Chapter 11
Later that afternoon, Merritt stopped at home to shower and change, since their paint-testing adventure had, predictably, ended with most of the samples splattered all over their clothes.
They were still supposed to meet up at Off the Rails that night, but as she peeled off her shirt and stepped into the shower, she wondered if it wasn’t way past time to pump the brakes on the whole thing.
When she’d spotted Skylar leaning into the window of Niko’s truck, she’d felt a territorial jolt that rattled her to her core.
What was worse, though, was the wounded way he’d glanced over at her when she’d given him the green light to go after her.
By this point, it was obvious that he was into her—so obvious that she felt stupid for ever questioning it.
She regularly caught him staring at her with such naked puppy-dog longing that it made her stomach flutter.
Because those looks weren’t just “I want to fuck you” looks.
Those she could handle. There was something else in those looks, something sweet and aching that conjured a vision of something she definitely wasn’t, something the two of them definitely couldn’t be together.
It was easy to forget that, though, when she was with him.
Nothing about the way she responded to Niko made sense to her, and that felt dangerous.
He activated a part of her that had been lying dormant for years, the part that craved chaos, targeting him in the crosshairs of her all-consuming obsession.
She wanted so badly to believe that she’d changed, but was increasingly starting to worry that New and Improved Merritt just hadn’t been tested yet. So far, she’d managed to behave. But not enough to cut things off before they went over the edge.
If she’d abandoned any hope of keeping things professional with him, the least she could do was make sure it stayed platonic.
Merritt took her time in the shower, deep-conditioning her hair, shaving and exfoliating her body, slathering herself with lotion afterward until the air cooled and the steam evaporated from the mirror.
The house had been empty when she let herself in, but she heard voices in the hallway as she slipped back into her room to get dressed.
She wrapped her hair in a towel, threw on leggings and a sweatshirt, and headed into the living room, where Olivia and Dev were on the couch, her feet in his lap as he rubbed them.
“If it bothers you, why don’t you say something to her?” Dev was saying as Merritt walked in.
“I can’t,” Olivia protested. “I just have to get over it.”
“Get over what?” asked Merritt, trying not to let her trepidation show.
Olivia tilted her head back to look at her. “One of my direct reports at work. It feels like she’s being passive-aggressive with her emojis on Teams. Like, I’ll ask her to do something, and she’ll just send me a smiley face.”
Merritt laughed, the tension in her chest releasing. Of course they weren’t talking about her. “How would you prefer she responded?”
“I don’t know, a heart?”
“That feels unnecessarily intimate,” said Dev.
“Yeah,” said Merritt with a grin. “You want her to be like, ‘I love when you give me assignments, thank you, Work Mommy’?”
Olivia huffed at Dev’s burst of laughter, the way she always did on the rare occasion the two of them sided against her. “What do you two know, anyway? Neither of you works in a real office.”
Dev just smiled indulgently at her, but Merritt flinched, even though she knew it wasn’t meant to be an accusation. She shook it off and changed the subject. “Did you just get back from your appointment? How did it go?”
“Everything’s looking good,” said Olivia with a shrug.
“Except her blood pressure’s a little high,” added Dev. “She’s supposed to watch her stress levels.”
“Well, maybe if Carla would stop sending me so many fucking smiley faces,” Olivia grumbled. She pointed at her purse on the counter. “Can you hand me that?”
Merritt brought the bag over to Olivia, who pulled out a small printout and offered it to her. She recoiled instinctively before realizing what it was.
“God. That’s so creepy. Why do sonograms look like that now?”
“I know, the 3D ones are awful. They look like something you’d find deep in a cave,” Dev said.
Olivia scowled at him playfully. “Those are your beautiful daughters you’re talking about.”
He squeezed her shin. “You know I’ll still love them even if they look like little Gollums.”
Merritt glanced up at them, her heart beating wildly in her throat. “Daughters?”
Olivia nodded, her face softening as she held Merritt’s gaze. Merritt looked back down at the sonogram. Now that the initial shock had worn off, she actually started to get a little choked up as she studied it. “They really are beautiful,” she said quietly.
“You don’t have to say that. You’re allowed to say they might be the evidence they’ve been hiding at Area 51,” Dev deadpanned.
Olivia shoved him lightly with her foot. “No, you’re not.”
“I would never.” Merritt ducked into the kitchen to stick the sonogram on the fridge, sharing a magnet with a picture of the two of them as toddlers. When she returned, Olivia looked up at her.
“Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Are you still friends with Nora Lind?”
Merritt frowned, an uneasy frisson shooting up her spine at the mention. “Sort of. Why?”
Nora had, at one point, been one of her closest friends—and one of her oldest, of almost fifteen years.
They’d met through one of Merritt’s exes, Russell, who had directed Nora in the movie that had put him on Merritt’s radar, about a young woman struggling with a heroin addiction navigating a harrowing night in New York City.
The two of them had clicked immediately, the kind of friendship that bloomed so deep and fast they swore they must have known each other in a past life.
Nora had even played Merritt’s love interest in her first Russell-directed music video—which was immediately banned from TV.
At the time it had felt empowering, a fuck-you to her label that had encouraged her to keep her bisexuality under wraps, but in retrospect the fetishizing male gaze he’d shot it with made her cringe.
They’d drifted apart over the years, as Nora gravitated toward a quieter life of marriage, children, and a stable career on a medical procedural, while Merritt…
had gone down a different path. They’d had a major falling-out shortly before Merritt entered treatment, the details of which Merritt’s brain had thankfully erased out of self-preservation, but which was definitely all her fault.
Once she got out, Merritt had made her amends, which Nora had mercifully accepted, but they had never fully recovered. When she still lived in LA, they would catch up over dinner or coffee once or twice a year, but these days they were strictly birthday-text friends.
Of all the relationships she’d fucked up over the years, Nora was one of her biggest regrets—especially considering Nora’s parallel struggles with her alcoholic ex-husband, Ethan, whom Merritt had never warmed to.
She knew they would never get back to that kind of early-twenties closeness of few responsibilities and fewer inhibitions, but she still missed her like crazy.
“I heard that she’s about to close on a house on the mountain, not far from yours,” said Olivia. “Gloria’s her real estate agent. I wasn’t sure if it was because of you.”
A lump formed in Merritt’s throat, and she swallowed hard, failing to clear it. “No. It’s, um, not because of me. We haven’t talked in a while. That’s exciting, though. I’ll have to give her a call.”
Dev made a stifled choking sound, which he turned into a cough.
“What?” Merritt asked, glancing between Dev and an extremely amused Olivia. Dev shook his head emphatically, but Olivia ignored him.
“She’s his celebrity crush,” Olivia said with an evil grin. Dev scowled at her.
Merritt let out a surprised laugh. “How did I not know that?”
“I didn’t want to make it weird, since you know her,” he mumbled.
“Well, you’re going to have to get over it, since you’re about to be neighbors,” said Olivia, sipping her tea.
Merritt unwrapped the towel from her head, combing out her damp waves with her fingers. Olivia glanced over at her. “Are you going to be around for dinner tonight? Dev’s on deadline, and I feel like I’ve barely seen you recently.”
A pang of guilt shot through her. “I know, I’ve been so busy. With the house, and the board, and everything.”
Olivia’s smile turned fixed, and there was a brief, awkward silence. Even though Olivia must know she’d been hanging out with Niko, it certainly hadn’t been because Merritt had told her. In fact, neither of them had even mentioned his name since their conversation after yoga.
“But, yeah, I can do dinner,” she added hurriedly. “And I can cook. Have you been craving anything?”
Olivia’s eyes lit up. “Can you make that baked brie with caramelized onions again?”
Merritt laughed. “Sure. I think that’s stretching the definition of dinner, though.”
“Not if I eat all of it,” Olivia said calmly.
Merritt glanced at her phone with a grin, checking the time. “Sounds like a plan. I can go to the store now.”
“Ooh,” Olivia said, “and after dinner, we can catch up on Bottoms Up. I’ve been saving it, since Dev refuses to watch.”
“It’s true,” said Dev. “You have to draw the line somewhere. And for me, that line is a butt crack.”
“Uh,” said Merritt, “I really, really want to. But I’m kind of…going out tonight. Later this week, though, for sure,” she added in a rush.
Olivia and Dev exchanged a brief, significant glance, which confirmed that even if they hadn’t been talking about her just now, they definitely had recently. Olivia turned back to her and shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “No problem.”
But it kind of seemed like it was, in fact, a problem. A real-life passive-aggressive smiley face emoji haunting Merritt all the way back to her room.