Nina pulled a tissue from her purse and tried to blot the tears threatening to overflow her lower lashes. She took a deep breath. Rocks, she thought. Pigeons. Turtles. Grapefruits.
* * *
• • •
Nina had gotten her emotions under control by the time the cab pulled up to Tim’s building. The external could be fixed with a press release from the campaign and an announcement of her and Tim’s engagement. If that was what she wanted. But the internal. The feelings she had when she was with Rafael. That was so much harder to figure out.
Nina took the elevator up to Tim’s floor. She could’ve opened his apartment door with her key but felt like she shouldn’t. He’d seemed so upset. So she knocked.
Tim opened the door. “You don’t let yourself in anymore?” he asked.
Nina sighed. Already she’d done the wrong thing. “I didn’t want to surprise you,” she said.
“You mean like how you surprised me by making bedroom eyes at that politician?”
“I wasn’t—” Nina knew getting defensive wouldn’t help, but it was hard not to when Tim was on the attack. This wasn’t a side of him she saw often, but she knew it existed. She’d seen it directed at other people before, but never at her. She took a deep breath. “May I come in?” she asked.
Tim stepped aside. She walked in and sat down on the couch. Tim sat on the love seat, across from her. His body was rigid.
“I really don’t know what to make of this. I know you said you weren’t cheating on me, but it sure as hell looks like you were. That hug picture from primary night. The way you looked at him. What’s going on, Nina? Do you know what your father would’ve said about this? About these headlines?”
Nina took a deep breath. She knew. Of course she knew. And she also knew that Tim didn’t believe her. She could tell. He’d chosen the press over her. And he knew just what to say to cut her deeply. He’d hurt her on purpose. It took a lot to get Nina to show her anger. An anonymously quoted source, someone who worked for the Gregory Corporation, once described her father as a “slow burn”; he wasn’t easy to anger, but once he did, watch out. Nina thought that wasn’t quite right. He was like her. The anger was there, but it was controlled. It took a lot for her and her father to let their emotions show. The feelings had to seem justified, the repercussions worth the expression. Nina clenched her fists to keep herself in check.
“I’m going to say it again,” she told Tim. “The media’s wrong.”
“But that hug picture—” he protested.
“Was just a hug,” Nina said. “On primary night. We were all happy. He hugged me. The end.”
“But his face—”
“I can’t control his face,” Nina said. “And the fact that you’re blaming me for his expression is inane. Do you hear yourself?”
Tim had the grace to look embarrassed. “What about tonight, then?”
This was the harder part to explain. “Tonight . . . he asked me for help with a speech. I told you that. So I went over. Mostly because I wanted to feel like myself for a little while. And after we worked for a few hours, we were hungry, so we went to get a burger next door at the Dublin Pub. A business dinner. Like people have when they work together. I assume that photographer had told the restaurants near the office that he’d pay for tips, if Rafael ever came in alone with a woman, and he did, and the photographer came. And so we ran into the kitchen.”
Tim looked visibly calmer now. “So it really was innocent? Nothing happened between the two of you?”
Nina wished she had a glass of water. Or wine. Or anything, really. Something to sip, to give her time to think while she swallowed.
“Nothing physical happened,” Nina said, not wanting to lie to Tim, answering what she’d wished he asked.
Tim blanched. “What does that mean?”
“I’m sorry,” Nina said. “After that, we were running, and holding hands, and talking on a bench along the river. And I didn’t kiss him, we didn’t do anything—but, Tim, I wanted to.” She bit her lip to keep it from trembling. In admitting this, she felt like a failure. Like she wasn’t strong enough. Like she was a kid again and her father was telling her not to cry in front of the guests, but she couldn’t stop the flow of tears. And she knew telling the truth like this would hurt Tim, which she never wanted to do. But after finding out so many of her father’s secrets, she didn’t want to keep any of her own. Not any longer.
“But you didn’t,” Tim said. He was cooling down. “You’re just colleagues.”
Was Tim telling himself a story? Purposefully misunderstanding her?
“Did you hear me?” Nina asked, hating to repeat it. “I just told you I wanted to kiss someone else.”
Tim rubbed his hands along the thighs of his jeans. “It’s okay. I want to kiss other women, too, sometimes. But I don’t. I’m not really worried about you wanting to kiss someone else as long as you don’t actually do it.”
Nina looked at him now. His hair slightly out of place, as if he’d been raking his hands through it. His beard neatly trimmed.
“Wait, you want to kiss other women?” Nina asked. “Legitimate people you know, or celebrities? Like, how you’ve had a crush on Anna Paquin since she played Polexia Aphrodisia in Almost Famous?”
Tim sat up a little straighter. “Are we being completely honest?” he asked.
“Of course,” Nina said. Why would he even need to ask if they were being honest? She thought about last night, when he came over and said he needed to remember that he loved her. Did something happen then that he’d kept secret? Was he afraid of his feelings for someone else, too?
“You know Casey from my office? The one with really long hair who heads up the team of web designers?” Tim said, slowly, as if the confession was costing him something, but it was something he was willing to pay to make things right with Nina. “I wouldn’t mind kissing her.”
Nina was quiet.
“I haven’t,” Tim said quickly. “But you said to be honest, and if we’re being honest, I wouldn’t mind. That’s why it’s okay if you want to kiss Rafael. It’s normal. Just . . . you know, there’s a difference between wanting and doing.”
Nina took a deep breath. Was it normal? She swallowed hard. She knew that what she was going to say next had the ability to explode their world. “Maybe we should do it,” she said. “Maybe both of us should, if that’s what we want.”
Tim stood up and sat down next to Nina. “Wait, no,” he said, grabbing her hand. “That’s not what I meant. I don’t want to date Casey. I don’t want a future with Casey. I want a future with you. Everything’s going to be better soon. Once we get married. And you’re on the board of the Gregory Corporation. And we have kids. And I can be CEO after my dad retires. Everything will be perfect.”
Nina’s brain screeched to a halt. She blinked at Tim. “You want to run the Gregory Corporation?” she asked him.
“Don’t you want me to?” he asked back.
Nina looked at him. How had they never talked about this? How had she not known that this was his vision for the future?
“I . . . I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t thought about it.”
“What do you mean you haven’t thought about it?” Tim looked perplexed. “Remember when we played ‘business’ when we were kids, when everyone else was playing house? I was always the CEO. You were always the chairman of the board. And we carried those briefcases my mom got us and used your dad’s old crossword puzzles as our balance sheets.”
They had done that. They had pretended. But they were kids. They’d also thought they could climb a rainbow if they put suction cups on the bottom of their sneakers. “That was a game, Tim,” she said. “I didn’t think it was real.”
Tim looked at her. She looked at Tim. It seemed like they didn’t know how to speak to each other anymore. She didn’t know how to fix what was happen
ing between them. The ring Tim bought her felt heavy on its chain around her neck.
“I . . . I don’t know what to say,” Tim said. “I don’t understand how we got so far off track.”
“Me neither.” Nina looked around Tim’s apartment, as familiar to her as her own. There were photographs of both of them everywhere. A small painting she’d had commissioned for him for his birthday, of the pier where they’d first kissed. Neither of them said anything for a while. Finally Tim spoke.
“Do you . . . want to stay over tonight?” he asked. “And maybe we can talk more in the morning?”
The easy thing to do was to stay. But Nina thought about that letter in her parents’ nightstand. She thought about her conversations with Leslie. What it felt like to be next to Rafael. She thought about the parts of herself that she still wanted to explore and develop and discover. It was too much. Everything was too much.
“I think it might be better if I sleep at my place tonight,” Nina said. “I just . . . I’m so mixed up right now.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I think . . . I think I need to be alone tonight,” she said.
“Okay.” His hands were in his lap, and he lifted one as if he were going to touch Nina again, but then didn’t. “I love you,” he told her. “More than anyone else in the world. I really love you.”
Nina took a deep breath. “I love you, too,” she said. “That’s never been the problem.”
Tim stood up and held out his hand. “We’ll talk tomorrow?” he said.
Nina took it. “Of course,” she answered.
As Nina walked out the door, she turned back to Tim. “Last night,” she said. “Before you came over. Was Casey out watching baseball with you and the guys?”
Tim quietly closed the door without answering.
54
Even though it was a long walk, Nina decided not to jump in a cab or take the subway. She needed to clear her head, to think, to move. Despite the fact that it was late, the city was alive with people and noise, and she took comfort in being a part of it. In New York City you were never alone in any situation—by the laws of probability there had to be at least hundreds, if not thousands, of people who were going through the same thing at the same time. Nina found it consoling.
As she walked, she pulled out her phone; it had blown up with calls and voice mails and texts from Leslie and Jane and Pris and Rafael. Nina scrolled through them.
Is this real? (Leslie)
Holy shit. We have to talk strategy. Call me ASAP. (Jane)
What’s going on over there? Brent just showed me a picture of you and Rafael on Twitter. (Pris)
Don’t read the comments! (Leslie again)
Are you okay? Will you please call me when you can? (Rafael)
Nina called Rafael. He picked up on the first ring.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. No greeting, just that. “I shouldn’t have grabbed your hand. We should’ve just sat there and had our picture taken. I made it worse. I wasn’t thinking.”
Rafael’s voice was heavy with apology. Nina could hear it through the phone. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s not your fault.”
“It is,” Rafael insisted. “I should’ve been thinking about the end result of those photographs. I’m just . . . I’m not used to it yet. Was Tim very upset? Jane just practically crucified me.”
Nina thought about the media, the paparazzi really—there was a difference. Her father used them to his benefit, to the Gregory Corporation’s benefit. He knew how to play them, what to say to whom, how to achieve the desired outcome. He’d trained her to think that way, but she hadn’t been thinking. Not where Rafael was concerned.
There was a bench in a small park across the street. Nina sat down on it.
“It’s funny. He was livid at first, and then he wasn’t,” Nina said. “He told me he wanted to kiss this woman Casey at his office. That it was normal to want to kiss other people, no matter who you were with, as long as you didn’t do it. I . . . I don’t know what to make of it all.”
Rafael was quiet. In the silence, Nina realized she’d just told Rafael she wanted to kiss him. Before the conversation had a chance to veer off in that direction, she asked, “What do you think?”
She could picture him running his hand through his hair on the other end of the phone. “I don’t think you want my advice, Palabrecita,” he said.
A late-night pigeon cooed somewhere behind her. “I think I probably know what it would be,” she said, thinking once more about what it felt like to have Rafael’s arms around her on the bench, the electric feeling she got when she was near him. What did he say it was? Adrenaline and cortisol.
“I’m just going to say one thing,” he said, “which is that since I met you, I haven’t wanted to kiss anyone but you.”
Nina took a deep breath. She thought about kissing Rafael and goose bumps rose on her arms. She stopped herself from thinking about it.
“What did you tell Jane?” she asked.
Rafael sighed. “I told her we’re just friends, of course. That you were helping me out. That the media was reading into things that weren’t there.”
Nina thought about her night with Rafael. She thought about how their conversation felt easy and comfortable. How her body thrilled when she looked at him, when their hands touched, when his lips were on her temple. She thought about the photograph of the two of them. The way he looked at her. The media was right.
“Good answer,” she said.
“Nina—” he started.
Nina could tell she didn’t want to hear what was going to come after that, so she jumped in, cutting him off. “What did Jane say?” she asked.
Rafael shifted focus. “She said that if that’s the case, we could ignore it completely, but that if we do, it might distract from the campaign.”
“She’s not wrong,” Nina said. “We should probably just issue a statement. And then not say anything more.”
“Yeah,” Rafael said.
She looked up at the lights of the city that twinkled like stars, all those people Rafael wanted to lead—wanted to help—tucked into their apartments, their lamps glowing strong and steady. “If anything were to . . .” She swallowed, not sure if she should finish that sentence. But then she did. “If anything were to happen between us, it shouldn’t happen until after the election anyway,” she said, knowing that she was giving him the idea that something could happen. “Even if we see each other as friends now, the media will see me as a staffer.”
“I never saw you that way,” he said. “To me, you were always an equal.”
Nina sighed. The truth was more complicated for her. “It doesn’t change what we were, though. And that’s all they’ll hear.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. “So . . . friends for another month? And then we can see?”
“And then we can see,” she echoed.
She had to figure out what she wanted. She and Tim could probably get past this—they had enough history, enough of a foundation that it could be fixed. It would take work. It wouldn’t be easy. It was doable, though. But was that what she wanted her life to look like?
She had a month. Then she’d see.
55
The next morning, Nina called Caro first thing, approving the menu for the fund-raiser and explaining how the media had blown everything out of proportion. Caro had seemed to believe her, but Nina could sense that there was something else Tim’s mom wanted to say. Something she might have said if Nina weren’t dating her son.
Then Nina started reviewing how much money the Gregory restaurants spent on vegetables each day, which seemed astronomical. She wanted to know how many of those vegetables were used, and how many went to waste. And what the profit margin was on each of the dishes. She wished someone would locate those Manxome Consulting reports. As she went through the spreadsh
eets slowly and methodically, she stuck Post-it notes with questions everywhere. She even climbed into the lofted storage space in her apartment to pull down some of her business school textbooks, glad she’d decided not to send them out to the East Hampton house, where anything she and her father didn’t really need went to retire.
Then Jane called.
“Hi there,” Nina said, when she picked up the phone.
“I’m surprised you didn’t call me the moment you woke up,” was Jane’s reply.
Nina took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Rafael said that you were going to issue a statement, and there wouldn’t be any more trouble,” Nina responded. “I figured you didn’t need me bothering you. It was just a business dinner. And the hug—we were happy.”
Jane was silent for a moment. “Am I going to look like an asshole tomorrow or next week or next month if I put out a statement that says that nothing is happening between the two of you? Is a photograph going to appear, or a voice mail or text exchange that someone hacked, making me look like an idiot?”
Nina thought back to the night before, to what she’d said, to what he’d said, to what their texts read. “We haven’t as much as kissed each other,” Nina answered. She was pivoting. “You know I’m with Tim.”
“So if I’m quoted as saying, ‘Rafael O’Connor-Ruiz and Nina Gregory have a purely professional relationship,’ would I be lying?” Jane pressed.
“Well,” Nina said. “I might use the word friends, instead.”
“Shit,” Jane responded. “Are you fucking kidding me? We’ve put in too many hours for too many days for this . . . if you screw everything up because you couldn’t keep your goddamn hands off the candidate . . . Don’t do this to me, Nina. I swear to God, if he loses this election because the two of you—”
“We’re not,” Nina said. “Jane. Relax. I’d never do anything to mess up the campaign. You know me. Rafael and I are friends now. Just friends.”
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