He returned to the kitchen, dumping the ice into the sink and shaking the feeling back into his frozen hands before finding a Ziploc bag in one of the drawers and filling it with a fresh batch.
He was relieved to see how much better she already looked by the time he came back, no longer shaking. He handed her the bag, and she held it in her hands for a moment before pressing it against her chest, then her forehead, then the back of her neck.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. “What does that do?”
“It helps ground me back in my body,” she said. “The extreme temperature. It reminds me that I’m here.”
She opened her duvet cocoon, giving him room to crawl in next to her, then closed it again, resting her head against his, their breathing slowly syncing.
“You said this happens to you sometimes? Has it ever…” Hepaused, not wanting to finish the thought, too disturbed by the idea that he may have had sex with her while she wasn’t fully present. She shook her head.
“This is the first time in a long time. And never with you. I think I’m just…really in my head right now. With everything.” She fidgeted with the ice. “I’m sorry. I know this is all kind of intense. I don’t want you to have to deal with this.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said. “Please. And don’t ever feel embarrassed asking me to stop if something’s going on or feels wrong.”
“God,” she said, putting her head in her hands. “When you say it like that, it sounds like I failed Consent 101. I just…I really want this to be good for you. This isn’t what this was supposed to be. All fun, no drama, right?” She raised her head, leaning it back against the headboard with a sigh. “I guess the honeymoon had to end sometime.”
Niko glanced at her, and when he saw her face, the resignation and despair written all over it, the heat turned up on the simmering unease he’d felt back in the car.
He wanted to tell her that thiswasgood for him. The best he’d ever had, actually. And not just the sex—every part of it. Of her.
He wanted to tell her that she wasn’t going to mess it up by having needs, or a past, or a complicated brain.
He wanted to tell her that he was in love with her.
But he remembered what she’d said to him the night of the power outage:I’m either completely detached or completely obsessed.She was staring into the distance now, lost in her own thoughts, and it felt like he’d swallowed a boulder, unable to ignore the sensation that the switch had flipped. She was already pulling away.
He remembered what he’d overheard Alan say to her barelyan hour ago:When you get bored. When you’re ready for someone on your level.Every insecurity he’d ever had about how mismatched they were as a couple, how unworthy he was of her, was apparently obvious enough to be seen from fucking outer space—especially in this world, where she still clearly belonged and he clearly didn’t. And she hadn’t denied it. She hadn’t defended him, or what they had.
And most of all, he remembered that this wasn’t the kind of relationship that needed to be strengthened through open communication and mutual reassurance. In fact, it might make things worse. The only commitment they’d made to each other was a clean break at the end of the summer, which was approaching fast. Once they got back to Crested Peak, they would be done in a little more than a week, whether he said any of this right now or not.
So he didn’t. He just sat there next to her, his heart quietly breaking, trying to come to grips with the inevitability of the beginning of the end.
32
Merritt had expected to bea 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 ofStepBrothers,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.
