Tim moved in his sleep and tightened his hand on Nina’s stomach, pulling her closer to him. She took a deep breath.
Hey, she typed back to Rafael. Thanks for checking in. I’m here with Tim. Good for leaning purposes. Listen, I’ve been thinking: Would it be better for you to hire someone else to write your speeches for the general? I’m not sure if I’ll really be able to handle that on top of all of this. I don’t know if I’ll even be able to handle all of this, honestly. And you need someone who can give the election 100%.
Her finger hovered over the send button, but she didn’t press it.
She added: I can send you some suggestions if you need. And then she hit send. She felt an immediate pang of regret, a sense of loss that was an echo of the one she felt when she’d hung up with him that morning, but she knew she’d made the right decision. And maybe, in time, they could be friends. Without seeing each other nearly every day, whatever sparked between them might fizzle out and leave mutual respect and admiration behind.
Nina stared at her phone, waiting for a response. She wondered if he’d try to convince her to stay. Three dots appeared, then disappeared, then appeared, then disappeared again. Nina put her phone down on the coffee table, frustrated with herself for caring so much, frustrated that her heart was trying to talk her out of a decision she knew was the right one. She took off her glasses, then rolled over slowly, shifting so that she was facing Tim now, and scooted herself down. He rolled, too, so he was more on his back than his side. Nina closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She felt so safe in his arms. Before long, she’d fallen back asleep.
* * *
• • •
When Nina woke up again, Tim was awake but hadn’t moved. His arm was still wrapped around her. Her head was still on his chest.
“Morning, sleepyhead,” he said.
“Morning,” she said back, pulling her hand out from under the blanket to rub her eyes. “What time is it?”
“It’s not actually morning,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her nose. “It’s a little after noon.”
When he moved, Nina felt his hip roll sideways and then there was a hardness against her thigh. Her eyebrows went up and Tim bit his lip. “Sorry,” he said. “I woke up like that. It’ll go away soon.”
Nina reached down, trailing her fingers along his jeans, feeling him warm under denim.
“Well, it won’t go away if you do that,” Tim said.
Nina couldn’t help it. She found erections fascinating. All of a sudden, men weren’t completely in control of their bodies. This thing just happened. Sometimes when they wanted it to, sometimes when they didn’t. And they couldn’t make it stop. It wasn’t like raising an arm or rising up on tiptoe. It was like something overtook them—awake or asleep, it didn’t matter.
“Do you want it to go away?” Nina asked.
Tim shrugged. “It feels like the wrong day to have sex,” he said.
Nina thought about that. Was it? Or would there be comfort in it? A statement to the world, to herself, that she was still alive. She was still here. She could experience pleasure in spite of pain.
“It might be,” Nina agreed. But her fingers were still on his jeans. He got harder.
Then he looked at her, a question in his eyes. His hand moved to the hem of her shirt, asking permission. When she nodded he slipped it into her bra, running his fingers around her nipple.
Nina closed her eyes. She reveled in the moment of pleasure. And then she felt guilty that she was feeling pleasure on the day her father died. Tears began to drip from the outer corners of her eyes, gravity pulling them down her cheeks and into her hair.
“Are you okay?” Tim asked, his hand no longer under her shirt.
“No,” Nina said, opening her eyes. “I’m not. But it’s not your fault. It’s not because . . .”
“It’s okay,” Tim said, his hand stroking her hair now. “You don’t have to say anything. I knew it wasn’t the day for this.”
She wasn’t quite sure if he was right, but, “I guess not,” Nina said. She pulled herself closer to him, laying her head back down against his shoulder.
Then Tim’s stomach growled. Nina could feel it rumble against her.
“You may not be hungry,” he told her. “But clearly I need to eat something.”
Nina knew she should, too. She straightened her T-shirt, readjusted her bra. “Want me to make us lunch?” she asked, wiping her eyes. She’d been making food for Tim since they were in elementary school, when she put peanut butter and sliced bananas on Ritz crackers and drizzled them with honey and called it Nina Nut Crunch.
“I think I can handle it,” Tim said, shifting sideways so he could get off the couch.
Nina turned her head and kissed Tim’s T-shirt. It was warm from his body heat—and hers.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“For being you,” she said.
Tim bent to kiss the top of her head, and Nina watched him as he walked across the room, looking so comfortable in her kitchen, like he belonged there.
Then Nina’s phone vibrated. She sat up on the couch, put on her glasses, and picked it up.
“The New York Times sent out an alert,” she said. “About my dad.”
There it was on her phone: Breaking News: Hotelier Joseph Gregory, Dead at 69.
And then a string of text messages and e-mails started coming in. From friends, acquaintances, colleagues. Everyone saying how sorry they were. Everyone asking what they could do to help. Pris offering to come over with a bottle of Brent’s best wine—her drug of choice—and to help respond to all of the messages Nina must be getting now. One of Leslie’s cousins offered a dime bag of marijuana. Nina politely declined both.
Then she scrolled down, looking for the one message she’d been waiting for a response to when she fell back asleep. Rafael. There he was.
I won’t try to convince you to stay on if you don’t feel like you can handle it right now. But if you change your mind, the door is always open. I never could have won the primary without you. Ciao for now, Palabrecita.
Nina felt another moment of regret when she realized she had no idea when she would see him next. But she was trying to make the right choice. It was too much. She had to cast Rafael from her mind and steel herself for the more serious things ahead. A wake. A funeral. A corporation to run. She looked over at Tim, making her lunch.
A wedding, too.
30
Nina and Tim spent the rest of the day together. After lunch they went back to Caro’s list. I’m a Gregory, I can do this, Nina thought, over and over, with every call, every choice she made. But her last name didn’t turn her into a superhero. She was still human, still in so much pain. Her phone kept vibrating, and finally Nina turned it off completely. She couldn’t talk to one more person about her dad. She couldn’t make one more decision.
The downstairs buzzer rang. When Nina picked up the receiver, the doorman told her that Leslie was on her way up.
Then the elevator opened into Nina’s living room, and Leslie walked out, her arms already open for a hug. Nina accepted it.
Maybe it was because her mom died when she was so young—or maybe it was just her personality—but Nina never had tons of close friends. She’d always had Tim. For a while she’d had Melinda, her best friend from lower school who moved away. And there was Pris and the group of girls she hung out with, who welcomed Nina as one of them in middle school, but who Nina never felt all that close to, except Pris. And then Leslie, who Nina was lucky enough to have been matched with as a roommate her first year at Yale, and who had become Nina’s closest friend, after Tim. And that was really it. That had always been Nina’s support network, her team. Other people were on the outskirts, the B-team, but her dad, Leslie, Tim, his parents, and Pris, they were the A-team. The major league. Her people. Always.
“Oh!” Leslie sa
id, once she put her bags down on the floor. “I forgot, I have something for you.” She pulled a plastic bag out of her purse. Inside it were four drawings and an only-slightly-licked lollipop from Cole. “He wanted to make sure you’d like it before he sent it with me,” Leslie said, handing her the lollipop. It made Nina laugh through her tears.
As Nina held the candy, she realized that she and her father had never settled up their debts. She owed him dozens of Twizzlers and Hershey’s Kisses, he owed her just as many lollipops and Tootsie Rolls.
Nina put the candy in her mouth. In its sugary sweetness, she tasted her Monday nights with her father. She tasted comfort. She tasted home.
31
The next morning, Nina and Leslie got dressed and headed over to The Gregory by the Sea. Nina was wearing a black cashmere dress with a gray cardigan over it, black stockings, and black heels. She’d gone to her jewelry box and pulled out her grandmother’s diamond earrings and a sapphire drop her father had gotten her when she graduated from college. “It’s the same color as our eyes,” he’d told her. “I checked in the mirror at the store.”
She’d laughed then, at the idea of her father holding a sapphire up to his eyes in the mirror, maybe asking to see other stones to check their colors, too. The drop was the same color as the stones in the bracelet he’d gotten her for her birthday. The one she was wearing now, next to the diamond tennis bracelet he’d had made for her mother—his last gift to each of them.
“Do I look okay?” Nina asked Leslie, as they got out of the black car in front of the hotel. Gene, the driver she and her father liked best, had picked her up that morning with tears in his eyes. He’d made sure there was sparkling water for her in the back of the car. And butterscotch candies, too. Nina looked down and considered what her father would think of her appearance.
“You look as stunning as ever,” Leslie said, as she put her feet on the asphalt. She was wearing a gray pantsuit with a black silk shirt and heels that were slightly lower than Nina’s. It evened out their height.
As soon as they both stepped onto the sidewalk, into the cool fall sunshine, cameras started flashing. Nina wasn’t sure what to do with her mouth. Usually when someone took her picture, she smiled. But now that seemed like the exact wrong expression. So she pressed her lips together, looked away from the camera, and hoped that nobody would read anything strange into it.
Tim was waiting for them in the lobby and took Nina’s hand, squeezing it softly while they stood in the elevator. “I love you,” he whispered, so only she could hear.
When they got to the top floor, TJ and Caro were already there. Tim and Leslie stopped to talk to his parents, but Nina crossed the room to stand by her father’s casket.
“Would you like anything to drink, Miss Gregory?” Marty, the bartender, asked her. “Scotch?” he asked. “Neat?”
Nina didn’t trust herself to speak, so she just nodded. It was really too early for scotch, but today was a day for exceptions.
As she drank, she looked out at the city, standing next to her father for what she knew would be the very last time. She wondered how many other people out there had lost their father this week. This year. This decade. There were 8.5 million people who lived in New York City. More than 1.6 million in Manhattan alone. Of those millions, how many of them had felt just like she did at one point in their lives? Bereft, afraid, unspeakably sad.
Rafael, she thought. Rafael lost his dad. Rafael once felt like she did.
And then, almost as if she’d summoned him, Nina felt a hand touch her elbow. She turned and Rafael was there, with Jane and Jorge and Mac and the whole rest of the office.
Nina hugged them all, taking an extra beat with Rafael, feeling his body against hers. She ended with Jane, who held on to her the longest. “I heard you’re not coming back,” she said, into Nina’s ear.
The two women separated. “I just . . . I don’t know which end is up, Jane,” Nina said. “Rafael needs someone whose brain is working properly right now. Mine isn’t. And I don’t know when it will again.”
“Well, you’re all he’s talked about since we got into work this morning. I told him we didn’t have to be the first ones here, but he insisted.” Jane left it there, but Nina could hear the question in her voice. Nina had no answer. She looked for Tim but couldn’t find him in the small crowd that had shown up since they’d arrived.
Nina turned back to Jane. “I’m glad you came early,” she said.
Nina talked to all of them, but the whole time she was aware of Rafael, aware of how he was looking at only her, sympathy in his eyes. After a while, the room started to fill up even more, and Jane announced that they had to get back to the office. They all hugged Nina again, and this time Rafael was last. “I told you I don’t sleep,” he said. “So if you ever need someone to talk to in the middle of the night, don’t hesitate to call. I’m not your boss anymore.”
Nina looked up at him. “We can be friends now,” she said.
“We can be whatever we want to be,” he answered before he turned to leave.
Nina could feel her cheeks turning pink and put her hands to her face to hide them. Though, of course, that brought more attention to her blush. Leslie walked over.
“That hottie who couldn’t take his eyes off you, that was your boss, right?” she asked.
Nina felt her blush deepen. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“You’re not fooling me with that act. That was Rafael O’Connor-Ruiz, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Nina confirmed. “That was him.”
Leslie looked at Nina with raised eyebrows. “And the two of you . . . ?”
“Nothing,” Nina said. “Honestly. I’d tell you. It’s nothing. I’m with Tim.”
“Is this something we need to talk about?” Leslie asked. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know what I want,” Nina said. Then she paused. “I want my dad, is what I want.” And her bottom lip started trembling, as if it had a heart all its own.
Leslie pulled Nina to her. “I know,” she said. “But you’ve got me.”
Nina wiped her eyes and leaned her head against Leslie’s, grateful, at least, for that.
“Come with me to the bathroom. We’ve got to fix your eyeliner.”
Nina let Leslie lead her to the restroom, wondering how she’d get through the rest of the day without someone telling her what to do. Grief felt like it mixed up her brain and her heart, put them back in the wrong places. She wasn’t sure how she’d set that right ever again.
32
Leslie stayed that night, too, in the guest room that had the same bedding as the rooms in the Gregory hotels. When Nina was furnishing her apartment, her father went on a familiar tirade against guest rooms with uncomfortable bedding. Nina figured the easiest way to avoid an argument was to accept when he offered to outfit the whole room for her. So the sheets were Egyptian cotton. The blanket, merino wool. The pillows filled with goose feathers. All in shades of cream and gold.
The two women sat cross-legged on the bed, wearing pajama pants and T-shirts, looking almost the way they did fourteen years before, when they were trading essay outlines for Directed Studies, neither of them confident in her thoughts or the way she’d expressed them. But now Leslie dyed her hair to hide the handful of silver strands that kept appearing at her temples. And Nina rubbed cream around her eyes every night, trying to stop the progression of the crow’s feet she saw forming when she smiled. They’d aged, they’d grown; Leslie had gotten married, given birth to a son. But when they were together, they became their college selves, Leslie brash and bold and unstoppable, Nina perceptive and observant and quietly commanding. Leslie’s husband, Vijay, once said their personalities had rubbed off on each other over the years, tempering their extremes. But maybe they’d just gotten older.
“Are you thinking about tomorrow?” Leslie
asked, when Nina had gone quiet.
“I’m thinking . . .” Nina said, “about kids. If I have kids, they won’t know my dad. My mom either.”
Leslie picked up one of the glasses of wine she’d poured for them. “Cole never met my mom,” she said. “But he still knows her.”
Nina lifted her wineglass and took a sip. She’d had more to drink today than she’d had in any twenty-four-hour period in her life. The low-grade buzz helped, though. It dulled everything and made her understand why people took Xanax. “I guess it’s the same with my grandparents,” Nina said, thinking more about it. “I know their stories—how the first painting my grandmother bought was a Lee Krasner. How my grandfather stole his teacher’s grade book in seventh grade to try to hide a B in history.”
“Exactly,” Leslie said. “We put my mom’s picture on Cole’s dresser. And he knows that his name starts with a C to honor her. Whenever we go swimming we talk about how she loved to swim so much that Jodi and I were convinced she was a mermaid when we were kids. I almost cried in the middle of a Target a few months ago when Cole saw a mermaid doll and asked if we could buy it because Grandma Cheryl probably would have liked it.”
Nina smiled at that. “He’s a sweet kid.”
“Thank goodness,” Leslie said. “Imagine if I gave birth to an asshole?”
“Not possible,” Nina told her.
“So what would you tell your future kids about your dad?” Leslie asked after another sip of wine. “What would you want them to know about him?”
Nina leaned back against one of the pillows, her head cradled by its softness. She thought about her imaginary children. In her mind now they always had Tim’s auburn hair, her mother’s freckles, and her father’s blue eyes. Maybe she would make sweet potato pie with them, using the recipe her dad liked. Maybe they’d start their own turkey collection. And their own traditions in his honor.
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