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I.I.H., for the uninitiated, stood for Ideal Indian Husband. Uggghh. Just thinking about it made her want to banshee-scream into a pillow.
Ashish shrugged. “I know. I just think, I mean, college doesn’t have to mean you just let go of everything, does it? Like, I plan to play ball in college. Why can’t you do what you want too?”
Need
Ashish was a few feet away, shooting hoops while he waited for his friends to swing by and pick him up for whatever fun weekend activity they had planned—contracting hep C or maybe alcohol poisoning.
The sheer scope and number of tattoos and piercings would have Mamma fainting. Dimple adored it.
“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.”
Need
Distance was the promise of safety. Without distance, Rishi knew the inexorable love for his art, for creation, would suck him in and never let go.
He wouldn’t think about writing letters home from his prison cell while his somewhat flirty, six-foot-three-inch roommate, Bozo, watched.
And then Dimple Shah put her hands behind his head and pulled him in for a kiss.
Immediately, before she could stop it, that famous Emily Brontë quote popped into her head: “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” Dimple blushed and coughed to hide her embarrassment at having had such a gooey, stupid thought.
She’d gone out of her way to make sure he understood that this was a non-date. Which meant Rishi was now officially a member of Camp Trying Too Hard.
This, she thought. This is what he meant when he said he couldn’t do it as a half measure. He lives his art. If he did it full-time, there might not be time for anything or anyone else.
When it first happened, she’d been so sure that Rishi and she would have absolutely nothing to do with each other. But that was Rishi… he was like a pop song you thought you couldn’t stand, but found yourself humming in the shower anyway.
When she hadn’t been thinking of him, all she’d really been thinking about was him.
Dimple gripped the edge of his desk. The corners of the room swam. Her voice came from a million galaxies away. “That’s… that’s how you dance?”
She slid the phone back into her pocket and took a deep breath, trying to rearrange her facial features into a not guilty of snooping or any other illicit activity expression.
That was something he’d been noticing more—that he was able to soften her, to rub out those hard edges of hers, when he smiled. The thought made him deliriously happy, mostly because he hadn’t thought it possible for Dimple’s hard edges to be softened at all, let alone that he’d be the one to accomplish it.
But I think for him to let it go to waste—to never share it with the world—is what we should all be really afraid of. Because I truly think his art could change the world.
“But jo bhi kaho, delivery is one of the most painful experiences of a woman’s life!” Ritu auntie proclaimed, jamming another Milano into her mouth. “I screamed so much when I was having Vishal ki I couldn’t talk for two days afterward!” She sprayed bits of cookie crumbs everywhere.
