Rishi reached over, grabbed her hand, and pulled her into the darkened alley between a shuttered jewelry shop and clothing store. Dimple leaned back against the wall, and he braced his palms on either side of her. Her heart thundered in the best way, her breath quickening.
“What’s wrong?” Rishi asked, searching her face. “Is it . . . because of what we talked about before? Doing this long-distance?”
Dimple started to shake her head and then stopped. “Um, sort of.” She was having trouble getting the words out with his woodsy smell swirling all around her, with his heat pressing closer to her than the fog.
“So, what is it?” Rishi reached out and casually tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, and without meaning to, she sucked in a breath and leaned in to his touch.
His brow cleared, and his eyes turned to honeyed fire as they drifted down to her lips, which, she noted, were now parted. It was like her body was this traitor, acting without her brain’s permission. Especially considering what you were thinking earlier, that annoying voice tried to interject. Are you seriously going to let hormones get the best of you when there are important things to consider?
But when Rishi dipped his head down and pressed his mouth to hers, his rough stubble scratching against her chin in the most delicious way, her brain shut up entirely. His arms wrapped around her waist, cinching her to him, and she put her hands in his hair, feeling the silken strands between her fingers.
When his hands slipped under her hoodie and shirt to rest against her bare back, her blood caught on fire. She did the same to him, reaching up under his coat and his shirt, to feel the muscled firmness of his lower back. Rishi made a sound deep in his throat, and she pushed herself closer to him, feeling the way he definitely, desperately wanted her. . . .
And then he stepped back, panting. “We . . . uh, we shouldn’t, can’t, do this.”
Dimple stopped, blinking, wanting him to come back and pick up where they’d left off. Her knees felt weak, like they might buckle. She wanted to sit. On his lap. Or lie down. With him. “What? You mean here? We can’t do it here?”
“Yeah, well, here.” Rishi pushed a hand through his hair. “But also, we need to stop and think about what we’re doing. Where this is leading. We don’t want to go too far, right?”
Dimple stared at him. “Too far. Meaning . . .”
Rishi nodded, his ears and cheeks pink. He was still panting a bit, clearly trying to calm his body down. She wanted to jump on him. “Sex. We need to talk before we go further.”
“Right. So . . . I think we should go further.”
Rishi laughed and groaned simultaneously, rubbing a hand over his face. “Dimple, believe me, I do too. But this is not a conversation to have when we’re both . . .” He made a vague gesture between them. “We need to think this through and talk it through with more rational minds. At least, I’d like to.” He raised his eyebrows pleadingly.
Dimple sighed. “If you’re doing this because of some old-school concern for my ‘honor,’ you don’t need to.”
He came forward and took her hands. “It’s not about your honor or mine. It’s just something I feel we should think about beforehand. Instead of just doing it, I’d like to have some time to really decide if we want to take that step now.”
It made sense, what Rishi was saying. This would be her first time, and, she was pretty sure, his, too. They definitely shouldn’t do it up against a grotty wall in an abandoned alley with feral cats watching judgmentally from a trash can. And she still needed to think about that voice, about what it had said. About whether any of those things had merit. If they did, sex would only complicate things further. But still . . . a part of her squirmed, frustrated at being thwarted. Her desire was like its own person, pushy and bossy as heck.
Dimple took a deep breath. “You’re right,” she said, pushing herself off the wall. “Let’s think about it and reconvene at a later date.”
Rishi laughed and reached for her, snaking a strong arm around her waist and pulling her snug against him. They walked back out toward the sidewalk together, Dimple feeling confused and frustrated and all manner of things she couldn’t even begin to untangle.
? ? ?
On Tuesday evening Ashish set the camera on a little tripod he’d bought and looked through the screen. He’d gotten even more serious now that (a) the performance was only four days away and (b) the conversation with Celia had not gone well that night after Rios. Not that either Celia or Ashish had discussed anything with Dimple (or Rishi). But their refusal to discuss it beyond an Everything is fine said volumes.
Dimple and Rishi posed in their final outfits, grinning as the opening strains of “Dance Pe Chance” began to play.
Dimple wasn’t even that nervous anymore. Okay, that was a lie. Every time she thought about dancing in front of an audience full of strangers in four short days, she wanted to throw up or die. Or leap from tall buildings. Anything that would require her to not perform. But she kept thinking of the end goal. The prize. The money that would enable her to build a better app, which would be so much better in the long run. It’d make her—them—that much more likely to win Insomnia Con.
“Did you know seventy-eight percent of the winners of the talent show have also gone on to win Insomnia Con?” she said, pausing the laptop to adjust her headband.
“Yes, I did know, my sweet,” Rishi said, kissing the side of her head. “You’ve told me about seventy-eight thousand times.”
Ashish snorted from behind the camera, but Dimple silenced him with a glare. “Are you still recording? Shouldn’t you pause when we’re not dancing? Aren’t you running out of space?”
Ashish looked at her quizzically. “You ask a lot of questions when you’re nervous.”
“What do you mean?”
He smiled and shook his head. “I’m uploading all of these to the cloud, so they’re not being stored on my phone. We have a megaton of video, so that was the best option.”
“?‘A megaton’ is right.” They’d spent a good four hours the night before watching videos from their “training sessions,” as Ashish was calling them, or “torture sessions,” according to Rishi. He insisted Ashish had gone all Coach Taylor/Friday Night Lights on them.
But Dimple liked the amount of effort Ashish put into coaching them. He had a natural eye for choreography, and everything he said sort of clicked for her. She knew they had a much stronger routine now than they’d had at the beginning. It was funny and fun, quirky, and just cool enough to get the votes they needed.
Rishi ran a hand along her cheek. “It’s going to be okay. Even if we don’t win, we’ll have tried our hearts out. That’s all we can do.”
She put a hand over his. “I know. But I want it so much. We have to win this, you know? Not just this talent show, but Insomnia Con. We have to.”