“Hey.”
She jumped slightly and turned to see Rishi coming around the park bench. He was dressed in a polo shirt and turquoise shorts, his fingers permanently ink-smudged. Dimple’s heart squeezed, half with endearment and half with nerves. “Hey. Everything okay?”
He didn’t smile as he usually did when he saw her after a long absence (and in Rishi’s eyes, a day and a half definitely counted as a long absence from Dimple). Looking around at the other people on the benches, mostly families with extremely loud young children, he said, “Want to go for a walk?”
* * *
Dimple and Rishi hiked across a gigantic field of soft green grass, their shoes sinking slightly as they went. Kids played soccer and Frisbee around them, and families picnicked. But Dimple was keenly attuned to Rishi and what he wanted from her. As she studied his profile, she was suddenly too scared to ask. Which was completely unlike her, and also completely cowardly.
Dimple cleared her throat. “So,” she said, somehow managing to keep her voice breezy. The beaded strings on her cotton skirt bounced as she walked. “Why’d you ask me to meet you here?”
Rishi glanced at her. “Dimple.”
“Yeah?” she asked, when he didn’t say anything else.
He took a breath. “About six months ago, during winter break, we were shopping at Macy’s for Jenny’s bracelet. Do you remember that?”
Dimple felt a chunk of ice block up her gastrointestinal system. “Yeah,” she said, her voice a little squeaky. “I remember. Why?”
“You caught me looking at engagement rings.” Rishi held her gaze for a long moment. “And you said, ‘To be continued.’ ”
“Mm-hmm,” Dimple said, looking away. She pushed her glasses up her sweaty nose. “God, it’s hot today, isn’t it?”
“Dimple.” Rishi’s voice was quiet, serious. She turned to look back at him. “Did you change your mind?”
“Rishi . . .” She sighed. “Can we go talk under a tree or something? I really am hot.”
“Sure.” He led the way toward a giant oak tree on their right. Luckily, no one else was under it. Once they were there, he looked at her in the shade. “Okay.”
“Okay.” Dimple wiped her palms surreptitiously on her skirt. This was silly. Why was she nervous? It wasn’t like she’d done anything wrong. “When I said ‘to be continued,’ I didn’t mean to . . .” She waved her hands around. “To start anything. I’m still me. I haven’t suddenly decided I want to get married at the Plaza in New York City with a thousand guests or anything.”
Rishi nodded. Dimple relaxed a tad.
“So what did you mean when you said ‘to be continued’?”
Her shoulders bunched up again. She’d need to go to a medical massage place if he didn’t stop talking about this. Dimple leaned against the rough bark of the tree and stuck her hands into her skirt pockets. “I don’t know,” she said, scuffing the toe of her sandal into the dirt. “I guess . . . I meant, maybe someday, I’d be . . . you know, open to talking about marriage. Maybe. Like, in fifteen years or so.”
“You’d be open to talking about it. In fifteen years.”
She couldn’t read the expression on his face. “Maybe. Maybe more than that.”
Rishi pinched the bridge of his nose and then looked at her, his honey-colored eyes searching. “Dimple, be honest. Is it me?”
Dimple frowned. “Is what you?”
Rishi put one palm against the tree trunk, next to her head. Dimple got a waft of his cologne, that familiar scent that reminded her of a summer forest. “Do you really think marriage is a way for the patriarchy to control us all? Do you really not want to get married because you want to focus on your career? Or do you just not want to get married because of me? Because I’m your boyfriend? Because you can’t see spending your life with me?”
Dimple felt her temper rise. “Okay, so first, even if we never got married, we’d still be spending our lives together. We’ve talked about living together at some point. Marriage is just a piece of government-sanctioned paperwork. Second, are you seriously making this about you?” The arrogance!
Rishi threw up his hands. “It is about me! When we’re talking about marriage, half of it is about you, and the other half is about me!”
Dimple pushed herself off the tree. “We’re talking about my reluctance to enter into a centuries-old contract that has never favored the woman!”
“And I’m asking if that reluctance has anything to do with me! I don’t think that’s so unreasonable, Dimple!” Rishi’s eyes flashed. Wow. Was he mad? He was mad!
Dimple clutched at her hair. “That’s so aggravating! You knew this about me when we got together, Rishi. I want to focus on my career. I want to see where life will take me—”
“And I’m not saying you shouldn’t!” Rishi said loudly, his voice cutting across hers. “Please don’t make me out to be the bad guy here. I just want to have a discussion about something you hinted at six months ago and then conveniently forgot! Maybe I knew that you were extremely career-focused when we got together, but you knew how important traditions and marriage were to me too. So how am I in the wrong for asking your opinion on this?”
“Because you’re not asking my opinion, you’re trying to bully me into adopting your opinion!” Dimple yelled, and then stopped short, breathing hard. Rishi looked like she’d slapped him. Dimple felt instant regret crash over her like an ocean wave. Her stupid, stupid temper. “Wait. I—I don’t mean ‘bully,’ exactly . . .”
Rishi held up a hand. He took a deep, steadying breath. “You know, Dimple, at first, I did imagine all that idealistic stuff. A beautiful, meaningful proposal, a gorgeous wedding with our family surrounding us, pictures we could look at forever. I wanted all of that; I’m not going to lie. Of course, that was before you snapped me out of it with that ice-cold cup of coffee.” She gave him a half smile for that. “But I never meant to hinder you in all you want to do. I never wanted to pressure you. When we first got together—almost a year ago—I promised myself I’d never rush you or rain on your parade, no matter how badly I wanted the traditional things. I wanted you to do everything while you were dating me that you would’ve done without me. I feel like I’ve been pretty good at keeping that promise.”
“You have,” Dimple said, feeling a lump in her throat. “Rishi, I don’t feel like you’re pressuring me.”
He smiled a little. “Then I don’t think you’re being completely honest with yourself, or with me. I think that’s what this argument is about, right? At the wedding, too, you didn’t want to talk about it. It’s always me bringing it up. And you’re right, maybe that is me making it about me when I shouldn’t.”
Dimple put a hand on his sun-warmed arm. “Where’s all this coming from? You’ve always said you didn’t care if we had to wait a long time to get married. You said you’d still be with me, even if I never wanted to get married.”
“I would, if I thought you not wanting to get married was just about you and your values. But I’m starting to get the feeling that . . .” He rubbed his jaw and looked away. “That maybe, deep down where you don’t want to acknowledge it, maybe this is about marrying me specifically. On paper, you and I don’t have much in common, I know that. Everyone can see that. Maybe subconsciously, you feel like I’ll hold you back if we got married. If we made it official.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Dimple said hotly. A wind whipped through the oak tree, making its leaves rustle above them, as if the tree were weighing in too. “Rishi, this entire conversation is premature. We’re only nineteen. Come on!”
Rishi shrugged. “Maybe it is premature. But I think this could signal some pretty big underlying problems. Isn’t it better that we figure that out now, before we get in even deeper? Can you imagine having this exact conversation in fifteen years?” He shook his head and pulled a leaf from his hair, where it had fallen. “I don’t know. I think maybe we should both take some time, think about things.”
Dimple’s
heart lodged somewhere in her throat. Her palms were drenched in sweat. “Think about what, exactly?” she asked, her voice quiet.
Rishi looked at her, his eyes soft and tender and tinged with sadness. He cradled her cheek with one hand. “Think about us,” he said softly. “Think about what we want from the future. Dimple, maybe I’m not what you want or need after all. And if I’m not, then I’d rather find out now.”
Her entire body felt stiff and frozen. “Right,” she heard herself saying. He really meant it. He wanted them to take a break. He wanted her to consider if this, if they, were what she wanted after all.
He was making it about him . . . but maybe he was right. Were they the best match for each other? Was Rishi Patel what she wanted for her future?
Dimple felt her emotions recede, as they sometimes did when she had too much to process. As if her brain were short-circuiting. “Okay,” she said, her voice remote. “Fine. I will.”
Rishi smiled sadly at her. Then he brushed his lips against hers in the sweetest, softest kiss. When she opened her eyes, he was already walking away.
Rishi
Rishi lay diagonally on his bed amid a pile of pillows and blankets, marathoning The Great British Bake Off.
Ashish walked in, glanced at the TV, and then tapped Rishi’s sock-clad foot (which was hanging off the bed) with his knee. “What are you doing?”
Rishi grunted and pointed one lethargic hand toward the screen. “Seriously considering having our chef teach me how to make mille-feuille. I think it might enrich my life.”
“Right . . . ,” Ashish said, narrowing his eyes. “You know what might help in the meantime?” He walked over to the windows across from Rishi and pulled open the curtains, letting in a blinding stream of sunlight.
Rishi groaned but couldn’t summon up the energy to do much besides that.
“Dude, you need to get up. Seriously.” Ashish ripped a blanket off him.
Rishi curled up into the fetal position. “Ash,” he mumbled, his voice muffled by a pillow into which his face was now pressed. “I think I might actually die.”
He heard Ashish plop down onto Rishi’s monster-size beanbag. Rishi had had that since eleventh grade. “What happened? It’s been three days since you and Dimple met up at the park, and you haven’t said anything to anyone. Ma’s starting to consider getting Adam uncle to take a look at you.”
Rishi groaned again. Adam Cherian was Pappa’s golf buddy and a very prominent psychiatrist. “I don’t need a shrink, man. My affliction has only one solution, and I’m pretty sure she’s decided to . . . go a different way.” That was the euphemism for when you got totally screwed over, right? Even corporations used it. It was nice and sanitized. It made his broken, bleeding heart feel a touch better. Dimple decided to go a different way, as if she’d meandered down a beautiful brick path instead of tossing him aside like a rag doll.
But that description wasn’t entirely fair to her, and Rishi knew that. He’d told her to take her time, to really think about what she wanted. In three days, she hadn’t sent him a single text. She really was taking her time. The longer she took, the more certain Rishi was about what her answer would be. He was actually dreading the sound of his phone now. He knew it was only a matter of time before Dimple delivered her verdict. She wasn’t the type to just ghost him and never finish it up. Once Dimple made up her mind about something, she saw it through to the end. She made sure everyone knew exactly how she was feeling.
Rishi swallowed and turned on his side so he could see Ashish. His little brother had somehow grown a couple more inches over the summer, and he looked like a giant praying mantis dressed in a basketball jersey and shorts. Rishi’s fingers itched for his sketchbook, but his body wouldn’t comply.
“You don’t know that,” Ashish said, shaking his head. He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture Rishi was intimately familiar with because he did it in exactly that way too. “I can’t tell you how many times I used to think Celia was blowing me off, but usually it turned out she was just studying for finals or something.”
Rishi raised a tired eyebrow. “Celia dumped you.”
Ashish looked slightly abashed. “Yeah . . . maybe that was a bad example.” He reached over to Rishi’s desk and grabbed a stress toy shaped like a banana and began to play with it.
Rishi grabbed one of his dozen pillows and hugged it to his chest. “Does Sweetie ever leave you hanging?”
Ashish couldn’t quite hide his smile, even though Rishi could tell he was valiantly trying to. “Nah, but she’s different, man. None of the rules apply with her.”
“Yeah,” Rishi said, feeling his chest squeezing in pain. “That’s how it always was with Dimple. She’s never been this quiet for so long, Ash. I can feel it coming. It’s like a freight train, and it’s going to hit me soon. It’s just a matter of when.”
His brother held his eyes. “Then I’ll be right here with you when it does,” he said, and Rishi could tell he meant it. He felt slightly better. Maybe the love of his life would be gone forever, but at least he’d always have his little brother.
It wasn’t enough—not nearly enough. But it was something.
Dimple
Dimple sat in the window seat on the staircase landing of her parents’ house, looking down at the street below. There were a few kids, probably no more than seven or eight years old, playing in the sprinkler on a neighbor’s front lawn. There was only one girl among the clot of boys, and she was clearly the ringleader. As Dimple watched, the girl made all the boys—who were getting way too rowdy, from the looks of it—form an orderly line so everyone had an equal turn at the sprinkler. Dimple smiled a little.
She glanced down at the blank screen of the cell phone in her lap, her hands clutched tightly around it. It had been almost a week since she and Rishi had spoken at the park, and so far it had been radio silence on both ends. Dimple knew he was waiting on her, but . . . she wished he’d have reached out. Or would that have made her feel more pressured?
This was impossible. Why was she making this choice now? How was she, a nineteen-year-old, supposed to know what Dimple Shah the thirty-five-year-old might want? How could she see into the future, to whether she and Rishi were really compatible on the big stuff, whether they’d be on the same page marriage-wise down the road? Why couldn’t Rishi just let her be?
She felt a surge of anger, but it subsided just as quickly as it had come on. If Dimple were being honest, she knew she wasn’t really being fair to Rishi. He hadn’t asked her to make this decision because he wanted to force her hand. He wasn’t asking her to predict the future. He’d simply asked her to look into her heart, to see what was truly there. He was asking her to be honest with herself and with him. And there was nothing inherently wrong with that.
The problem was, Dimple did feel pressured, whether Rishi intended it that way or not. It was hard to be with someone for a year—God, she could barely believe their anniversary would be next week—without taking into account their dreams and hopes for the future. It was impossible to be with someone like Rishi, so sunny, so boundless in his enthusiasm for life and his support of her, without letting what he wanted seep into her consciousness as well.
“Diiiiiimple? Diiiiimple? Where are you, beta? Dimple, can you hear me?”
Dimple tried not to roll her eyes at her mother’s desperate tone. Did she think Dimple had been abducted from her room upstairs in the middle of the day? “Yes, Mamma!” she called down the stairs. “I’m in the window seat!”
She heard her mother’s plodding footsteps then, as she made her way up. “Hai Ram!” Mamma said, putting a hand on her chest and breathing heavily, as if she’d ascended the Himalayas instead of a few stairs. Mamma should’ve seriously been a Bollywood actress; she was even dressed for the part right then, in a school-bus-yellow salwar kameez, a billion multi-colored bangles on each wrist, and a full face of makeup. She’d missed her calling.
“What are you doing up here?” Mamma paused, frowning. “W
hy are you wearing that Insomnia Con T-shirt and jeans? Don’t you have anything prettier in your closet? What about that brocade salwar kameez I bought you for your birthday?”
Dimple rolled her eyes. “Mamma, please. I’m just chilling at home today.”
Mamma looked like she wanted to say about seventeen different things, but she swallowed them all, maybe at whatever expression she saw on Dimple’s face. “Hmm. So what are you doing here all alone?”
“I don’t know,” Dimple said, resting her head against the wall. “Just thinking, I guess.”
“Oof oh, Dimple,” Mamma said, wedging herself next to Dimple on the window seat without asking. “Your problem is that you think too much.”
“You don’t even know what I’m thinking about!”
“Okay, okay,” Mamma said in that slow, maddening way she had, as if to say she knew whatever Dimple was thinking about was probably ridiculous, but she was willing to hear her out because of what an excellent mother she was. “Then tell me.”
Dimple wove her fingers loosely together and hung them between her knees. Her head bowed, she said, “I feel like I’m at a crossroads, Mamma. A pretty big crossroads, in fact. And I’m no closer to a decision today than I was almost a week ago.”
She thought about Rishi, how he’d kissed her softly right before he turned away. God, she missed him. She felt a pang of longing so sharp, it felt like she should be able to touch it right there, in the center of her chest. She just wanted to run her hands through his hair. To lace her fingers through his. To kiss him, to shake him, to ask him why he couldn’t be more like her. But she knew the answer to that question already—because if he were more like her, the magic between them wouldn’t exist. If he were more like her, he wouldn’t be Rishi.
“So you have two options you’re facing?”
As Kismet Would Have It Page 2
