A taxi honked behind Nina, and she took a moment to wipe her eyes before she stepped on the gas. There was no way she was going to let sorrow end her life. She would not let history repeat itself. Not now. Not ever.
45
It felt good to be home. Nina had taken out her contact lenses and filled up her bathtub with some fancy bubble bath Leslie had sent over a few months before. An “I saw this and thought of you” gift, which was Leslie’s thing. She didn’t celebrate Christmas and sent beautiful cards on birthdays but said that people got so many gifts then, it seemed silly to add to the pile. Instead, she bought presents when she saw things she thought her friends and family would like. It was actually nice—gifts arriving when you least expected them.
Nina looked at her naked body in the bathroom mirror and thought: This body is now engaged to Tim. It was a crazy thought. Yesterday her body had been her own; now it felt like it was partially his. It was amazing to think about how quickly a world could shift. Yesterday I had a parent, today I don’t. Yesterday I was working on a campaign, today I’m not. Yesterday Tim was just my present, today he’s my future. It hurt her brain to think about it.
Nina climbed into the bathtub, letting herself disappear under the bubbles. She hadn’t brought a book into the tub with her. Instead, she turned down the lights in the bathroom and tried to focus on relaxing. She relaxed her toes, her feet, her ankles. She relaxed her calves, her knees, her thighs. The only thing she found she couldn’t relax was her mind, no matter how long she sat there counting her breaths, closing her eyes, imagining thoughts floating out of her head like balloons. She ran her fingers down her body, the way she had with Tim the night before, but instead of his naked body, Rafael appeared in her mind. Nina opened her eyes. Tried to float that thought out of her head like a balloon, too. That thought that never should have been there to begin with. This bath was the opposite of relaxing. So when she heard her phone ring in her bedroom, Nina took the excuse to get out of the tub.
She wrapped herself in a bathrobe and checked to see who the missed call was from. Leslie. Nina called her right back.
“Hey,” Leslie said, after the first ring. “Cole made me promise I would call you today. He was reminding us last night about how the two of you made pizza dough out of beer last time you visited. He’s asked me every day this week if I thought you needed another lollipop.”
Nina laughed. “Tell him I’ll come visit soon,” she said. “We can make pizza again. And tell him he must’ve sent me a magical lollipop, because no matter how many times I lick it, it doesn’t disappear.”
“Ha,” Leslie said. “I’d better not, or he’ll want to buy all the lollipops in the store to see if he can find another magical one.”
“Fair,” Nina said. “No magical lollipop.” She’d been remaking her bed as she talked to Leslie, and now she sat down on top of the blanket. “So, I did something yesterday. But it’s a secret.”
Nina heard a horn honk. Leslie must’ve been driving. “I’m gonna need more than that,” Leslie said.
“I told Tim I’d marry him.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. A split-second pause. And then Leslie’s voice came through. “Congratulations! How did he propose?”
Nina straightened the pillows on her bed. “With a beautiful ring and a gingerbread house like the one we built a long time ago,” she said. “He told me that he thinks we belong together. And my dad gave him his blessing.”
“Is that why you’re marrying him? Because it’s what your dad wanted?” Leslie’s words were slow, careful.
“No,” Nina said, feeling defensive, refusing to think about Leslie’s question. She thought about forks and napkins for a moment to keep her temper in check. Calmer, she said, “I like my life with Tim. And I love him. I always have. It all makes sense.”
“That’s great, then,” Leslie answered. Nina could hear the smile in her voice. “I’m glad you’re happy, Neen. You deserve it.”
Nina didn’t feel happy, though. And she felt like she had to confess. “I’m not sure if I am, actually,” she said. “At least not completely.”
“Hm?” Leslie replied. Nina could tell her friend was trying to figure out what her role was in this conversation. Was she supposed to be supportive? Critical?
“I was,” Nina explained. “When he first proposed, I was. But then I think I made a mistake last night. I touched myself in front of him. And took charge. In bed. And I thought maybe he liked it, but then it turned out he didn’t. Or at least he said it wasn’t ‘us.’ What if I want it to be, though? At least, sometimes.”
“Well,” Leslie said, “have you tried to talk to him about it? Tell him what you want? Couples do lots of things in bed. You know that game Sextris that Vijay showed me when we first started dating? The one that was like Tetris but with humans? We once spent a week trying every position that made the game pieces disappear.”
Nina thought about how she wanted to phrase her response. “Do you remember that summer I dated Alex? In D.C.?”
“Of course,” Leslie said. “The Summer of Freedom. I liked that guy.”
“I wasn’t Joseph Gregory’s daughter that summer. No one in D.C. really cared who I was. And I let myself do whatever, because it didn’t seem to matter so much—where I went, how I dressed, what I said. But then when I got a job back in New York, and I was with everyone who knew my dad, that part of me kind of went away. Or I didn’t let it out. Tim has certainly never seen it.”
Leslie honked her horn again. “So what changed?” Her turn blinker was on. Nina could hear it clicking rhythmically. “Last night, I mean.”
Nina knew the answer to this one. She’d been thinking about it all day. “I found out that my dad had an affair,” Nina said. “And I just . . . I don’t know. I needed to disengage. I feel like I’ve been behaving a certain way for my whole life because it’s what my dad expected of me, and it turns out he didn’t follow the same rules. He held me to a higher standard than he did himself, or something. And now everything feels so complicated.” She was thinking not just about Tim, but about Rafael, too, who’d popped into her mind in the bath. And before then, too. She got the feeling he wouldn’t mind if she touched herself when she was with him. She stopped herself from thinking more about it.
Nina heard Leslie’s car engine turn off and the doors unlock. She heard her friend take a deep breath. “Well, all relationships are complicated. I’m sure Tim could get used to you wanting to fuck more creatively, if that’s all this is. But I feel like there’s a lot more to unpack here.”
Nina massaged her forehead. “I don’t know, Les,” she said. “I just feel like the whole world is changing and I don’t like it.”
They kept talking, and while nothing was worked out, nothing changed, it made Nina feel better knowing Leslie was there, listening, on the other end of the phone.
46
A few nights later, Nina was placing the water glasses on the table when the elevator door opened into her living room, revealing Tim.
Tim had gotten busy with work the last few days, so she’d spent her time looking at balance sheets on her own, calling the heads of the different departments, catching herself up on the business, starting with the most recent year’s results and working backward. She did call Irv, but just to get a rundown of the business from his perspective. She knew a lot just from growing up around the hotels, living with her dad, having conversations with Caro and TJ, all those classes at business school. But there was more to learn—more than she’d let herself believe. Now she was learning it. She was doing it for her father, while at the same time wondering if she’d ever really known him at all. She wasn’t sure if she’d found the thing he’d wanted to talk about, but she was discovering a lot about the company that made her question him even more. The marketing seemed like it was from a different decade. The decisions didn’t quite make sense. Was he really the brilliant businessman everyone made him out to be? And what about TJ? Where was he in all of this?
“Hey,” Tim said. “That smells delicious.” Nina smiled. For the last few hours she’d been cooking. Chicken sautéed with apples, onions, garlic, and thyme. She’d paired it with an autumn salad and a freshly baked loaf of bread.
There really was something rewarding about putting a meal together. About following a recipe, measuring ingredients, chopping and dicing, and then ending up with exactly what you’d planned. Nina never made up recipes as she went, adding this, switching out that. For her, the joy was in the rules and the result of following those rules to the letter. Today, though, she’d thrown some hot pepper flakes into the bread. She’d added some pomegranate seeds to the autumn salad. And was embarrassed by how satisfying it felt to see them there, nestled in with all the other ingredients.
Tim helped Nina bring the dishes of food to the table, then served her before he served himself.
“Thanks,” Nina said.
“Thank you,” he said. “For making me such a fantastic dinner. Though you’ve never put pomegranate seeds in salad before. New recipe?”