Chapter 12
“You still haven’t told me about your breakup.”
Merritt drained her water glass before accepting the fresh beer Niko offered her.
Three was probably okay. She could handle three.
Despite Olivia’s ambitions, Merritt had eaten a huge chunk of the baked brie, crackers, and other assorted apps-for-dinner she’d put together, which seemed to be doing an adequate job of soaking up the first two.
Still, that was at least part of the reason she didn’t bat an eyelash before answering, even though a month ago she would’ve shut down and demurred. But then, a month ago, he probably wouldn’t even have asked.
“Which one?”
Niko set their empties on the table next to him and picked up the chalk. “The one that brought you here.”
She leaned her hip against the pool table, her eyes drifting to his hands as he chalked his cue. “Neither have you.”
“Yes, I did,” he said.
“Not that one. Your last one.”
She thought maybe she’d made a mistake when he didn’t answer, just lined up his shot. It was an easy one, but he bungled it, sending the cue ball ricocheting around the table. He must have been tipsy, too. He glanced up at her, his brows knitted together.
“Olivia told you?”
She raised one shoulder, then lowered it. “A little. The basics. You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”
He fixed her with a look she couldn’t decode. “I guess it’s only fair.”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?” A little more flirtation slipped into her tone than she’d intended. Reel it in, she admonished herself.
He swept his arm toward her and sank into a half bow. “Ladies first.”
She didn’t respond right away, taking her next shot, then crowing in victory when she knocked the ball into the pocket. Unsurprisingly, her follow-up shot was a dud, and she rested against her cue again as Niko took his turn.
It had been a long time since she’d thought about Adrian, she realized with a start.
When she’d arrived in Crested Peak two years earlier, it took only the most tangential of reminders to set her off on an extended inventory of grievances to whomever would listen.
But now she was surprised by her lack of emotion as she started to piece the well-worn story together.
“He was in my band. My guitarist.”
Niko’s brow furrowed. “I thought you were solo?”
“No, I was. I meant my backup band. He played on my records, and we toured together.”
She’d had a crush on him since the first tour, when they’d shot some rare promotional material of all of them together: Merritt in a suit and tie, her hair slicked back; the guys in the band posed around her in silk evening gowns.
Adrian had been the only one not to put up an over-the-top fuss about wearing a dress—just checked himself out in the mirror, shrugged, and headed to set.
Nothing had happened between them until she was twenty-one, though, touring her second album, their nine-year age difference slightly less eyebrow-raising by then.
“We were on and off for most of my twenties, broke up a bunch of times, dated other people in between. But I always kind of had this thought in the back of my mind like…I don’t know.
Like he was the person I was supposed to end up with.
Like we’d get our acts together and find our way back to each other, eventually. ”
Niko sank his shot easily and stalked around the table, scoping out the next one. She almost thought he wasn’t listening to her until he paused, his eyes flicking back up to her when she stopped talking.
“Why’d you break up so much?”
Merritt sighed. “He didn’t want to be a backup guitarist forever.
Which, fine, totally get it. He had his own band he fronted, and they had a cult following, but…
he had a lot of ambitions that didn’t necessarily pan out the way he wanted them to.
And that led to resentment.” She paused, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Just to be clear, I always saw him as very successful. He was one of the most talented guitarists I’ve ever met, I learned so much from him.
He always had more work than he knew what to do with, and he made good money. He just wasn’t…” She trailed off.
“You?” Niko filled in immediately.
She shrugged—a whole relationship’s worth of mutual bitterness summed up in a single word.
“His work was…not very commercial. I thought he was a genius, but I never understood why he was so obsessed with mainstream validation.” She shifted her weight, suddenly self-conscious under his gaze.
“Anyway. A couple years went by without us talking at all. I figured it was really over this time. Then one day, he calls me up like, ‘I’m an idiot, let’s get married,’ which he’d always said he never wanted.
And I was like, ‘Okay, sure, let’s do it. ’ ”
Niko was beside her now, taking a long pull from his beer and raising his eyebrows. “You married him?”
She looked down, unable to meet his eyes.
“Yeah. We drove to Vegas that night. I thought it was so fucking romantic. And I guess I figured…since I wasn’t in the game anymore, maybe he’d stop feeling like he was competing with me.
” It was her turn to shoot. She missed, of course.
She looked up to see Niko’s gaze still fixed on her.
“What happened?”
She ran her hand through her hair, her eyes dropping to the floor.
“His band was getting some traction again. They were going out on tour, and I offered to come with him, but he said I’d be a distraction.
And he didn’t mean a distraction for him—he meant a distraction for everyone else.
” She met his gaze again. “You can probably guess where this is going.”
Niko put his beer down but still didn’t make a move to resume the game. “He cheated?”
She braced her hand on the pool table, tilting closer. “With his backup singer,” she said in a dramatic whisper.
His eyes widened, then a hard line formed between his brows. “What the fuck.” He shook his head, taking a sip of his beer. “I’m sorry. That’s so messed up. Sounds like you’re better off without him, though.”
“Definitely. But I can’t blame it all on him. I wasn’t exactly a saint in that relationship, either. And then when we broke up…” She hesitated, her face flushed with embarrassment.
Niko cocked his head. “What did you do?”
“I, um. I stole all the lightbulbs from his house.” She paused. “And the batteries.”
She’d dragged the stepladder from room to room, fueled by self-righteous rage, methodically removing lampshades and cracking open the backs of electronics, filling the extra-large garbage bag slung over her shoulder like some kind of demented reverse Santa Claus.
She’d grabbed a few power cords, too, while she was at it. Whatever she could get her hands on to make sure he returned to a house that was as dark and useless as she felt.
“You took his batteries?” Niko repeated, somewhere between amused and alarmed.
“Well, I left the ones in the smoke detector. I’m not a monster.
And then he wrote a song about it, that fucker.
He’s just lucky I don’t write anymore.” She rested her hand on the eight ball, rolling it lightly under her palm.
“Anyway. I got in my car and didn’t stop driving until I got to Olivia’s, and the divorce was finalized last August. That part was pretty painless, all things considered.
He was very motivated to get everything squared away so he could marry what’s-her-name.
” She inclined her head toward him. “Your turn.”
Niko looked down at his abandoned cue with a start. “Oh. Right.” He crossed over to the other side of the table.
“I didn’t just mean that.” Merritt rested a hand on her hip, observing him. “So who was she? Snowboarder? Yoga teacher? Spring breaker?”
Niko missed his shot, which wasn’t surprising, considering the table mostly consisted of her balls at this point. “She was a poet. She’d won some kind of award or grant or something, where they’d pay for her living expenses for a year, so she came out here. Moved into the house. That’s how we met.”
Merritt bent over the table, carefully angling her cue, and tried to ignore the throb of jealousy that pulsed through her veins. “Was she any good? Her poetry?” Obviously, she was, if she was winning awards or grants or something, but Merritt’s petty streak needed to hear it directly from him.
“I think so. I mean, other people thought she was. I didn’t really get it. But sometimes I could, like, feel it, you know? Even though it didn’t rhyme.” He shrugged. “I’ve never understood poetry, though. Except—Who’s that guy? The bald guy? With the drawings?”
“Shel Silverstein?”
“Yeah. I like him.”
Merritt grinned. “Me, too.” She straightened up again as Niko took his turn. “So she was like you? A year wasn’t enough?”
“I guess not. We got together pretty soon after she moved in. She stuck around, got a job in town. Then, after a while, she started bringing up how monotony never worked for her.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Like, being with one person. Commitment.”
“Oh. You mean monogamy?”
“What did I say?”
“Monotony,” she said.
“Shit. What does that one mean again?”
“Boredom. Getting tired of the same old thing.”
“Right. That was a problem, too. Eight ball in the side pocket.” He missed, but just barely.
“So her solution was to start fucking your other roommate behind your back?” She probably could have phrased it more tactfully, but the vulnerability of her own confessions and the irrational hostility she felt toward this woman she’d never met and knew almost nothing about had her feeling raw and exposed.
Plus, that third beer had gone straight to her head.
“Sort of. It, uh, wasn’t behind my back. I said she could do it.”
Merritt blinked. “You did? Like, an open relationship?”
“Yeah. I mean, I could’ve slept with other people, too, if I wanted to. I just wasn’t interested.”
Her cue hung slack in her hand, forgotten. “You weren’t jealous?”