Chapter 12 #2
He shrugged. “A little. But sex is just sex, you know? She and I had something bigger than that. Or, I thought we did.” He scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck, his brow furrowing.
“Maybe…I don’t know. Maybe I should’ve gotten jealous.
Maybe she wanted me to put my foot down, act all possessive of her or something. Like some kind of test.”
“I mean, if that is what she wanted, that’s a really fucked-up way to go about it. It’s super manipulative.”
“Yeah. I guess so.” He paused to sip his beer. It seemed like he was debating whether to keep going. “But that wasn’t all of it.”
She didn’t say anything, just waited for him to continue.
“After a while, she asked me how I would feel if we tried it like…like maybe instead of having it be him and her, and me and her, we could bring him into our relationship. All three of us, together.”
Merritt’s jaw dropped. Whatever she was expecting, it wasn’t that.
She knew she needed to say something, but all she could manage was a bemused “Huh.”
It wasn’t the idea that shocked her. She’d seen her share of unconventionally configured relationships over the years, even dabbled in them herself.
It just didn’t square with her impression of Niko, which was decidedly, well, square.
Though now that she thought about it, she’d come to that conclusion based solely on her own assumptions about his sexual inclinations, which she’d convinced herself probably began and ended at ten minutes or less of overeager cervix-battering missionary.
The idea of him partaking in anything less vanilla than that made her skin feel like it was on too tight.
She must have been stunned silent for a beat too long, because even in the dim light of the bar, she could see color rising in his cheeks. A dozen questions ran through her mind, each more invasive than the last. She cleared her throat. “So…three was a crowd?”
He shifted, leaning his hip against the pool table. “Not at first. It actually kind of worked. Things were good. Much better than they had been.”
Merritt thought back to Olivia’s version of events, which now appeared to be missing a few crucial details. “But it was a secret.”
He nodded. “Not on purpose. It just…wasn’t really anyone else’s business. We all already lived together. People saw what they wanted to see. Or didn’t see.” He paused. “I don’t care if you tell Olivia or anything. I don’t regret trying it, I’m not ashamed of it. It was fun while it lasted.”
“So what happened?”
He shrugged again, a little helplessly. “She wanted to close the relationship again. Just…without me in it.” He looked down and swallowed. “I guess monotony was only a problem with me. Monogamy. Whatever. Both.”
“Wow.” She was silent for a moment, then lifted her beer. “Well. Cheers to silver medaling.”
He clinked his bottle to hers before they both drained them. “Can I get you another one?”
She hesitated. “I should probably switch to water.”
He returned from the bar shortly, handing her another glass. “I get it. Silver medaling. Because we both came in second.” He didn’t seem amused, though.
She tilted her head back and drank. “It was just a joke. You don’t agree?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really think of relationships—love—as a competition. If it feels that way, you’re probably with the wrong person.” He met her eyes, his face solemn.
For the second time that night, she was rendered speechless. She leaned back against the pool table, one arm curled across her stomach and the other holding her glass idly against her lips, staring at him like she’d never seen him before.
Niko was the first to look away, glancing down at the table. “I have no fucking idea whose turn it is, do you?”
“Not a clue.”
He bent over to rerack the balls, and she allowed herself a brief moment to openly ogle him, her eyes going slightly unfocused. She was almost drunk enough to lean over and drape her body over his, press her cheek to his back, slide her hands up the hard planes of his chest.
She was so preoccupied with that idea that it took several long seconds for her sluggish brain to process that the song on the jukebox had changed, and an all-too-familiar piano riff was reverberating throughout the bar.
She tensed automatically, then forced herself to relax, unclenching her jaw, then her shoulders, moving down her body one muscle group at a time.
It had been too easy to forget that she and Niko weren’t the only people there.
As casually as possible, she looked around, quickly zeroing in on a nearby table where a group of four or five snickering twentysomethings were trying and failing to act like they weren’t watching her.
This wasn’t a bar that attracted a lot of tourists, but she didn’t recognize any of them, so they must have been.
At least none of them had their phones out. Yet.
Once the vocals came in, Niko’s head jerked up, his eyes darting immediately to her, then following her gaze to the table.
He stood up straight and moved beside her, placing a steadying hand on her shoulder and looking at her with a question in his eyes.
She shook her head slightly, then turned away from them.
She lamented the loss of his hand on her when she bent over and tried to line up her shot, willing her hands to stop trembling as her teenage voice cooed seductively all around her.
Hearing her own music didn’t usually rattle her this much, but everything about tonight had her feeling beyond unbalanced.
She attempted to break the rack, but her cue only glanced off the ball, sending it spinning lazily toward the center.
Niko watched with a perturbed expression, then looked back up to glare at the table of gawkers.
He set his cue down and strode over to the jukebox, pushing a combination of buttons that cut the music off sharply.
She forced herself not to look over at the group, but she heard some annoyed murmurs from that direction.
He wasn’t done, though: the silence didn’t last long before a pulsing disco beat took its place, seemingly twice as loud as her song had been. She felt her chest loosen, anxiety giving way to amusement as soon as she recognized it—“Hot Stuff” by Donna Summer.
Merritt expected Niko to return to her, but instead he approached the other table, whose occupants were all pretending not to notice him. Her heart caught in her throat, and she willed him not to tell them off or make some kind of scene.
But he didn’t say anything. He just started dancing.
At first, they tried to ignore him, but when he circled their table, shimmying and gyrating, it didn’t take them long to pick up their drinks and beat a hasty retreat, casting a few guilty looks in Merritt’s direction.
She was shocked by the power of the laugh that escaped her, so much so that she clapped her hand over her mouth. She expected to feel at least a twinge of embarrassment at Niko’s display, but instead she laughed so hard she was wheezing, doubled over, leaning on the pool table for support.
It wasn’t that he was a bad dancer. Even though she could tell his moves were purposely goofy, he definitely had rhythm and was surprisingly graceful.
It was laughter of relief, of gratitude, of affection.
She wiped tears from her eyes as he danced back over to her, his face breaking into a radiant grin when he saw the change in her demeanor.
He leaned forward and shook his shoulders at her, and she burst out laughing again.
“Okay, okay, we get it, Magic Mike.”
Still, she didn’t try to resist when he reached out his hand and pulled her upright. She was a little dismayed when he released it immediately, but her inhibitions were loose enough for her hips to start swaying almost of their own volition.
Their dancing grew more and more ridiculous, quickly devolving into a competition to one-up each other and make the other laugh: jumping, writhing, whipping their heads, punching the air until they were breathless and giddy.
Keeping close—close enough to feel the heat emanating off his body, close enough to smell his shampoo—but never touching.
Except once, when he grabbed her and pulled her tight against his chest, warm and heaving and damp with sweat. She was so stunned that she barely had a chance to process it. They were only nose to nose for a second before he dipped her low, spun her away, and released her.
She stumbled, losing the rhythm, and paused to catch her breath, scraping her hair off her sweaty forehead and tying it in a loose bun on top of her head.
“You know, I met Donna Summer once. After the Grammys.”
Niko was still swaying in place, not missing a beat. “Who’s Donna Summer?”
“This is her song. She’s a fucking legend. I basically babbled at her for, like, five minutes straight about how much I loved her. And then she was like, ‘Thanks, Alanis.’ ”
“Who’s Alanis?”
Merritt grinned. “Doesn’t matter. Be right back, I need water right this second or I’ll die.”
She sauntered over to the pitcher of ice water in the corner, refilling her glass and gulping it down without stopping.
She filled it again and turned to see Niko at her shoulder, and she handed him the cup without thinking.
He drank it in one go, too, briefly holding eye contact with her, and the whole thing felt so strangely erotic that she shivered.
Usually, the only time she shared a glass of water with someone like this was after sex, chugging it down in that same desperate manner, sweaty and spent.
He put the empty cup down and wiped his mouth on his arm, pulling up the bottom of his T-shirt to dab at his forehead.
She immediately homed in on the swath of trim midsection that was now bared, her mouth going dry again as her gaze followed the obscene trail of dark hair disappearing below his waistband.