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“Tiff. Please be nice.”
“I’m always nice,” Tiffany said, which was a lie, and walked off toward the kitchen.
Chapter Fifty-One
Nicole’s room looked exactly the way she’d left it at Thanksgiving, which was exactly the way she’d left it the summer before college. There was the canopy bed, the window seat with the cushions her mother had picked out when she was thirteen, and the bookshelves stacked two deep, because even at home she couldn’t help herself. Her old paintings, the bad ones from middle school and high school, still hung where her mother had framed and hung them, a whole wall of the things, and Nicole had stopped being embarrassed by them about a year ago.
She unpacked fast, hung up her dresses, put her things in the bathroom, and fixed her lipstick. She checked herself in the mirror and told herself it was going fine. Mama Gussie hadn’t thrown him out. Her mother hadn’t said anything cutting. MJ was behaving. And Tiffany hadn’t met him yet, so technically, Tiffany hadn’t been rude to him yet.
Fine. It was going fine.
Then she went back downstairs and down the long hall to the guest wing at the far end of the house, past the formal living room and the library and her father’s office, which nobody had touched since September. The door was shut. Nicole didn’t let herself look at it.
The guest room door was open. Drew’s duffel sat unzipped at the foot of the bed, and Drew was over by the window with his hands in his pockets, looking out at the back lawn.
It was a nice room. There was a big four-poster bed with about nine pillows on it, a fireplace with a fire already laid, a sitting area by the window, and its own bathroom with a clawfoot tub and towels folded so perfectly they looked like nobody was ever supposed to use them.
“You know you’re allowed to sit down, right?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t move. “This room is bigger than the whole downstairs of my parents’ house.”
Nicole didn’t know if he was exaggerating, and she didn’t ask.
“My ma could fit her whole kitchen in that bathroom. I’m not even kidding.” He nodded at the fireplace. “And there’s a fireplace. In a bedroom.”
“There’s one in mine too.”
“Yeah, I bet there is.” He sat down on the edge of the bed, and it didn’t creak. He looked up at her. “Your mom’s nice.”
“I told you she would be.”
“Yeah. You also said nice isn’t the same as liking me.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “She asked if I needed anything. Then she asked how long I was staying, like she didn’t know. Then she looked at my face and said she hoped it didn’t hurt too much. That’s it. She was real polite about the whole thing.”
“That’s my mother.”
“I couldn’t tell if she was being nice or if she was trying to figure out what she’s gonna say at my funeral.”
Nicole laughed, and it came out of her before she could stop it. “Both, probably.”
“Great.” But he was smiling now, a little. “Your grandma, though. I like her.”
“She threatened you.”
“Yeah, and she meant it. My ma would’ve done the same thing.” He stood up. “And your brother’s actually not that bad, when he’s not on the phone giving me shit.”
“He’s on his best behavior. I made him promise.”
“Promise what?”
“To keep his mouth shut about the agent stuff.” She shrugged when his eyebrows went up. “My mother doesn’t need one more reason. And you’ve got enough people pulling at you right now without my whole family getting in on it.”
Drew didn’t say anything to that. He just nodded, slow, and she watched him think about it, about her mother, about what it might look like from where Roxanne Wright stood. Some athlete her daughter had been fighting over in hotels, whose name was all over the sports pages, and who her son was trying to sign, if she ever found out. Then he let it go.
“Okay,” he said. “So what now?”
“Now I give you the tour. Get your coat.”
They went out the back, through the sunroom and onto the terrace, and the cold hit them hard enough that Drew said, “Jesus,” and zipped his jacket up to his chin. It was coming up on four o’clock, and the sun was already low behind the trees, with half the lawn in shadow. The grass crunched under their shoes where the frost hadn’t melted, and the woods behind the house had gone dark and gray, the trees all bare except for a few holly bushes along the edge.
