Chapter 32
Merritt had expected to be a wreck in the week leading up to Niko’s departure. Instead, she was numb. She observed the world from the inside of a Jell-O mold, everything muffled and distant and slightly wavy.
All that mattered now was proving she could nail the dismount without rolling her ankle.
She could let him go, and she would be fine. She had to be.
Niko wanted to take only what he could fit in his truck, so she helped him list his furniture online for local pickup, watching impassively as he and Simon helped load his bed frame into Elijah’s truck, Elijah’s arm still immobilized in a sling.
They held a yard sale for everything else.
Unsurprisingly, it turned into an impromptu going-away party, with what felt like every person in town stopping by to chat and take home a piece of Niko’s life—mismatched plates, a scratched DVD of Step Brothers, a knotted tapestry left by some forgotten roommate.
In the end, he was down to two suitcases and a handful of boxes.
His real going-away party was at Off the Rails, of course, and Merritt went out of her way not to cling to his side.
She had her first real conversation with Dev and Olivia in weeks, but she had no idea what it was about, since her main concern was showing them just how fine she was.
Everything was fine, they’d made a huge deal over nothing, and she wasn’t even going to gloat about it.
It didn’t feel like there was much to gloat about, anyway.
The only crack in her mask came when she bumped into Pam on the way out of the bathroom. Pam had smiled at her, a little sadly.
“We’re all devastated to lose him. But I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that. How are you holding up? Are you going to try long distance?”
Merritt felt knocked sideways by the question, suddenly too aware of the cavernous, Niko-shaped emptiness behind her sternum. “Uh…no. No, we’re just…letting it be.” She pressed her lips together, but she could feel them quivering.
Pam’s face crumpled in sympathy. “Oh, honey,” she said, and wrapped Merritt in her arms.
When she stepped outside for a moment to get herself under control, her attention was drawn to a pair of shadowed figures embracing just out of range of the streetlight.
When one of them moved close enough for the light to catch the copper in their hair, though, she realized with a start that it was Jo and Daniela, exchanging soft murmurs and giggles.
She felt like laughing at the reminder that she was not, in fact, the center of the universe, and at least one other torrid summer romance had been going on right under her nose.
Then she felt like crying, because the first person she wanted to tell was Olivia.
They spent his last night at her house, since his was empty—their first time sleeping there.
Merritt tried not to think of the sick symmetry of these milestones as they took off their shoes at the door.
They’d barely talked all night, and they still didn’t as they undressed each other, then tangled in her crisp new sheets.
Last one. This is the last one. She’d thought that the first time she’d kissed him, back when she’d still been in denial that she could stay away from him. As the two of them went through the now-familiar motions, the words felt real enough to bruise.
One of her favorite things about sleeping with him was how fun it was, vocal and verbal and adventurous and totally uninhibited.
It wasn’t like that tonight, though. There was a heaviness, a quietness, a different kind of intensity than normal.
He was clearly deep in his own head—which, fine, so was she.
It still felt good, but as one last orgasm rolled through her, followed shortly by his, she’d never felt less connected to him during sex.
Things had shifted between them after Sadie’s party. As desperate as she was to know how he felt about what had happened that night, it almost felt counterproductive to get into it at this point.
Maybe feeling just a little bit weird about each other was the right way to end this. No dramatics on either end of the spectrum—neither the agony of a connection severed too early nor the irritation of one dragged out too long.
“Niko?” she said softly as they lay next to each other, eyes closed but nowhere close to sleep.
“Yeah?”
“Tomorrow…I think you should leave before I wake up. So we don’t have to…it’ll just make it easier. Right?” Her voice broke a little on the last word, her stomach clenched in a fist.
She counted three long exhales before he responded. “Okay,” he said, then rolled over, his back to her.
It felt like only a minute later that she opened her eyes and he was gone—the world’s worst magic trick.
She rolled over to his side and took a deep inhale of the sheets, clutching his pillow to her chest. When she was ready to get up, she wandered slowly through the house barefoot, taking it all in, every detail she and Niko had selected together.
She had been so fucking stupid thinking it would be easy to get over him here, when everything from the kitchen drawer knobs to the bathroom tile carried his touch.
She was able to keep it together until she made it downstairs, stopping in her tracks when she saw Niko’s completed mural for the first time.
He’d painted a giant, impressionistic map of the town—the candy-colored facades of the shops on the main street, the hodgepodge architecture of the neighborhoods, embellished with local trees and plants and wildflowers.
Each corner was a different season, dusted with snow or sunshine or multicolored leaves.
She spotted his house, and Olivia and Dev’s, every last landmark she’d grown to know and cherish from seeing them through his eyes. All she could do was stare, the love he’d poured into it so palpable it took her breath away.
His love for this town. For the act of creation.
For her.
Mountains stretched over the top of the wall, lit with moody late-afternoon light. When she leaned closer, she noticed something midway up the peak, in the part of the mural frozen in eternal summer—a tiny blue pickup truck parked on the overlook, two figures cuddled together in the back.
He’d even gotten the flower in her hair.
All at once, the fog cleared, everything snapping into sharp relief, like she’d finally found her glasses after wandering around without them for the last week.
She doubled over, head in her hands, sobs shaking her whole body, every messy, scary, out-of-control feeling she’d been pushing down spilling violently, inevitably out.