Then Jane called.
“Hi there,” Nina said, when she picked up the phone.
“I’m surprised you didn’t call me the moment you woke up,” was Jane’s reply.
Nina took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “Rafael said that you were going to issue a statement, and there wouldn’t be any more trouble,” Nina responded. “I figured you didn’t need me bothering you. It was just a business dinner. And the hug—we were happy.”
Jane was silent for a moment. “Am I going to look like an asshole tomorrow or next week or next month if I put out a statement that says that nothing is happening between the two of you? Is a photograph going to appear, or a voice mail or text exchange that someone hacked, making me look like an idiot?”
Nina thought back to the night before, to what she’d said, to what he’d said, to what their texts read. “We haven’t as much as kissed each other,” Nina answered. She was pivoting. “You know I’m with Tim.”
“So if I’m quoted as saying, ‘Rafael O’Connor-Ruiz and Nina Gregory have a purely professional relationship,’ would I be lying?” Jane pressed.
“Well,” Nina said. “I might use the word friends, instead.”
“Shit,” Jane responded. “Are you fucking kidding me? We’ve put in too many hours for too many days for this . . . if you screw everything up because you couldn’t keep your goddamn hands off the candidate . . . Don’t do this to me, Nina. I swear to God, if he loses this election because the two of you—”
“We’re not,” Nina said. “Jane. Relax. I’d never do anything to mess up the campaign. You know me. Rafael and I are friends now. Just friends.”
“You’d better be telling me the truth,” Jane said.
“I am,” Nina said. “I am.”
Jane hung up, and then a text came through from Rafael.
Sorry about that, it said. If it makes you feel any better, she said worse to me.
Nina didn’t usually use emojis with anyone other than Tim, but she sent back the one with very big eyes and pink cheeks.
You said it, he replied.
Nina paced around her apartment. Jane wasn’t right. She hadn’t screwed up Rafael’s campaign. Or had she? She’d already screwed up her relationship with Tim. And she was afraid she was going to screw up the Gregory Corporation—if her father hadn’t done that already. Why not screw up a campaign, too?
Her loft felt tiny. There wasn’t enough air, enough space to breathe.
She picked up the phone and called Priscilla.
“Lunch at Ippudo?” she asked when Pris picked up the phone. “In, like, two hours?”
“Would love to,” Priscilla answered, “especially because I want to know the story behind that photograph of you and Rafael, but I’ve got a spin class in an hour and a half and I scored the best bike. Want to come?”
Nina was not a fan of spin class. All the effort and you stayed in the same spot the whole time. But she needed to get out of the apartment. “Sure,” she said. “The cycle studio near your place?”
“Always,” Pris said. “I’ll sign you up.”
“Thanks,” Nina replied, hanging up the phone.
She put on some running gear that seemed spin class appropriate, and then dialed Leah, who was in charge of the Gregory restaurants, saying she was trying to get to know the company a little better and would love to ask some questions. Leah’s voice seemed to take on an extra-professional tone when Nina asked her first question.
“We fill the Dumpster about twice a week, and most of that is food waste,” she said.
“And the Dumpster is how big?” Nina asked.
“I think it’s four cubic yards,” Leah answered. “It’s mostly food people leave on their plates. And rolls. We throw away so many rolls. Once we put the basket on the table, they’re done.”
Smaller portions, Nina thought, personal rolls instead of a basket, so the customer could say no. But someone must’ve thought of this before and rejected it.
“What about the food that goes bad before it’s eaten? How much of that is there?” Nina asked.
“Not a ton, but some. We’re pretty good at predicting how much we’ll need, but it’s not a hard science.”
Donations, Nina thought. Tax write-offs maybe.
“Thanks,” she said. “I might call back later.”
Nina flipped again to the pages with the Manxome Consulting line items. She couldn’t find a listing for them anywhere on the Internet. Maybe she’d ask her father’s lawyer to look the company up in the Corporation and Business Entity Database. Or maybe she’d ask Rafael. He should have access, too. She really wanted to see what they had to say. Not reinvent the wheel if she didn’t have to.
Nina jumped in a cab to head across town.
56
After the spin class, Nina and Pris sat down in the cycle studio’s juice bar, Pris with carrot juice and Nina with a mango smoothie.
“I didn’t realize how close you and Rafael were when you asked me to throw that fund-raiser for his campaign,” Pris said, as she tightened her ponytail.
“We weren’t,” Nina said. “And we’re not all that close now, really. The photo made us look closer than we are.” She was lying to Pris, but she’d learned years ago from her father that if you were selling one story to the press, you didn’t tell the real story to anyone who didn’t need to know it. Pris didn’t need to know. Leslie had always been an exception, since she was so far removed from New York society. Pris, though, was at the center of it.
“But Tuesday’s fund-raiser in your dad’s—I mean, your—hotel? Brent and I can come, by the way.”
“Oh good! I’m so glad,” Nina said. There had been lots of RSVPs already. About seventy-five couples had said yes so far. Nina wondered how much of it was a morbid curiosity to see how Joseph Gregory’s daughter handled the company’s first corporate event without him. “And I’m doing that because Christian asked—and because my dad probably would have.” She shrugged.
“Yeah.” Pris took another sip of her juice and winced slightly. “I always feel so good ordering carrot juice, but then when I go to drink it, I remember that it doesn’t really taste that good at all.”
For the first time that day, Nina laughed. That sentence right there illustrated why she’d stayed friends with Pris for so many years. Pris wasn’t the kind of person who would pretend to like carrot juice if she didn’t, and there are so many people in the world who would.
“Want to split this smoothie?” Nina asked.
Priscilla looked around. “If you don’t tell my trainer,” she whispered with a wink.
Nina laughed again and slid her smoothie over so it was halfway between her and Pris. “Secret’s safe with me,” she said.
Pris dipped her straw into the smoothie and took a sip. “Oh God, that’s so much better,” she said after she swallowed. “Did you pierce your ear?”
Nina lifted her hand to touch her piercing. “I did,” she said. “Tim hates it.”
Pris inspected Nina from a few different angles. “I don’t,” she said. “I like it. It makes you seem multilayered. More than you appear at first glance.”
Nina found herself laughing once more. Pris always had that effect on her. “Are you saying that I’m boring?”
“No,” Priscilla said. “Not that you are boring, just that sometimes you might appear boring.”
Nina stopped laughing. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“To be honest, your clothes are always nice but kind of bland.”
“My clothes?” Nina looked down. She was wearing black capri leggings and a gray tank top. Pris’s top was turquoise.
“You just . . . you seem to dress to blend in instead of to stand out. You always have,” Pris said, taking another sip of the smoothie.
Did she? Nina thought about it. Most of her clothing was black, gray, navy, brown, cream. Elegant but sensible. Respectable. Why did she dress that way?
“Maybe I should change that, then,” Nina said. “You have time to go shopping?”
57
They went back to Pris and Brent’s new apartment to shower.
“Brent wants to start trying,” Pris said as they walked by the door leading to the wing waiting for the children the two of them planned to have one day.
Nina smiled at her friend. “That’s exciting,” she said. “You two are going to have the cutest, blondest baby on the Upper East Side.”
Pris laughed. “I haven’t said anything to anyone else yet. Not even Hayley.”
Nina reached out and squeezed Pris’s hand. “I won’t say a word. I’m glad you told me—it’s nice to have something happy to think about.”
Pris squeezed Nina’s hand back, then led her to the guest bedroom, which had an en suite bathroom. “I’ll grab you some clothes,” she said.
While Nina showered, she thought about the babies she’d been imagining she’d have with Tim. The ones she’d expected would be friends with Pris and Brent’s kids. She’d assumed they’d spend time together out in East Hampton, maybe ski together on family vacations. If they had girls, they’d send them to Brearley, and the boys would go to Collegiate. As much as Nina thought she was different from her father and her friends, she was the same, too. If she and Tim broke up, she’d lose that whole life. She’d lose those kids. And TJ and Caro as second parents. And all of the traditions they’d built up over the years. The intimacy, too, of knowing someone as well as she and Tim knew each other.