More Than Words

Nina ran her fingers up his chest, under his T-shirt, through the tangle of hair there, feeling the smoothness of the skin around his nipples.

Tim followed suit, running his hand across the bare skin of her stomach, trailing his fingers under her silk cami, across her breasts.

This felt right. It felt like what was supposed to happen, how she was supposed to spend her life.

Then the pressure of his hand disappeared, and it was on the hem of her shirt, a question.

Nina answered by raising her arms so he could slide it over her head. After Tim took off her shirt, he removed his own, and she could feel the heat radiating from his body.

His hand played along the waistband of her lace underwear, dipping to touch the warm skin beneath it.

She reached for him under the covers, freeing him from the confines of his cotton boxers and then stroking her fingers along the length of him.

“Oh, Nina,” he breathed, then slid his underwear down.

She did the same to hers.

And then he was inside her, moving slowly, purposefully. She joined in the rhythm of his rocking, and it felt like a slow dance, the two of them moving in time with each other to the music playing just for them.

Nina felt a pressure swelling inside her. “Right there,” she whispered.

She was close, so close.

But then Tim’s body stiffened, his mouth forming a perfect O as he groaned, and whatever was about to crest inside her faded away, receded like waves on the beach.

“Did you . . . ?” he asked.

She’d been getting there. Almost. Not quite.

She shook her head. “But it’s okay,” she said, relaxing against the pillow. “It still felt good. I don’t always.”

“I know,” he said, reaching under the covers to find his underwear and slip it back on. “But I like it better when you do.”

She laughed. “Me too,” she said, patting the blanket in search of her own underwear, then thinking better of it. “I don’t see any tissues in here. I’m going to go to the bathroom to clean up.”

“Okay,” Tim answered, laying his head down. “In case I’m asleep by the time you get back, I’ll say I love you now. And sweet dreams.”

“You, too,” Nina said, and she kissed the tip of his nose before she got out of the bed.

After the insanity and sadness of the past weeks, there was something so nice about being here with Tim, as if crossing the city limits made the rest of the world disappear. But she knew eventually they’d have to go home, and she’d have to run the Gregory Corporation. Eventually the rest of her life would start. And maybe, once it did, she’d figure out how to tell Tim she wanted to orgasm, too. Every time.

41

It was 3:22 A.M. and Nina was still awake. Tim’s arm was wrapped around her as if she were his security blanket. She knew she needed sleep, but her mind was awhirl. She stared at the lace canopy on the bed, trying to find shapes in the fabric the way she and her mother used to do with clouds on a summer day. When she closed her eyes, her thoughts kept spiraling through her mother’s death and her father’s death and marrying Tim, and not being able to tell her father, and all the new memories she’d unearthed by coming to this house. Memories she wasn’t sure if she could trust but wanted to just the same.

Nina pulled her phone into bed with her and went to her photos to look at one of her father. He had been gone barely a week, and she was already afraid she’d forget what he looked like, the exact shape of his eyebrows, the depth of the widow’s peak in his hairline. She brought him up on her screen, and immediately her eyes began to fill.

Nina wiped her tears and scrolled through more pictures. And then she got to the photo she’d taken that afternoon of the drawing she’d made for her mom. The one that made her wonder if Rafael had ever made something similar. Rafael, who might be awake now. She thought about the conversation they’d had the night her father died, how he’d offered to listen if she ever needed someone in the middle of the night. Even though Tim was here, she felt like she needed someone. Someone else who could help her untangle all her thoughts. Rafael would be good at that. But then she remembered what he’d said to her at her father’s wake: We can be whatever we want to be. She wouldn’t call him.

The photo was blurry. Even though she wouldn’t call Rafael, she might want to send him the picture, say hello. So Nina lifted Tim’s arm off her stomach and slid quietly out of bed. She padded into her parents’ bedroom and opened her mother’s drawer. When she lifted the drawing to photograph it better, she discovered a sealed envelope underneath. Nina picked it up and flipped it over. It was addressed to her father in her mother’s loopy handwriting.

Nina felt her heart race. Without giving it a second thought, she slid her finger underneath the envelope’s flap and opened up the sheaf of handwritten pages inside.

December 25, 1992

The day her mother died.

Dear Joseph,

I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how it got this bad.

Nina stopped reading. She folded the letter back up and slipped it back into the envelope. She didn’t want to know. This was private. Between her parents. For her father’s eyes only.

But maybe it had the answers she’d been wondering about. Maybe it talked about the mysterious Christmas present. Besides, her father was gone. Her mother was, too. Whose confidence was she really breaking?

Nina opened it again.

After the summer, after all we went through, all we talked about, you said you’d stop seeing her. I thought you’d do it, if not for me and Nina, then for your father and his legacy. But apparently you didn’t.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to forgive you this time.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to trust you again.

And if we separate, if we divorce, if the truth about this woman comes out, do you know how that will affect Nina? What the press will do to all of us?

I think maybe she and I should go away. To Colorado, perhaps. I’ll take a leave, and she can do the rest of the school year out there. We can say my sister needed me. Or we can figure out another cover story.

You screwed up, Joe. You really screwed up. I would say this all to your face, but I think I’d break down before I got through it, I think you might be able to convince me not to go through with it, but I need to, Joe, and I need you to know why.

There was more. There were pages more, but Nina stopped there. She couldn’t keep going.

Her father had cheated on her mother.

He’d taken what was beautiful and destroyed it.

And now Nina knew.

Her father wasn’t who she thought he was.

She couldn’t trust her memories.

She couldn’t trust him.

Could she trust anything at all?

42

Numb, Nina climbed back into bed, slipped between the sheets, and pulled Tim’s arm back over her stomach. Trying to draw comfort from his familiar solidity.

Her parents’ love story was fake. The People magazine spread framed in the lobby of the Gregory hotels was just a story they’d created. Or maybe it was something that once was true but wasn’t for a long time. A glamour they allowed the world to believe—wanted the world to believe.

She couldn’t believe her parents had done that. Had lied. Not just to the world, but to her.

Was her father too embarrassed to tell her the truth? Too ashamed? She thought about the line in her mother’s letter: I don’t know if I can ever trust you again. Could Nina trust anything her father had told her? And who was the woman? Was it someone Nina knew? Had known? Someone who came to Thanksgiving dinners? Ever? Still?

She pulled herself closer to Tim. He tightened his arm around her in his sleep and she let her body shape itself around his. Tim opened his eyes halfway.

“Morning,” he said to her.

“Not morning yet,” she told him quietly. She wondered for a moment about telling him what she’d found, but she needed to make sense of it herself first. She wanted to shut off her brain, so she pressed her lips against his. Tim responded, kissing her back tentatively. But she wanted it to feel like it did with Alex: primal, animalistic. She wanted her body to control her mind, instead of the other way around.

She pulled the blanket down so she could see all of Tim, so he could see all of her.

“Nina?” Tim said, more awake now.

Nina needed to feel hands on her body, the pressure of someone’s touch, even her own. She needed to focus on that. So she ran her fingers down the small slope of her breasts, across the muscles in her stomach, over the protrusion of her hip bones. Then she brought her fingers to her mouth and licked them before slipping them into her underwear, inside her.

She watched Tim’s erection grow. Watched him take off his boxers.

His body was all sinew and muscle, strong and hard and taut. Nina rarely saw his body the way she did now. Usually he was just Tim. Now he was an object of desire.

“I want you,” Nina said. There was an urgency in her voice. She could hear it. A desperation.

“Nina?” he asked again, his voice unsure. She’d never touched herself in front of him.

“Please,” she said. “Touch me.”

He ran his fingers down her stomach and she felt her body respond, the sensation cutting her brain and her heart out of the loop, like she’d hoped it would.