He saw Dimple instantly. Hers were the only pair of eyes that were attempting to incinerate him. He thrust his chin out and stepped forward. He had just as much right to be here as she did.
“Oh, hey, hold on before you take a seat,” the dude with the exuberant red beard at the front of the class said. “I’m just about to call out partners, so you may as well take a seat with yours. What’s your name?”
“Rishi Patel.”
“P . . . Patel . . . ah, there you are. You’re with Dimple Shah.” The instructor looked up, into the sea of faces. “Dimple Shah?”
Rishi didn’t dare look at her. Crap. He’d totally forgotten he’d requested her on his application. It had seemed a good idea at the time, and he’d fully expected her to do it too. He’d thought it’d give them more time together, see how they worked in a partnership.
She stood, and they walked to the front row together, Dimple’s back straight, her shoulders set. Her body conveyed anger like a second language; she must have had a lot of practice. As soon as they sat down, she turned to him, eyes flashing. “You requested me, didn’t you?”
Rishi rubbed the back of his neck, his cheeks warming. “Yeah, but I thought you might request me, too. Look, I’m going to go up there at the end of class and talk to the dude about reassigning us, okay? So just chill.”
“His name is Max. Which you’d know if you’d bothered to be here on time. You even missed the announcement of the grand prize.” She looked at him like she was accusing him of torching the redwood forests.
“Oh yeah? What is it?”
Rishi watched as the corners of her lips tugged upward in spite of herself. Her eyes shone behind her glasses, brilliant, fiery. “The winning partners will have a chance to pitch Jenny Lindt their idea. If she likes it, she’ll partner on marketing and development!”
Dimple’s voice was two octaves higher than usual when she finished, so Rishi knew whatever she said must be a big deal. He racked his brain trying to remember who the heck Jenny Lindt was and came up empty. Okay. He could fake it for now and look her up later.
“Great!” He grinned and tried to mirror her excitement. “That’s so cool!”
Dimple leaned in closer, and Rishi caught a waft of that maddening, amazing shampoo again. “Really? You’re a Jenny Lindt fan too?” Her face was open, her eyes wide and soft in a way Rishi hadn’t seen yet.
“Oh, totally,” he said, thinking, I will be by the end of today if it makes you look at me like that.
Dimple laughed. “I know, she’s so great! What’s been your favorite part of her success story so far?”
Crap. He kept the smile on his face. Okay, success stories. What did they all have in common? “How she came from nothing and became, you know, Jenny Lindt.”
Rishi thought he’d done pretty well, but Dimple was frowning. “She didn’t exactly come from ‘nothing.’ Her parents are both lawyers; they gave her the seed money for Meeting Space. It’s in all her interviews.” Rishi felt his cheeks heat. Traitorous body.
Dimple’s brow cleared. “You don’t know a single thing about her, do you?” she asked, leaning back and crossing her arms. “Had you even heard of her before today?”
“You know what? I’m, uh, going to go talk to the instructor guy—Max,” he hurried to add, “about reassigning us.”
“Yeah.” Dimple’s eyes were now flat marbles behind her glasses. She would make a good serial killer. “You go do that.”
He had some nerve, lying to her like that. “The way she came from nothing,” Dimple muttered mockingly. What a jerk. Maybe Max would make an exception this one time and reassign her to Celia. Celia knew how important it was to Dimple to win this thing. She’d work her butt off.
Dimple glanced over her shoulder and saw Celia deep in conversation with one of the hipster-model boys, tossing her curls and laughing throatily at a joke. Huh. Or maybe she wouldn’t want to be partners anymore.
Dimple turned back around to see Rishi taking a seat beside her again, his cheeks still pink. “What happened? Who are we getting reassigned to?”
“Um, well . . . nobody,” he said, wincing a little as he met her gaze. “He said it’s too late now. We’re just going to have to stick together.”
“What? Did you tell him requesting me was a mistake?”
“Yeah. Didn’t work.”
Dimple stood. “Oh, it’s going to work. I’ll take care of it myself.”
She stalked over to Max. “I’m sorry, I absolutely need to be reassigned,” she said as soon as he met her eye, feeling slightly guilty. By doing this, Dimple was effectively saying she couldn’t bear to spend a minute with Rishi. Ambition and kindness were warring inside her, and she was choosing ambition . . . again. But she wanted this so badly. So, so badly. “Rishi Patel knows absolutely nothing about Jenny Lindt. I doubt he knows much about web development.”
Max smiled. “Well, we’re all here to learn, Dimple.”
“Right, but he doesn’t care about it as much as I do. I need to partner with someone who wants to win just as much.”
Max stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Or maybe you need someone who can teach you something, hmm? Maybe Rishi is the universe’s way of teaching you how to take a breath and just roll with the punches.”
Oh dear God, he was an honest-to-goodness hippie. Curse you, San Francisco. She could tell he was going to be implacable, so Dimple forced herself to nod and smile. “Mmm. Good point. Thanks anyway.”
When Dimple returned to her seat, she tried not to bite Rishi’s head off right away. She could tell he was side-eyeing her, trying to figure out how to ask.
“No,” she finally bit out. “He won’t let us swap partners at this point.”
He sighed, and sounding genuinely sympathetic, said, “That sucks. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” Dimple felt that familiar fury boiling inside her, the same one that flowed when Mamma or Papa didn’t understand why she wanted to do the things she did. “Sure. I’m sure you’re really sorry.”