More Than Words(63)

He didn’t say anything. Nina shifted her eyes up.

There was a look on Tim’s face like she’d just punched him in the stomach. “What’s going on?” he said. “Is this your way of telling me you think I’m not up for the job? I could do it, Nina. I could do it well. I can’t believe I have to even say this. I thought you believed in me.”

Nina felt tears rushing to her eyes. She’d always hated when Tim looked that way, and hated it even more that she was the one who brought that expression to his face. “It’s not that,” she said. “I do believe in you. I think you’d do a great job. I just don’t think it’s a good idea, us working together. Me being your boss.”

“But our fathers—”

“Aren’t us,” Nina said. “They were friends.”

“Best friends,” Tim said.

“Best friends,” Nina amended.

“But aren’t we?” Tim asked.

Nina drained the glass of wine in front of her and placed it carefully on the bar. “I don’t think we are anymore,” she said, biting her lip. “I think we changed that, when we kissed each other, when we slept together. When you date your best friend, he’s not your best friend anymore. He’s your boyfriend. It’s different.”

“Your fiancé,” Tim said, mumbling the words. Then: “I’m your fiancé,” he said, loudly.

Nina pulled the ring out from where it had been hanging on its chain under her new magenta dress. She rolled it around in her fingers. The word fiancé made her uncomfortable. In all honesty, from the day after she’d told Tim she’d marry him, things hadn’t felt right. And they’d felt more and more wrong as time went on.

The old Nina wouldn’t have done anything about it. But she was her new self now. Or at least on the way to becoming her new self.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be,” she said, quietly.

She hadn’t gone into the night with this plan. It hadn’t been what she thought would happen at all, but it felt like the right thing to say. It felt true.

“Tim, I love you. I will always love you, but I don’t think I should marry you. At least not now. I don’t know who I am anymore. You keep talking about the old Nina, but I’m turning into a new one. You want me to stay the same, and I don’t want to do that. As much as I love you, I can’t compromise myself for you.”

“What does that mean?” Tim’s voice cut through the din of the bar straight into her heart. “What are you compromising? My father’s been picking up your slack while you go shopping for dresses and get your goddamn ear pierced like a teenager. What are you compromising?”

The bartender came over. “Is everything okay over here?” he asked.

“We’re fine,” Tim shot back.

But the bartender didn’t move until Nina echoed his words. “We’re fine,” she said. “It’s okay.”

He nodded and headed to the other end of the bar, but Nina could feel his eyes still on them.

“So what are you compromising?” Tim said, not as loud this time, but just as intense.

“I’m compromising the idea of being with someone who wouldn’t criticize me for that,” she said, matching his intensity. “My father just died. The last family member I had. I’m sorry if your dad has to run the business he’s getting paid to run, while I grieve my father. I’m sorry if you don’t like—what is it you don’t like, new dresses? Earrings? Pimentos and pomegranate seeds?”

“It’s not that,” Tim said.

“Then what?” Nina said. “What is it?”

Tim rubbed his face with his hand. “You know how you feel like you didn’t know your father? How you’re all off balance now because the man you thought he was wasn’t the man he actually was inside? That’s how I feel about you.” His voice broke. He was crying. “I thought I knew you. And it turns out I don’t. And it kills me that you never trusted me enough, or loved me enough, or whatever it was, to share yourself with me until now.”

Nina felt tears overflowing her eyes, too. In finding her freedom, she had hurt the person she had once loved more than anything. “But I didn’t know who I could be,” she said. “It wasn’t that I didn’t trust you. I just didn’t really know me. Not until now. And now that I’m starting to . . .”

“Now that you’re starting to, you don’t love me anymore.”

“No!” Nina said, reaching out and grabbing his hand. “That’s not true. I do love you. But I’m just not sure if I’m in love with you. Or, honestly, if you’re in love with me.”

Tim didn’t say anything. His hand was limp in hers.

“Maybe,” she ventured. “Maybe we can go back to being friends for a while? Until we figure things out?”

Tim pulled his hand away and wrapped it around his now-empty glass of vodka. He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at the glass.

“What if I don’t want to?” Tim said, so quietly that she could barely hear him. “Nina, I’ve known ever since college that I wanted to be with you. Us together was always my plan. But I wasn’t ready then. I didn’t want to start something unless I knew it could end in forever. It’s rare to get more than one chance to make a relationship work. And we were both focused on our own paths. We weren’t in the right place. And so I waited and dated other people, and I watched you date other people, always wondering if something would work, if we’d miss our chance—”