When Dimple Met Rishi(93)

Celia hopped off the bed. “I’m going to miss you,” she said.

“Me too.” Dimple stepped forward, and they hugged. “But we’ll keep texting. And we’ll be driving distance apart starting in the fall.”

Celia nodded furiously, and when she stepped back, her eyes were all misty. “I feel like no matter what roommate I get now, I’m going to be disappointed,” she said. “Because it won’t be you.”

Dimple swallowed the lump in her throat. “Ditto. You know, you could change your mind and decide to transfer to Stanford. . . .”

Celia rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. Like they’ll ever let me in that place.”

Dimple laughed and turned to Ashish, who was standing by Celia now. He smiled down at her, but it was coated in sadness and it made her chest tighten. His eyes reminded her so much of Rishi’s, she had to blink and look away. “It was nice to meet you, Ashish,” she said, rubbing at her nose. “Thank you for your help with the talent show.”

She held out her hand, but Ashish ignored it and pulled her into a hug instead. “You would’ve made a great bhabhi someday,” he said, and that, more than anything, drove it all home with an ironclad finality. She and Rishi were over.

Dimple swallowed and stepped back, smiling brightly. “Okay, I’m out. You guys are leaving tomorrow, right?”

They nodded. “Want me to help you with your suitcase?” Ashish asked, but Dimple shook her head.

Celia reached out and grabbed her in a hug again and then stepped back and put an arm around Ashish’s waist, swiping at her eyes with her free hand.

Dimple took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, determined not to shed another tear on this campus.




Rishi sat on the edge of his bed, his head bent as the phone at his parents’ house rang. It seemed a lonelier sound than usual, as if it were echoing around an empty home.

He felt like he’d been struck by a freak flare of lightning on a sunny, blue-skied day. He had not seen that coming. He’d thought maybe she was unhappy, but that it had to do with losing, with not being able to see Jenny Lindt. Rishi had no idea she . . . that Dimple . . . that she didn’t love him anymore. Had likely never loved him.

All those things she’d said—was that how she saw him? As some big coward, too afraid to stand up to his parents, too afraid to really live life? Someone who wanted to cower and be sheltered from every storm in life, someone who wanted an easy, placid, dull, nothing existence?

Was she right?

“Haan, bolo, Rishi beta!” Pappa’s happy greeting came down the line, startling him out of his cold, tumbling thoughts.

“Pappa . . .” His voice came out husky, unpolished. He cleared his throat. The words were gone.

“Rishi?” Pappa sounded a little concerned. “Kya baat hai, beta?”

“Am I making a mistake, Pappa?” he said, his voice just barely above a whisper. He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a sudden surge of frustration he couldn’t explain. Rishi hopped off his bed and began to pace. In a louder voice, he continued. “I mean, MIT? Engineering? You’re the one with a mathematical brain, not me. I couldn’t even fix the laptop when it broke last year, remember?”

There was a moment of silence, and he knew Pappa was hurrying to catch up. “But, Rishi, there are many different types of engineering degrees,” he said finally, a little wondrously. “Tumhe patta hai, you don’t have to fix computers to be an engineer. You know this.”

Rishi kicked at the foot of his desk, making the whole thing shudder. “But it’s not about fixing the laptop!” He threw his free hand up in the air. Why couldn’t his father see? “It’s . . . it’s everything. It’s my brain, Pappa. It doesn’t work like yours. I’m not interested in mathematics and business and, and everything else that you do. Do I want to spend fifty or sixty years of my life stuck at Global Comm, doing stuff that bores me now, at eighteen? I mean, what will my life look like at that point? Who will I even become if I do that?”

“But there are many good companies besides Global Comm, Rishi,” Pappa said, still sounding bewildered. “You don’t have to work here. You can go to Google—they’re progressive, na? Many young people enjoy working—”

Oh gods. He just wasn’t getting it. “No, Pappa,” Rishi cut in, standing still in the center of his room, looking at the bed where not too long ago he and Dimple took things to another level. Where he realized he couldn’t live without her, no matter what. The bitter burn of rejection flared in his chest. “What if I want to do my comics instead?”

There was a long beat of silence. Rishi waited, his heart hammering. “C-comics?” He’d never heard Pappa stutter like that before. “Rishi, why are you saying all this, beta? Where did you get these ideas? Plan sub change kar rahe ho—you’re changing all your plans. For whom? Dimple ne kuch kahaa?”

Did Dimple say something? Rishi wanted to laugh. Yeah, he thought. She said a lot of things. But instead of getting into that, he said, “Yes. She said something. But I was feeling it before that, Pappa. I was . . . engineering doesn’t feel right for me. It feels right for you. I’m an artist in my soul. Not an engineer. Not a corporate machine.”

Pappa exhaled, the sound long and reaching for a patience it currently lacked. When he spoke, his voice was low and controlled. It was the voice Rishi had heard him use in phone meetings when he was trying not to lose his temper. “Ghar aao, Rishi. Then we’ll talk about it. Aur Dimple . . .”