen aunty, so the idea of Zain coming was not entirely impossible.

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll just have to wait and—” I stopped, suddenly distracted by the name on the screen. “Tania, there’s also a message in here from you,” I said as I clicked on the email to open it up.

“Yeah . . .” Tania shifted nervously, watching as my eyes quickly scanned the screen. “I sent that from my cousin’s phone. But I wouldn’t worry about that right now—”

“What is this?” I said, looking at her.

“It’s . . . it’s nothing. I was going to tell you—”

“You and Zeeshan broke up?” I exclaimed.

“Yeah . . .”

“When? Why? Oh my God, why didn’t you say something?”

“It happened while you were in India.” She sighed heavily. “Look, Leila, I shouldn’t have sent that email. I don’t want to bother you with my stuff because I know you have a lot on your plate right now—”