More Than Words

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 said, 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.