My Last Love Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

used to dislike public displays of anything. I don’t think he’s changed all that much.
    Anyway, I decided not to test the theory.
    “Do stop staring, Zai. They might think you’re available.” I raised an eyebrow. “Unless you want them to think you are? But then whatever will Marjaneh think of Nirvaan and me? Bad enough that we stole you away from her charms for a whole year. That we couldn’t even protect her man from the big, bad California Barbies would be unforgivable. She’d never let you off her shackles again.”
    Marjaneh Shahrokhi was Zayaan’s girlfriend of two years and colleague of five. According to Zayaan’s mother, the couple was a hairsbreadth away from getting engaged. Marjaneh was smart, pretty, moderately religious, and sensible—the perfect woman for Zayaan. We’d met her on our last trip to London. I’d hated her on sight.
    “What’s put your nose out of joint tonight?” remarked Zayaan, calling me out on the Mean Girl act.
    It shut me up, as intended. I wrinkled my rather large Parsi nose with the inexplicable bump in the middle. The thing was an added insult on my plain-Jane face. I had a lovely peaches-and-cream complexion, courtesy of my mother, but no glamorous features to speak of, nothing to inspire a Leonardo to paint me as Mona Lisa .
    No, that wasn’t entirely true. Both Zayaan and Nirvaan, during our hormone-crazed teenage years, had composed love sonnets in my honor. Some of them had been absolutely filthy limericks extolling the virtues of my various body parts, but I’d found them enchanting regardless.
    In turn, I’d penned down praise of their sinewy beauty. Nirvaan was the classic tall, dark, lithe type of handsome while Zayaan was ruggedly good-looking and very fair. Zayaan, without his golden tan and face stubble, was almost as pale as me. Our common Persian heritage, we’d deduced, during one of our trillion and one profound midnight chats.
    Sometime over the past millennium, to avoid persecution, first the Parsis and then the Aga Khani Muslims, a sect of the Shiite Ismailis, had fled Persia to settle down on the mildly distant but welcoming shores of Hindustan—the shores of the State of Gujarat, to be precise—setting the precedent for a religiously and ethnically diverse yet secular nation.
    The undulations of history fascinated all three of us. But while Nirvaan and my interest remained amateurish, Zayaan had studied the subject to death. He held degrees in world literature, sociology, and Islamic studies from the University of London and Oxford. He spoke Farsi, Urdu, and Arabic as fluently as Gujarati or English. Add in a smattering of Hindi, Latin, and French, and we had an octo-linguist . Nirvaan had coined the word a while ago.
    Currently, Zayaan was working on a dissertation that hoped to shed light on the cross-cultural relationship between Muslims and their neighbors from the time of Ishmael through now. Zayaan was a super nerd. It wasn’t all he was, but it was the one quality that continued to stagger me. He worked for the Share Khan Foundation in several capacities, all mostly academic, and while it hadn’t been convenient for him to apply for a sabbatical at this point in his career, he’d done just that to come live with us. Of course, his superiors in London believed he was pursuing his doctorate in earnest, which he was.
    But the simple truth was, Zayaan had come because Nirvaan needed him, and that was all that should’ve mattered to me. I was doing all of us a disservice by my behavior. Zayaan was the third of our triad. He had every right to be here with us, every right to say good-bye to Nirvaan. So, why had I begun to resent his presence, their friendship, when I’d always been glad that they had each other before?
    Nirvaan kissed my bumpy nose, tugging me back from the side trip I’d taken into the extraordinary complications of my life. He always claimed my nose gave me character, a sort of distinction. With an unholy gleam in his