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—”
“I think we might have,” Nina said softly.
“Maybe we can still make it work,” Tim said, leaning toward Nina. “I’ll try harder. And maybe you can try harder. And we can figure it all out. We can live the life our parents always dreamed for us.”
Nina shook her head sadly. He wasn’t even listening. “I don’t think it’ll make a difference.” She was slipping the necklace over her head. “No matter how hard we try, I don’t think it’ll work. You’re right. I’m not who you thought I was. I’m not who I thought I was. And I want to live my own life, not one that was dreamed for me by someone else.”
“Nina,” Tim said. He looked heartbroken. She felt heartbroken, too. But for the first time in a month, the low-level panic, one she couldn’t put a name to, subsided. This felt right. “We’re partners. We’re a team. We always have been.”
“Maybe we were, but . . . I’m sorry.” Nina held the ring in her hand, the beautiful ring he’d picked out just for her, with sapphires the color of her eyes. “You’re someone I love and care about and want to spend time with until we’re as old and gray as we’ll ever get. You’ve been in my life forever and I always want you there. But—”
“Then why can’t we fix this?” Tim still looked broken.
“I don’t think I can agree to marry anyone right now,” Nina said. The ring had slipped between her fingers and was dangling from her hand, swaying slightly on its chain. “At least not until I figure out who I am.”
“Is this because you found out your parents’ marriage wasn’t as wonderful as you thought it was?”
“No,” Nina said. “This is about us, about me. Not about them.”
“Is it?” he asked, quietly.
Nina thought about it. It wasn’t, but also it was. This conversation was the culmination of everything that had happened over the past month—or maybe even longer. “It’s both,” she said.
He took a deep breath. “You’re still holding that fund-raiser on Tuesday, right?” he asked.
Nina nodded.
“Let’s decide after that. And there’s no need to rush a decision about whether we should work together or not. I really believe, with all my heart, that we’re meant to be a team. In everything. I’m not ready to give up on us. Let’s try. For a few days. Let’s really try. And then we can see.”
And because she loved him. Because he was her oldest friend, Nina said yes. And she called Rafael to say she wasn’t going to be able to make it that night after all.
59
Nina and Tim spent the whole weekend together—a visit to MoMA, dinner at the Modern, a ride on the Carousel—but even though it would’ve looked to anyone on the outside like they were having a great time, Nina felt awkward, like everything was strained, like one wrong word would deflate the whole weekend. The only way she made it through was by concentrating on the fund-raiser. In her spare moments, she worked with Christian, with Caro, with Jane, making sure that everything was perfect. On Monday, she spent an hour with the bartender at Los Tortolitos creating a specialty cocktail. And she promised TJ that after the fund-raiser, she’d be there full time, ready to take over the company.
She also called her father’s lawyer and left a message with his secretary, asking if he wouldn’t mind looking up whether Manxome Consulting was still an active corporation.
* * *
• • •
And then Tuesday night came. They had 250 RSVPs, and Christian was glowing when he showed up at the hotel. Nina had arrived early, too, and Caro kept shooing her out of the way. “You’re hosting this,” she said, “not staffing it,” when she found Nina rearranging the leaves in one of the centerpieces.
Mia walked in with a couple of other people who worked advance for the campaign, and Nina stopped to say hello.
“That’s a beautiful dress,” Mia said.
Nina had put on a Badgley Mischka maxidress with an elegant floral design that looked as if it had been hand-painted on the fabric. It was one of her recent Pris purchases and made Nina feel like a living, breathing piece of art.
“Thank you,” Nina said.
Soon after, Tim appeared in a perfectly tailored three-piece suit, and the two of them circulated, saying hello to friends and acquaintances and encouraging them to try the specialty cocktail and the chef’s newest hors d’oeuvres creations.
“We’re so good at this,” Tim said to her as their paths crossed in the ballroom, a glass of scotch in his hand. “And you look gorgeous.”
“Thank you,” Nina said with a smile. Maybe this was what Tim wanted her to see. What their life could be like, would be like. As she was greeting people, though, Nina had the same feeling she did at the Saturday brunches—like she was playing a role, the part of the heiress. Though she was no longer the heiress, she realized, she was the chair of the Gregory Corporation. The realization bowled her over, and she knew she had to leave the room or she’d start to cry. She went to take a breather in the green room they’d set up down the hall.
But when she walked in, Rafael was there, practicing his speech in the mirror.
“Oh!” she said. “I’m so sorry.” It was the first time they’d seen each other since their conversation on the bench last week, and her heart raced. Cortisol and adrenaline.