More Than Words(32)

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.