Chapter 1 #2
Olivia was sitting on one of the lounge chairs, legs tucked up under her oversized hoodie, hood up, sleeves hanging flaccid and empty at her sides.
When she was a kid, their parents called it “going turtle.” No matter how old she got or how professional the rest of her wardrobe was, there was always room in the back of her closet for a sweatshirt that trailed below her knees, ready to provide armor against the first sign of distress.
She craned her head to look at Merritt but turned back without saying anything. Her face looked pale and tired. Merritt settled on the wicker chair next to her.
“How did Dev take it?”
Olivia looked down at her socks, which were poking out from the hem of her sweatshirt. “He’s really excited. We called all the parents, everyone was crying. It’s the first grandkid on his side, too.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Olivia rested her head on her knees and closed her eyes tightly, her brows knitting together. Her shoulders rose and fell in a jagged stutter.
“Are you thinking about Dad?” Merritt asked, surprising herself with how softly it came out, almost childlike.
Olivia nodded without opening her eyes, a single tear sliding down her cheek.
Her throat tightened, and when she spoke again, the words were raspy with emotion. “He would’ve been really happy.”
Olivia nodded again, a short burst. “He would’ve been a great grandpa.” Her voice was thick, too.
Twenty-five years after their father’s death, the waves of grief came less frequently, the ocean calm more often than not, but they still had the power to knock her off her feet.
It overwhelmed her, that shared ache she knew they were both feeling, how even the happiest moments were tainted by the reminder of how fucking unfair it was that he was gone and their lives kept going anyway.
Merritt blinked rapidly, then cleared her throat. “I’m so sorry, Liv. For spoiling it.”
Olivia shook her head. “It’s okay. It’s too big for you to spoil. Nice try, though.” The corners of her mouth turned up slightly as she dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “I should know better than to tell you secrets by now.”
Merritt didn’t respond, just tilted her head back, taking in the ink-black sky through the skylight.
It seemed unthinkable that it was the same one she’d looked up at in LA, muddled with smog and light pollution.
Out here, there were so many stars that her brain struggled to process them all.
She looked back down again before she got dizzy.
“I found out something else at the appointment,” said Olivia, and Merritt glanced over at her, too quickly. “I’m having twins.”
Merritt’s eyes widened, her worry dissipating as quickly as it had arrived. “Really? They can tell that early?”
“It’s not that early. I’m ten weeks. Apparently, the chances go way up if you’re a fraternal twin.”
Most people were surprised to find out that Merritt and Olivia were related at all, let alone twins.
They were the same height and roughly the same build, but the similarities ended there.
Olivia’s features were soft and delicate, bearing little resemblance to Merritt’s angular, exaggerated ones, and while Merritt had hidden under an unruly mop of dark brown hair practically since birth, Olivia’s was straight and fine and pale as cornsilk.
Even once it had darkened in adulthood, she still bleached it that same color, which she wore in a sleek bob just below her jawline.
But their most striking difference was their eyes—Merritt’s were brown like their father’s, and Olivia had inherited their mother’s, light blue and eerily clear (a source of burning jealousy for Merritt during their childhood).
Aside from their physical appearances, they’d grown into polar opposites as teenagers.
Olivia had excelled in both academics and athletics: she was varsity field hockey captain, valedictorian, and had a full ride to Princeton for undergrad, graduating with honors.
As for Merritt, who’d excelled at none of those things, she was just grateful her own gifts had been distributed in such a way that nobody really remembered she’d never graduated high school.
Living together over the past two years had brought them closer than ever, though, and despite how dissimilar they were in so many ways, there was no one on earth that Merritt understood better, had more fun with, or loved harder than her sister.
There was also, if she was being honest with herself, no one she’d hurt more deeply.
“Wow. Lucky them,” said Merritt, and she meant it, even as she shook off another residual shudder of guilt. She sighed. “I am sorry, though. I’ve just…really loved living here.”
Olivia’s voice was dreamy and lethargic. “Yeah. Us, too. Having you. It’s been nice.” She paused. “Mostly.”
Merritt laughed. “I guess I deserve that.” She rubbed her hands over her goosebump-covered upper arms, the chill creeping through the glass. “Maybe I should just sell the house and go back to LA.”
Olivia lifted her head, peering out from under her hood. “What? Why would you do that?”
Merritt shrugged. “I don’t know. Living with you was supposed to be kind of a transitional thing. And now I have to figure out what the rest of my life is going to look like. If I settle down here for real, is that just, like…running away?”
“Running away from what? What’s in LA for you anymore?”
Merritt considered it. What was in LA, besides relationships she’d ruined, bridges she’d burned, and the smoking rubble of her career?
And, an even more intimidating thought to contemplate: what could be out here for her, if she was brave enough to build it?
“Nothing,” she said on an exhale. “I guess I should figure out what needs to happen with the house. Get that whole process started.”
“When’s the last time you were over there?”
“I have no idea. Last summer, maybe? Remember I had that shitty contractor from Silverton, and then I never got around to finding someone else.”
“You should call Niko.”
Merritt’s stomach flipped. “What?” She tried to keep her voice casual.
“Niko. You should do a walk-through with him. I bet he could take care of half of that stuff himself for cheap, and he can give you names for whatever he can’t do. He literally knows everyone.”
Merritt bit her lip. “Maybe. I don’t want it to be weird.”
Olivia’s brow furrowed. “What? Why would it be weird?”
Merritt hesitated.
Merritt had first met Nikolaos Petrakis in her shower. She hadn’t been living at Olivia’s for long, a month at most. She’d pushed open the bathroom door, draped loosely in a towel with her hair piled on top of her head, and there he was.
“Heard you needed it a little harder in here,” he’d said, grinning, hands stretched above his head, well-muscled biceps flexing as he reached up to adjust her showerhead with a wrench.
When Merritt replayed it later, she usually said something witty in response.
Maybe something about the unexpectedly porn-ish vibe of the whole scenario, right down to his opening line—even though, thankfully, he’d delivered it so cheerfully that she could believe the sleazy double entendre was somehow unintentional.
What she actually said was “Guh” as she dashed out of the bathroom, slamming her bedroom door behind her.
She flopped onto her bed, heart racing, suddenly recalling her breakfast conversation with Olivia about someone coming by to fix the water pressure in her shower, which had recently slowed to a trickle.
Merritt had only stopped by her bathroom to collect her toiletries to go use the one upstairs, like she had for the past week.
But Olivia had neglected to mention that “someone” would be so…
well. Merritt had only gotten a brief look at him, but she’d seen enough pieces to put together that he was attractive, in an obvious sort of way.
Not her type, of course. But objectively, sure.
That didn’t make her any happier about walking in on him when she was millimeters away from slipping a nip.
A deep voice came from outside her door, the hint of laughter in it making her cheeks burn.
“Hey there.”
She quickly calculated the odds of him believing she wasn’t in there, or maybe that she’d decided to take a spontaneous nap. Probably zero.
“Um. Hi,” she squeaked. “Sorry. I didn’t—sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. I thought Olivia told you I was coming. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“She did. And you didn’t. I was just…surprised.”
A pause.
“I’m Niko, by the way.”
Another pause.
“You must be Merritt.”
“That’s me.” Was she being rude, talking to him through the door like this without coming out? Should she throw on some clothes, or just go back out half-naked? She sat helplessly on the bed, towel clutched to her chest, paralyzed with anxiety.
“I should be done in here pretty soon and then I’ll get out of your way.” He paused again. “I didn’t see anything, by the way.”
“Oh. Cool.” Oh, cool? She grimaced to herself.
“All right, well. See you around.” He was definitely laughing now. She heard his footsteps retreat back to the bathroom.
His words proved prescient: After that, he was everywhere.
At Dev’s poker night. At her and Olivia’s birthday party.
At the coffee shop. At the grocery store.
At the dispensary. At her favorite yoga class.
But that was to be expected, in a small vacation town with an even smaller number of year-round residents.
If she were a different person, she would’ve been able to recover seamlessly from their first awkward meeting, laugh and joke and pivot into friendly acquaintanceship, if not actual friendship.
But instead, when she’d seen him approaching in the cereal aisle, her mind went blank.
Even though she should’ve been used to it by now, something about a stranger unexpectedly coming up to talk to her when she was out and about always triggered a subconscious panic.
Not that he was a stranger, exactly, but still.
She couldn’t do anything besides smile tightly, nod in acknowledgment, then drop her head to examine the organic Special K knockoff in her hand.
Thankfully, he’d gotten the hint, nodded back, kept going, and that was that.
But even if she didn’t talk to him, their regular run-ins provided her with almost too many opportunities to take a detailed inventory of exactly what he looked like, after their first split-second encounter had denied her the chance.
She tried to keep her observations as impartial as possible.
He had dark eyes and darker hair that fell over his forehead in shaggy, unruly curls.
Skin bronzed by the sun. Cheekbones and jawline that were geometrically agreeable.
A physique that corresponded to active hobbies and a job in manual labor.
He wasn’t especially tall—five-nine at most—but he was brawny in the most literal beefcake-paper-towel-mascot sense of the word.
He was so beautiful he was almost boring, rescued only by a handful of jolie laide imperfections.
His nose was disproportionately large, though she begrudgingly admitted it suited him more than a smaller one would.
One eye was a little bit bigger than the other, if she looked long enough from exactly the right angle.
His jaw was lightly pocked with faded acne scars—when it wasn’t hidden by an impressive beard in the winter.
She cataloged these tiny flaws without even realizing it, like they would eventually add up to some equation that, if solved, would liberate her from her attraction to him.
She couldn’t figure out why his overbearing handsomeness flustered her so much.
She’d spent years in LA in the company of people who’d hoarded more than their fair share of genetic blessings, without anyone getting under her skin like he did.
Besides, she’d never thought of herself as shallow enough to have her head turned by looks alone.
Many of her past relationships had been with people she’d found perfectly average-looking at first, where her physical attraction bloomed out of appreciation for their talent or intellect—then turned to repulsion by the time they broke up.
But the thing that unsettled her the most was the way he looked at her.
When she went to pick up her latte at the counter, when she rolled up her mat at the end of class, when she wandered through the living room during their card games.
It was different, somehow, from the way most other people gawked at her.
A little too familiar, coming from someone she’d barely exchanged five sentences with.
Not leering. Not disrespectful. But familiar.
Of course, she couldn’t begin to explain any of that to Olivia right now. Olivia would just roll her eyes and tell Merritt she was being ridiculous. Which she was.
“Forget it. You’re right. I’ll call him tomorrow,” Merritt said with a sigh.