“Yeah.” His eyes lit up. He seemed delighted by this, the revelation that I knew his name. “I just moved here. Like, last month.”
“Oh. Wow.” I gestured with my pizza to the damp, depressing parking lot. “I’m sorry.”
He laughed. “It’s not so bad.”
I raised an eyebrow.
He bit back another laugh. “Yeah, okay. It’s pretty bad.”
I cracked a smile then. Picked up my paper.
“So, um, you’re Muslim, right?”
I was still reading when I said, “What gave it away?”
He laughed for a third time. I liked that he laughed so much, so easily. The sound alone made my heart kick a little.
“Yes,” I said, my face buried in the article. “I’m Muslim.”
Gently, he pushed the newspaper down, away from me, and I flinched at his closeness, sat back an inch. He was staring at me with barely suppressed mirth, like he was fighting a smile.
“What?”
“Okay,” he said finally. “Okay. I’m going to say something right now, and please don’t take this the wrong way or anything”—he held up his hands—“but I didn’t think you’d be so funny.”
I raised both eyebrows. “Don’t take this the wrong way?”
“You just seem so intense all the time,” he said, his whole body like an exclamation point. “Like, why are you always reading the newspaper? That seems unhealthy.”
I frowned at him. “I’m a masochist.”
He frowned back. “Doesn’t that mean you like to hurt people?”
“It means I like to hurt myself.”
“Weird.”
“Hey, how do you know I’m always reading the newspaper?”
Noah’s smile slipped. He looked suddenly nervous. “Okay—please don’t freak out—”
“Jesus Christ, Noah.”
“Wait—are you talking to me?” He pointed at himself. “Or are you just listing prophets?”
My eyes widened.
He couldn’t stop laughing, not even when he said, “Okay, okay, complete honesty: I’ve been, like, trying to figure out how to talk to you for a little while.”
I sighed. Put down the paper. “Let me guess: you’re a serial killer.”
“I’m not! I swear, I just—I promised to do my mom a favor, and I didn’t know exactly how to approach you.”
I straightened. Noah suddenly had my full attention; I was one hundred percent freaked out. “What kind of favor?”
“Nothing weird.”
“Oh my God.”
