When Dimple Met Rishi
Page 49

“A true story of the American dream,” Dimple said, smiling and taking a sip of her water.
“And the Indian dream,” Rishi said. “Pappa gained a real family, which is what he’d wanted. They stood by him from the beginning. He and Ma have this fairy-tale marriage.”
“Is that what you want?” Dimple said softly, her palms going sweaty. “A fairy tale?”
He glanced at her, his ears pink. “I’d originally wanted a practical partnership, but now I think I’m getting the fairy tale anyway.”
Dimple felt the heat bloom in her cheeks. When she smiled up from under her eyelashes at Rishi, she found him pink-cheeked and grinning too.
• • •
The waiter tried to foist Toucinho do Céu and Mousse de Chocolate on them, but Dimple declined for the both of them. “I have something for us instead,” she said after Rishi had paid the bill. (He’d insisted, even though she’d tried her best to split it evenly.)
They walked out into the fog, Dimple’s belly heavy and full of hot food. She zipped up her hoodie just as Rishi buttoned up his coat, both of them retreating a little farther into the warmth of fleece and heavy cotton. Dimple reached into her bag and pulled out a red cardboard box.
“What’s that?” Rishi asked, squinting to see in the haze of streetlights the fog had smeared.
“These, my friend, are Pocky sticks.” Dimple smiled as she opened the box and the foil package inside, sliding three of the chocolate-covered sticks onto Rishi’s palm. “Delicious, just the right amount of biscuit and chocolate, light as air.”
She watched as Rishi bit into one, her gaze automatically riveted on his mouth, her cheeks heating. Blinking, she forced herself to look away. That had been happening more and more now, her noticing the sheer physicality of him, how he was so different from her, how his jaw had that beautiful smattering of stubble on it, how rough his skin was compared to hers. . . .
“Wow, these are good!” Rishi ate the remaining sticks in a couple of bites.
Dimple smiled, swallowing to dispel the warm, liquidy feeling in her bones, and handed him the box. He ate three more before holding it out to her. “Oops, sorry. Want some?”
“No.” She waved a hand. There was no way she could eat now, not when her stomach was so flippy and her eyes kept latching on to details like how much bigger Rishi’s feet were than hers, or how broad his shoulders were beneath that coat. You’d think she’d never even seen a boy before.
“Hey, you okay?” Rishi asked, dropping the box into a trash can they were passing.
She looked up to see him frowning slightly, watching her face. “Yeah, fine. Why?” She was still having trouble meeting his eye. She felt shy suddenly, like . . . like there was something new between them, something different. Now that they’d agreed to make this work long-term, it felt heavier, more serious. And she was allowing her brain to go places it hadn’t quite gone before.
Rishi reached over, grabbed her hand, and pulled her into the darkened alley between a shuttered jewelry shop and clothing store. Dimple leaned back against the wall, and he braced his palms on either side of her. Her heart thundered in the best way, her breath quickening.
“What’s wrong?” Rishi asked, searching her face. “Is it . . . because of what we talked about before? Doing this long-distance?”
Dimple started to shake her head and then stopped. “Um, sort of.” She was having trouble getting the words out with his woodsy smell swirling all around her, with his heat pressing closer to her than the fog.
“So, what is it?” Rishi reached out and casually tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, and without meaning to, she sucked in a breath and leaned in to his touch.
His brow cleared, and his eyes turned to honeyed fire as they drifted down to her lips, which, she noted, were now parted. It was like her body was this traitor, acting without her brain’s permission. Especially considering what you were thinking earlier, that annoying voice tried to interject. Are you seriously going to let hormones get the best of you when there are important things to consider?
But when Rishi dipped his head down and pressed his mouth to hers, his rough stubble scratching against her chin in the most delicious way, her brain shut up entirely. His arms wrapped around her waist, cinching her to him, and she put her hands in his hair, feeling the silken strands between her fingers.
When his hands slipped under her hoodie and shirt to rest against her bare back, her blood caught on fire. She did the same to him, reaching up under his coat and his shirt, to feel the muscled firmness of his lower back. Rishi made a sound deep in his throat, and she pushed herself closer to him, feeling the way he definitely, desperately wanted her. . . .
And then he stepped back, panting. “We . . . uh, we shouldn’t, can’t, do this.”
Dimple stopped, blinking, wanting him to come back and pick up where they’d left off. Her knees felt weak, like they might buckle. She wanted to sit. On his lap. Or lie down. With him. “What? You mean here? We can’t do it here?”
“Yeah, well, here.” Rishi pushed a hand through his hair. “But also, we need to stop and think about what we’re doing. Where this is leading. We don’t want to go too far, right?”
Dimple stared at him. “Too far. Meaning . . .”
Rishi nodded, his ears and cheeks pink. He was still panting a bit, clearly trying to calm his body down. She wanted to jump on him. “Sex. We need to talk before we go further.”
“Right. So . . . I think we should go further.”
Rishi laughed and groaned simultaneously, rubbing a hand over his face. “Dimple, believe me, I do too. But this is not a conversation to have when we’re both . . .” He made a vague gesture between them. “We need to think this through and talk it through with more rational minds. At least, I’d like to.” He raised his eyebrows pleadingly.
Dimple sighed. “If you’re doing this because of some old-school concern for my ‘honor,’ you don’t need to.”
He came forward and took her hands. “It’s not about your honor or mine. It’s just something I feel we should think about beforehand. Instead of just doing it, I’d like to have some time to really decide if we want to take that step now.”
It made sense, what Rishi was saying. This would be her first time, and, she was pretty sure, his, too. They definitely shouldn’t do it up against a grotty wall in an abandoned alley with feral cats watching judgmentally from a trash can. And she still needed to think about that voice, about what it had said. About whether any of those things had merit. If they did, sex would only complicate things further. But still . . . a part of her squirmed, frustrated at being thwarted. Her desire was like its own person, pushy and bossy as heck.
Dimple took a deep breath. “You’re right,” she said, pushing herself off the wall. “Let’s think about it and reconvene at a later date.”
Rishi laughed and reached for her, snaking a strong arm around her waist and pulling her snug against him. They walked back out toward the sidewalk together, Dimple feeling confused and frustrated and all manner of things she couldn’t even begin to untangle.
• • •
On Tuesday evening Ashish set the camera on a little tripod he’d bought and looked through the screen. He’d gotten even more serious now that (a) the performance was only four days away and (b) the conversation with Celia had not gone well that night after Rios. Not that either Celia or Ashish had discussed anything with Dimple (or Rishi). But their refusal to discuss it beyond an Everything is fine said volumes.
Dimple and Rishi posed in their final outfits, grinning as the opening strains of “Dance Pe Chance” began to play.
Dimple wasn’t even that nervous anymore. Okay, that was a lie. Every time she thought about dancing in front of an audience full of strangers in four short days, she wanted to throw up or die. Or leap from tall buildings. Anything that would require her to not perform. But she kept thinking of the end goal. The prize. The money that would enable her to build a better app, which would be so much better in the long run. It’d make her—them—that much more likely to win Insomnia Con.