“Like what?” Rishi said, and it was clear he wasn’t just being polite. He really wanted to know more about her papa.
Dimple leaned back in her booth. With her free hand, she played with her napkin. “He had a tough start to his life, but he never talks about it. Mamma told me that apparently his dad used to drink and go into these rages. His mom, my daadi, would purposely anger him so that he’d beat her and spare Papa. When Papa was older, he tried to get her to leave, but she wouldn’t. And when he got married and he and my mom decided to come to the States, he tried to get Daadi to go with them, but she refused. He didn’t make very much money at first, but he still sent about half of it home to her. I guess he was hoping she’d sock it away and finally find the courage to leave his dad. But Daadi died when I was a baby. No one would tell him for sure how, though. The party line was that she slipped down some stairs.” Dimple shook her head. “Papa is this soft, gentle soul, you know? The exact opposite of me and Mamma. I could see how an experience like that could change you, harden you, make you into the monster you hated. But not Papa. If anything, I bet he used it to become a better husband and father.”
Rishi raised her hand to his lips. “He sounds incredible.”
Dimple smiled at him, reveling in the delicious shiver rolling up her spine at the touch of Rishi’s lips. “He is.”
“And what about your mamma?”
Dimple shrugged, the shiver winking out instantly. “She’s . . . Mamma. She believes my worth is directly tied to my beauty and my ability to land a husband. She doesn’t give a crap about my personality or my brains.”
“That can’t be right. There’s no way she sees what I see and thinks that about you.”
Dimple smirked. “Maybe you need to have a talk with her. I’m sure I’m in for an earful when I go back home.”
“Because we’re not getting married, you mean?”
“Yeah.” Dimple sighed, her mood darkening at the thought of that conversation.
“I’ll bet there’s a part of her you haven’t seen yet.”
Dimple looked up, frowning. “What do you mean?”
Rishi rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. “I don’t know; she’s your mom, you know. I feel like if you were really hurting or really needed her, she’d be there for you without question. And maybe there’s a part of her she hasn’t shared with you yet that’s totally not what you expect.”
Dimple thought that was likely utter BS, but instead she said, “Yeah, maybe. But tell me about your parents now.”
The waiter set down Dimple’s steaming, fragrant plate of cod and potatoes, garnished with halved boiled eggs. Rishi’s soup looked delicious, too, though Dimple thought she might’ve preferred it with sausage. Keeping their hands clasped between them in silent agreement, Dimple and Rishi began to eat.
“Hmm, let’s see. My dad, Pappa, he had a tough start too. His parents died in an accident when he was six or seven, so he was raised by this series of relatives who treated him badly. He basically put himself through college, and when he saw Ma, he knew he wanted to marry her. He didn’t have parents to go ask her parents for her hand in marriage, so he had to do it himself. And he knew it was unlikely that her parents would go for him—poor, with no family to speak of—so he just went in there and told her dad how much he cared for her. He promised to one day make enough money to give her the lifestyle she deserved.” Rishi smiled and ate a bite of potato. “Her dad, my nana, became Pappa’s biggest fan after that speech. He’s the one who helped them come to the States. He even gave them seed money to get Pappa’s first business started. It went bust, but the relationships he made there led to him coming in on the ground floor of Global Comm.”
“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.