Excerpt from The Bones of Grace by Tahmima Anam, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Though I turned to look at you a few times, you didn't glance back. Aside from your hand, the rest of you was very still. I wondered at your stillness. I followed your eyes that were fixed on the tight pool of light around the instrument, on the float and hammer of the woman's fingers, and as you gazed so seriously, you compelled me to do the same, to really listen to the music. At the end of No. 4, I felt the fraction of an earthquake open in my chest, and after No. 5, which was tender, then triumphant, the tremor rose, so that when the music stopped, I felt it making its way up towards my neck. And that is when the memory returned to me: the birthday party, the confession, sleeping between my parents that night, their anxious breaths mingling over my face. Before I knew it, my cheeks were wet with tears, and it was all I could do to stop myself from sobbing out loud as the next piece began. I held my arms tight around myself, attempting to contain whatever it was that was erupting, and finally you turned around and saw that I was crying, and, though it was dark, I could see from the outline of your face that you were perfectly solemn and had registered no alarm. You put your palm against the sleeve of my shirt, the warmth of your touch radiating from my arm all the way across my shoulders. At your touch, I felt calmed at first, and then, when the music ended and you lifted your hand away, I experienced a piercing loneliness, the loneliness of being the sole inhabitant of my body.

We had our first exchange, which, looking back, is an odd thing for two people to say to one another as introduction, but which at the time felt perfectly natural. Your voice was deep and mellow in the quiet. You took my hand, and the blood rushed to that hand, leaping beneath my skin as if to leap out and mingle with yours, and this is how we sat for the rest of the first half, my heart hammering in my chest as the hour came to its end and the lights went on in the auditorium.

In the sudden brightness I noticed you were very pale, with blue eyes and a beard that was neither messy nor particularly trimmed. I rubbed my face, willing the evidence of my tears to disappear. I pulled my hand away, seeing the people file out for intermission and wondering if anyone had recognised me. You asked me if I would like a glass of water, and I would have said yes, but I worried you would disappear and I would never see you again. Finally, the lights went down and the second half began. This time the audience seemed restive, people shifting on the shallow wooden benches that angled around the stage. I thought again about the matter of origins. Not so much about where I was from, but of the fact that, in my twenty-five years, I had lingered so little on the matter. How few questions I had asked – none, really, possibly because of the fierce love of my parents, which I had reciprocated without question until that very moment. While all of this was cycling through my mind, the concert came to an end with an energetic blur of the pianist's fingers and a triumphant hand-stretching series of chords. The crowd rose to its feet, a meadow of standing figures, and the applause went on for a long time, but there was no encore, so the lights came on eventually and the concert ended. As the auditorium emptied again we both rose, and you stepped towards me and leaned in, letting other people pass on their way to the exit. I inhaled your scent: wood shavings and trees that survived snow. A cold-weather smell on this, the hottest and closest of evenings.

We considered one another. You fixed your eyes on me as if we were the last two people left in the world. I had never seen a gaze like that, so direct, so unambivalent. Most people like to be in at least two places at once, but you – you were standing there as if roots had grown around your feet. I could hardly bear it, so I said, 'All right, then. Goodbye.' You laughed at this, and, relieved, I laughed with you. We made our way to the exit, and I thought for a moment about inviting you to stay the night with me, but instead I suggested we go to the Korean café for a cup of tea. I hadn't eaten dinner but I wasn't hungry, and you didn't mention food either. We walked up Mass Ave and ordered iced tea, and I asked for tapioca pearls in mine and you looked at me with a question in your eyes, and I explained that I had been introduced to bubble tea in Bangkok, which was a short distance from Dhaka, Bangladesh, where I was from. 'A snack at the bottom of your drink,' I said. 'Try it.'

Excerpted from The Bones of Grace by Tahmima Anam. Copyright © 2016 by Tahmima Anam. Excerpted by permission of Harper. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.