When I reached the lobby, I immediately saw her sitting near the entrance. The first thing I noticed was that she looked completely different from the last time I had seen her. Not physically different, but the attitude was gone. The usual confident posture, the sharp expressions, the sense that she was evaluating everyone around her. Instead, she looked tense.
As soon as she saw me walking toward the desk, she stood up quickly and started talking before I even reached her. She said she needed help. The explanation came out in pieces. After Luis crashed her car, he apparently disappeared almost immediately. He stopped answering her calls, stopped responding to messages, and within a few days he had taken time off from work.
No one at their office seemed to know exactly where he was. The car, meanwhile, was still sitting at a repair shop. The damage was expensive and the insurance situation was complicated because Luis had been the one driving when it happened. Then she finally got to the point. She asked if I could help her cover the repair costs until she sorted everything out.
That was the moment I realized why she had shown up at my workplace. For a moment I honestly thought she was joking. Nina standing in the lobby of my workplace asking me for money was not a scenario I had ever imagined even during the worst parts of our relationship. She had always been extremely proud of her independence and her income. One of her favorite habits was reminding people that she never relied on anyone.
Now she was standing in front of me doing exactly that. I asked her to explain the situation properly. The repair shop had already inspected the car. The damage from the crash was worse than she expected. Front suspension, bumper, and part of the frame alignment.
The estimate was several thousand dollars. Her insurance company was still reviewing the claim because Lewis had been driving. From what she said, they were questioning whether the policy would fully cover the accident. Meanwhile, the repair shop wanted confirmation that the bill would be paid before starting the work. Lewis, on the other hand, had completely disappeared.
He stopped answering her calls the night of the crash. He stopped responding to messages from co-workers. According to Nina, he had not even shown up at the office since then. No explanation, no updates, nothing. While she explained all of this, she kept glancing around the lobby like she did not want anyone hearing the conversation.