More Than Words

Nina walked across the apartment to where her bag was sitting and unhooked his keys from her key ring. “I guess this is bye for a while, then,” she said, as she handed him the keys, tears blurring her vision.

Tim stood up.

“I guess so,” he answered.

They hugged stiffly, Nina afraid to let herself hold him the way she wanted to, realizing she no longer had the right to. Now he was just supposed to be someone she used to know.

Nina couldn’t watch as he walked out her front door.

62

A little while later, Nina left her apartment in her running clothes feeling stunned. There was a pit of guilt in her stomach that made her stop and lean against a street post, sure she would throw up. She didn’t; the guilt just ate at her. And the uncertainty. She’d made a decision her father would never have agreed with. She’d given up the man he’d imagined her marrying for more than thirty years. She’d lost her best friend.

A truck was parked in front of her with a mirror at eye level. Nina peered at herself. She hadn’t gotten all of her eye makeup off from the night before. Her eyes were swollen from crying. And her hair was stringy now, ratty in its ponytail. Nina fumbled in her runner’s backpack for a tissue and another hair tie. Even if she felt like shit, she didn’t need to look like shit. A braid might fix things a little.

She couldn’t find an elastic. But she did find her tiny Swiss Army knife, a gift from Caro for her twenty-first birthday. “Just in case you ever feel threatened,” Caro had said. Nina had never used it, but now she took out the scissor tool. Right there on the street, Nina decided it was time to cut her hair. She didn’t want to see her old self in the mirror anymore.

Chin length, she decided as she let her hair out of its ponytail. She’d made it through just a couple locks when she realized this was insane. Down the street was a hair salon.

“Can I help you?” the woman behind the front counter asked, taking in Nina’s day-old makeup and puffy eyes. “I was just opening up the shop,” she said. “We don’t take customers for another half hour.”

“I . . . I was hoping for a haircut,” Nina said.

The woman eyed her partially cut hair.

“Sometimes when something terrible happens, a new haircut is a good first step,” the woman said. “I think I can squeeze you in before my first appointment.”

She led Nina to a chair and threw a cape around her shoulders. “I’m Hannah, by the way. Hannah Lee.”

“I’m Nina,” Nina answered, leaving off her last name.

Hannah cut quickly and efficiently. As they finished up, she shook out Nina’s hair with her fingers, letting it fall back into place.

“It’s a great length on you,” she said. “Really brings out your cheekbones.”

Nina looked at herself in the mirror. She was someone else now. Her transformation was complete. Short hair, pierced ear, no Tim.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Hey,” Hannah answered. “Women have to stick together, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Nina agreed. “We do.” She thought about Leslie and Priscilla, about Caro. And she thought about her aunt. Why hadn’t she stuck around? Why hadn’t she been there for Nina after her mother died? Nina was going to find her. Talk to her and figure out why she’d disappeared. “How much do I owe you?” she asked Hannah.

“That’d usually be about sixty-five, but I’ll give it to you for fifty,” she said.

Nina nodded and handed over her credit card. “Thank you,” she said, as she took the credit card receipt and left Hannah a $200 tip, equaling out what it usually cost to get her hair done. “I really needed this.”

When Hannah took the receipt back her eyes opened wider. She looked at the name on Nina’s credit card and Nina saw her make the connection. But Hannah didn’t say anything. All she did was hand Nina back her card and a small square wrapped in foil. “This is my favorite eye makeup remover, if you want to give it a try,” she said.

Nina thanked her again and, while Hannah went to the back of the shop, Nina walked over to the mirror by the door and wiped off her eye makeup. War paint, Caro had always called makeup. “Give me a minute,” she’d say on family vacations, “I need to put on my war paint.”

Nina winced. Would she really lose Caro now? Forever? She looked in the mirror again and wished she had mascara with her. Eyeliner. Lipstick. She needed war paint. Especially if she was heading into battle on her own.

63

As Nina started walking home, her phone pinged. She wondered if it was Tim, saying maybe they could be friends after all. It was Jane.

We need to talk about last night. Can you come to HQ ASAP? Take the service elevator just in case photogs are out front.

Nina looked at the time. Eight forty-five. She wasn’t looking forward to a conversation about last night with Jane. But it had to happen.

I’ll be there in an hour, she wrote. She’d go home and get ready first. Put on her war paint.

* * *

• • •

When Nina got to campaign headquarters, she went around the back, like Jane had suggested, and texted so someone could come down and unlock the door.

While she was waiting, she started a text to Leslie and another to Pris, explaining what had happened with Tim, but before she’d gotten the words right, the door opened in front of her, and Rafael was standing just inside the entrance.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Nina said. She ducked inside, and Rafael studied her for a moment before they started walking. “New hair?” he asked, as they moved through the loading dock, toward the freight elevator.

“Mm-hm,” she said.

Rafael paused. “It looks great.”

His responses were so different from Tim’s.

“I’m sorry if I provoked your boyfriend last night,” he said. “I really didn’t mean to.”

“My ex-boyfriend,” Nina answered quietly.

Rafael looked at her as he pushed the elevator button, sympathy on his face. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Really?” she asked.

Rafael laughed as the elevator dinged. “Well, no,” he said. “But that’s what you’re supposed to say when someone tells you they’ve broken up with their boyfriend. And I know it’s a hard thing to go through, no matter what caused it.” His face turned serious again. “Was it because of me?”

Nina shook her head. “Not really,” she said. “That was maybe part of it, but there was a lot more.”

“There always is,” Rafael said.

The freight elevator opened, and the inside was covered in padding. It went all the way around, obscuring the buttons and covering the camera in the corner.

“I felt like I was in a gift box on the way down,” Rafael said, holding the side of the elevator door with one hand, letting Nina go in before him. “One marked Fragile.”

Nina walked in and leaned against the padding. It was nice to relax for a moment.

“I feel like a china figurine,” she said, closing her eyes.

“You look like you could be one, in that dress,” Rafael said. His voice was right next to Nina, and she felt his weight pressing down on the padding to her left.

She opened her eyes and turned her head.

When she did, she found that her face was so close to Rafael’s she could feel his breath on her lips. It seemed like there was a magnetic force between his mouth and hers. And just like magnets, without even realizing it was happening, Rafael’s head tilted forward and hers did, too, and then they were kissing. He tasted like cinnamon gum—spicy and sweet at the same time. Rafael ran his top teeth along her bottom lip, and she shivered. Then, as if by mutual agreement, they broke apart and looked at one another.

“I didn’t mean . . .” Rafael said, grabbing her hand. “It’s not why I came down. I didn’t know you’d broken up with Tim. I just . . .”

“I know,” Nina said, her heart beating faster, her body awash in him.

The elevator opened on the twelfth floor, and Jane was standing in front of them. Her smile fled quickly when she saw their hands intertwined. “Stop that right now and follow me,” she hissed, staring pointedly at their fingers.

Rafael and Nina separated and then followed Jane into the conference room off the elevator lobby. Nina felt chastened. She heard her father’s voice in her mind: You’re smarter than that. And she was. But sometimes it wasn’t about intelligence. Not when the heart got involved. Her father never seemed to understand that. Or maybe he did. All too well.

“Not a word,” Jane said when she shut the door behind them. Then she grabbed a napkin from the stack that sat on a table pushed up against the wall. “You,” she said to Rafael, “have her lipstick on your lips. Wipe. Now.”

“And you.” She turned to Nina. “What in the hell happened to your brain? First you tell Rafael that you think he should change campaign strategies without talking about it with me or Mac, and now you cheat on your boyfriend and lie to me—you both lie to me—about what’s going on here. No wonder there was a fiasco last night. I know you lost your dad and that’s not easy, but what the hell, Nina?”