When Dimple Met Rishi

by Sandhya Menon

  “I bet it’s nothing compared to my brain waves. They’re probably crying out, spiraling into years of addiction.”

  Dimple shook her head and sighed. “There’s nothing in that brownie except sugar and fat.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “I saw them make it, okay? I peeked into the kitchen when you weren’t looking.”

  Without talking about it, she and Rishi began to make their way to the sliding back door. The dark backyard beyond looked mostly empty. Rishi opened his mouth and feigned being aghast at her, his heart lifting when she trilled a laugh.

  “Sorry, sorry,” she said, lifting her hands in front of her. “You’re just too easy with your paranoia.”

  “It’s not paranoia, Dimple. I think it’s idealistic to trust people so completely. That’s why I don’t like going to parties.” He could feel her watching him in that sardonic, Dimple way she had—eyes calculating, eyebrows slightly furrowed. “Yeees?”

  She stepped through the sliding door, and he followed, pulling it shut behind them, hoping to deter any wasted college students from following. They made their way to a grove of bushes off to the right, the breeze just cool enough to provide some respite from the thick, soupy heat of bodies inside. “Well, see, I don’t think it’s idealistic. People go to parties all the time to just kick back and chill. For me it’s about getting away from the constant pressure I felt at home to be someone I wasn’t. Didn’t you ever feel the need to let go of stress?”

  Rishi laced his hands behind his head. There was a small bench beyond the grove of bushes, sheltered from the rest of the yard and the house. He went to it, and Dimple followed.

  There was a soft quietness in his head now, as if the world was at a remove. His voice sounded muffled in the fog. “Sure I did. That’s why I drew.” He sat on the cold stone bench, and put his messenger bag down by his feet. “I never felt the need for anything else.”

  Dimple sat beside him, her arms and legs stiff, as if she were afraid of encroaching on his personal space, of touching him. He knew how she felt. Before, scraping elbows together or grabbing her hand had seemed benign, just exciting enough without being serious or scary. But here in this private little alcove in the dark, things felt more. Bigger. And Rishi wasn’t entirely certain he wanted to go down that path. Mainly because he wasn’t certain she did.

  “Hmm.”

  When Dimple didn’t say anything else, he tipped his head back, drank in the air. The fog coated the sky and filtered through the trees around them so it felt like they were encased in a tiny gray bubble. Just him and Dimple. His heart beat faster at the thought of that, but he felt fine about the unknown of it all. He felt fine about everything, he thought, with a small smile. She had that effect on him.

  “Show me your sketch pad.”

  The fine feeling disappeared. Rishi looked at her, big eyes shining in the dark behind those glasses. Some of her wild hair, curly again thanks to the humidity in the air, was brushing his shoulder in spite of her careful posture, as if it had a life of its own. “Huh?”

  “You must have some sketches in there, right? You lied to Leo Tilden.”

  Leo Tilden felt like forever ago. Thinking back to that moment made something unpleasant and bitter squirm in his stomach. “Yeah. But . . . I don’t know. It’s just, they’re not that great.”

  “Don’t do that.” Dimple turned toward him completely, her face eager in the dim light. “Don’t downplay your talent. If you don’t want to show me, just say so. But I saw what you’re capable of in there”—she gestured toward the house—“and it was remarkable. Aditya, what I’ve seen of him, is amazing. So it’s clear you have talent; lots of it. I don’t know why you don’t want to show people, though. If it were me, I’d be diving into it whole hog.”

  “Is that what you’re doing?”

  Dimple nodded, her face small and vulnerable. “Trying to. And it’s crazy scary, but you know, what’s the alternative? Just forget about it? I can’t.” She leaned forward. “You shouldn’t either, Rishi. Just because it’s scary—”

  “It’s not because it’s scary.” He sat back, taking a deep breath. It still wasn’t easy to talk about this, even with Dimple’s presence turning everything pink and soft around the edges. But looking at Dimple’s open face, hearing her earnest questions, his usual inhibitions turned to puffs of cloud, insubstantial, floating away as he tried to grasp them. Rishi found himself being honest. “I would love to do what you’re doing. To immerse myself in the work, to think, breathe, eat, and sleep art. But that’s how it’d have to be. See? There’s no in between for me. I can’t be an engineer and a part-time comic book artist. It can’t be a hobby. I love it too much; it means too much to me. It’s like, like having a child, I guess. How I imagine that would be—all consuming.”

  “Well, then, that’s easy, isn’t it?” Dimple sounded genuinely confused. “Do it. Do what you love, what you’re passionate about. So what if it’s not the most practical thing? You’re eighteen, you don’t have to be practical for a long, long time—maybe not ever, if you choose not to be. There are people who live very frugally, who just keep plugging away for years because they can’t think of doing it any other way.”

  “That’s not going to be me.” Rishi shifted, uncomfortable, suddenly done talking about it.

  “Why not?”

  “I told you. My parents, I made them a promise. I’m their oldest son. It’s just not going to happen. I have duties, obligations.”

  Dimple sighed, soft and slow.

  Rishi looked at her for a second, touched at how much she seemed to care. Then, without giving himself too much time to think about it, he reached down and unsnapped his messenger bag top. Sliding his sketch pad out, Rishi held it out to her.

  CHAPTER 27

  Dimple smiled, a lantern in the night. “Really?”

  Rishi nodded, and she took the sketch pad, setting it carefully on her lap. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, turned on a flashlight app, and set it on the bench between them. Then, almost reverentially, she began lifting the cover.

  “Wait.” Rishi put a hand on hers. She looked at him quizzically, her face and glasses tinted a silver blue from the phone. “So, these aren’t finished sketches. Well, some of them are, but some aren’t. More just like . . . blocking. Like, ideas.”

  “Okay.” Dimple nodded, and he let go of her hand. She began to flip the cover open again. He put a hand on hers. She looked at him, one eyebrow raised.

  “One more thing. Don’t look just at what’s happening; look at the nuance. Like, notice the backgrounds in each panel. That’s important information; it’ll tell you more about what I had planned for the story. It’ll set the mood and everything.”

  Dimple nodded again. “Okay.” Rishi let go of her hand, and she began to open the cover.

  “Oh, and another th—”

  “Rishi,” she said, turning so she could look him in the eye. “I have no expectations. Okay? None. Whatever’s in here, I’m not going to be judging. I just want to take it in.”

  He studied her, the honesty in her eyes, the frank openness of her face, and his shoulders relaxed. “Okay.”

  Dimple opened the sketch pad, and as she studied each panel, each sketch, each line he’d made, Rishi studied her. She smiled quietly at some sketches, others seemed to arrest her. Her gaze would travel over each line, over and over, and sometimes she’d pull the book closer. One she stopped and squinted at, the most curious mixture of disbelief, amusement, and wonder on her face. Rishi leaned in to see what she was looking at.

  It was a panel he’d done around two years ago, of a boy of about ten or eleven making paper flowers out of a heap of crumpled pages while rain poured outside his window.

  Rishi chuckled, the sound slow and deep in his head. “Paper flowers. I used to make those when I was that age. I don’t know why, but I was obsessed with them for a while. That panel was more like an exercise. I was feeling sluggish and empty that day.” It wasn’t nearly his best; he didn�
�t know why Dimple seemed so enthralled with it.

  She turned to look at him, that same strange expression still on her face. Her entire body was frozen, still. “You made paper flowers. Out of magazines.”

  He nodded, surprised. “How’d you know I did them out of magazine pages?”

  “Don’t you remember?” Dimple shook her head, her eyes wide as she studied him. “Keep it. Remember me. And don’t tattle.”

  And just like that, the memory slammed into him.

  He’d been dragged along by Pappa and Ma to some Indian acquaintance’s wedding in San Diego. It was hot, and the wedding was outside. Ashish was being a baby, whining about being hungry, and his parents were bickering about something, and there were absolutely no activities for the kids to do, so Rishi told his parents he had to go to the bathroom and wandered off. His kurta had been a thick gold brocade, he remembered, and itchy as heck. His plan was to get inside the big hotel where it was cool and air-conditioned and find a T-shirt or something to wear. Maybe he’d steal it from an open room—that always seemed to work in the movies.

  But when he got inside, Rishi saw the guests had commandeered the interior lobby too. There was no way to get past them and to the upstairs—there were caterers and waiters and nosy aunties and uncles everywhere. So he’d ducked into a room with a sign that said CONFERENCE ROOM A, whatever that was, and sat down on a chair in the semidark (just one lamp in the corner of the big room was on), grateful for the cool and quiet. There was a pile of magazines on the table in front of him, and Rishi began methodically ripping out pages as he sat, folding and turning them into flowers that he set in a line in front of him.

  He’d gotten into the habit just months ago, having seen some special on TV. Rishi first tried it with one of Ma’s Bollywood magazines and found it weirdly compelling, not even minding that his fingers were constantly covered in paper cuts. Now he made roses and mums and lilies, the repetitive, familiar motion soothing.

  He was on his third rose when he heard someone clear their throat. Startled, Rishi looked up at a small girl with wild hair. She sat on a high-backed armchair he hadn’t noticed in the corner of the room. A copy of A Wrinkle in Time was facedown in her lap, and her feet, sticking out from underneath her bright blue lehenga, didn’t touch the floor. She was staring at him through glasses that were too big for her narrow face. “Why are you ripping up those magazines? They’re not yours.” Her voice was high-pitched. It reminded him of Tinker Bell, a cartoon Ashish loved to watch, though he didn’t like to be teased about it. Rishi had learned that the hard way. He still had the bruise on his shin.

  Rishi sat back, letting the rose fall from his fingers, and studied the tiny girl. She must be around his age, he decided, in spite of her unimpressive size. “You’re not a tattletale, are you?” he asked, in a way that implied (a) there was little he could think of that was worse than being one, and (b) she definitely looked like one.

  “No,” the girl said immediately, almost before he was done speaking, pushing those oversize glasses up on her nose. “I was just asking.”

  Rishi looked at her for another long moment, appraising. Then he said, “I’m bored.” And went back to rolling the paper for his next flower. “Why are you in here reading?”

  The girl studied him for a minute before replying. “I’m bored too.”

  Rishi nodded, but kept his eyes on his lily.

  After a pause, the girl hopped off her chair and came up to the table, sidling into the chair across from him. Rishi watched her through his peripheral vision. She set her book carefully down, dog-earing a corner of her page with love. When that was done, she picked up a chrysanthemum and studied it closely, turning it this way and that. “I like it,” she pronounced finally, setting it back down and looking up at him. “How do you know how to do that?”

  Rishi shrugged nonchalantly. “Picked it up.”

  She nodded, curls bobbing. “Cool. Maybe you could teach me.”

  “Nah, it’d take too long,” Rishi said. “Besides, your hands are too small.” Rishi wasn’t entirely sure this was true, but it wasn’t like the girl would know any better.

  “Hey, that’s not—”

  “Diiiiimple!”

  The girl froze, looking toward the door. “That’s Mamma. I have to go.” She grabbed her book and began to slide off her chair, but right before she was completely out of reach, Rishi grabbed her wrist. She looked at him, confused.

  He pressed the chrysanthemum into her small, sweaty hand. “Keep it,” he said, his gaze boring into hers like he’d seen Shah Rukh Khan do to a dozen different actresses in a dozen different Bollywood movies. “Remember me.” He paused. “And don’t tattle.”

  The girl glanced down at the flower, and then up at him again. She nodded solemnly, like she understood the gravity of this moment. She wouldn’t tattle. Then, closing her fingers around the flower, she slipped out of the conference room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

  CHAPTER 28

  On the cold stone bench, Rishi exhaled. “That was you?” he asked, staring at Dimple. His brain delighted at the impossibility of this, at the sheer coincidence that that tiny, serious girl in the blue lehenga now sat opposite him, looking at his sketch pad.

  Dimple laughed, shaking her head. “I know. Crazy.” Shrugging, she added, “I mean, not crazy crazy. We do both live pretty close to each other, and our parents are part of the Indian community in NorCal, which isn’t that huge. . . .”

  “No.” Rishi rubbed the back of his neck. “Still crazy.” Softly, he said, “Kismet.”

  She looked at him, big eyes luminous and almost black in the light from the phone. “Kismet.” And then Dimple Shah put her hands behind his head and pulled him in for a kiss.

  • • •

  In retrospect, Dimple wasn’t quite sure how it happened, exactly. One minute they were talking about the crazy coincidence of having met about eight years ago at some random wedding. And the next she was attached to Rishi’s face.

  Her heart pounded in her chest; it echoed around the world. Her blood was fire, flames licking at her skin—

  Oh God. He wasn’t kissing her back.

  Why wasn’t he kissing her back?

  Rishi sat rigid as a statue while her mouth moved against his. The minute Dimple realized this, she pulled back. Cheeks flaming, she forced herself to look him in the eye. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize . . . um, I don’t know what happened there. Exactly.”

  Rishi cleared his throat, his eyes slightly glazed. Dimple turned away, back to his sketch pad, although she wasn’t seeing a single sketch anymore. “I’m sorry too,” he said, and her heart sank, dripping in a sad, cold puddle to her feet. “I’m sorry you stopped.”

  She turned, hope quickening her pulse. “What—”

  And then he grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to him, one hand moving up to cup her cheek, thumb just under her jaw while his fingers tangled in her hair. Rishi kissed her with purpose, with meaning, like he believed this was exactly where they were supposed to be in this moment. He kissed her till she believed it too.

  Some moments in life were intensely disappointing. You waited and waited and waited and then . . . Summer vacation turned out to be boring. Your big trip to NYC was awful because people were rude and it rained the entire time. The movie you’d been waiting to watch for months sucked when it finally came to theaters.

  This moment was nothing like that. This moment was like Diwali and Rishi’s birthday and a new Leo Tilden YouTube video all rolled into one. No, scratch that. It was way better than all of those things combined. Rishi was fairly sure he lacked the lexicon to put into words what was happening in his brain—and his body—right then.

  Rishi felt clearheaded, bright, delighted, amazed. Dimple’s mouth was soft and small and full against his, her body was warm as it pressed into him, and the smell of her skin and hair flooded him like a thousand stadium lights. He was kissing her. He, Rishi Patel, was kissing her, Dimple Shah. And she�
�d initiated the kiss. How the heck had this happened? How the heck could one guy get so lucky?

  When they finally pulled apart, Rishi’s mouth tingling still, Dimple smiled shyly and looked down at their hands, entwined between them on the bench. “So,” she said softly. “That was unexpected.”

  He leaned over and kissed her forehead, like it was the most natural thing to do. Was this going to be their thing now, casual kissing? He hoped so. “Unexpected but awesome.” Rishi paused. “Right?”

  She laughed and looked up at him. “Definitely.”

  He grinned, his heart soaked in happy.

  Her smile fading a little, Dimple looked down at his sketch pad, still in her lap. “Rishi . . .” She took a breath, apparently steadying herself for whatever she wanted to say next. Rishi felt that familiar guard come back up around his heart, like some electric fence. “You should show these to Leo Tilden. Really. These are . . . they’re just amazing. We can go show them to him right now.”

  He saw in her eyes that she truly believed it, that she felt he had this great gift to offer the world and how it’d be a tragedy if he didn’t, and a surge of affection threatened to flatten him. He tucked an errant curl behind her ear. “I think it’s probably too late.”

  Dimple shook her head, the set of her jaw stubborn. “We can find out from Kevin what hotel they’ve put him up at. There has to be some way to—”

  Rishi ran a gentle thumb over her bottom lip. “Can we just sit here instead? Can I look at you?”

  Silently, she nodded. Rishi studied everything there was to study in her face—every curve and line and shade of color. Then he reached over and took his sketch pad from her lap.

  “What are you doing?”

  Flipping it open, he grabbed a pencil from his bag and began to draw. “Oh, you’ll see, my friend,” he said. When Dimple tried to peek, he turned, shielding the page from her view.