“What if I did it this year?” Merritt asked impulsively. Olivia’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. Merritt couldn’t blame her: she was surprised she’d offered, too. Still, she continued, “You don’t need the stress right now. You can just rest, and this will be one less thing on your plate.”
“Really?” asked Olivia, still visibly suspicious.
“What?”
“You’ve just…never shown any interest in doing town stuff.”
Merritt felt herself flush, even though it was true. “I want to, though. If I’m going to live here for real, I can’t just be in my room brooding all the time.”
The side of Olivia’s mouth tugged up. “You said it, not me.” She picked up her phone. “Are you sure?”
“Totally sure.”
“Don’t commit if you’re just going to flake out in a month. Remember, it’s my reputation on the line.”
Merritt let out an indignant laugh. “Olivi-uhhh,” she said, drawing out the last syllable like she did when they were kids, just to annoy her. “Email them right now and tell them I’m replacing you, and I’ll see them tonight. And you’ll just have to fill me in on whether Terrence finally stops flip-flopping between Vanessa’s and MacKenzie’s sweet cheeks.”
Olivia’s face softened, and she laughed, too. “Okay. Fine.” She looked down at her phone, tapping out a message, then glanced back up. “Thank you.”
Merritt settled back against the pillows. She expected to feel nerves or even regret, but instead, she felt something she’d been missing since she’d moved to Crested Peak—or, more accurately, in the ten years since she’d abandoned her music career: the spark of purpose.
Maybe getting more involved with the community was exactly what she needed. The directionless question mark of the rest of her life had become too overwhelming to ignore ever since she’d found out about Olivia’s pregnancy. Plus, it would lighten the burden on her already stressed sister.
She told herself it had nothing to do with the skeptical way Niko had repeated the wordbusyback to her, or the wistful lookon his face when he’d talked about how he’d have to leave Crested Peak eventually.
Even though he didn’t strike her as a judgmental person, she couldn’t help envisioning how she must look through his eyes—and the results weren’t flattering. Her standoffishness, her aimlessness, her immense privilege. How wasteful she was to be living in such a special place and barely taking advantage of it.
Merritt brushed away those thoughts like they were gnats buzzing around her nose. She didn’t care what Niko thought about her—or, more accurately, whatshethought he thought about her. All that mattered was that now she’d found a wholesome, productive, and much-needed project to throw her energy into.
And if it distracted her from him, well, that was just a bonus.
5
The first SummerFest planning meetingwas hosted by Freya and Pam, the couple who had run the local health-food store since the early eighties. Merritt didn’t know either of them well, but the first time she’d gone into the store, Pam had charmed her into sampling (and then purchasing) every flavor of their homemade granola.
“Oh yeah, I should’ve warned you,” Olivia said gravely, when Merritt had walked in the front door with a hundred dollars of granola and a dazed look on her face. After that, Merritt had mostly steered clear of Pam whenever she was working, for the sake of her grocery budget.
Their house was only a few streets away—not worth the drive, even though it was still below freezing at night. After fifteen years in LA, she didn’t take the ability to walk from one end of town to the other for granted.
As Merritt pulled on her thermal and reached for her sweater,her phone buzzed on the bed. When she saw it was Alan, she swiped it open with a reluctant sigh to read his texts.
Hey, beautiful.
Busy tonight?
She’d first met Alan Hardwicke through her ex-girlfriend, Stella, who’d had a recurring role on the prestige cable drama he’d created. She hadn’t thought much of him at first. He was older, fifteen years or so, with nothing to distinguish him from the dozens of generic forty-something white men she encountered at every industry event.
Then, years later, long after she and Stella were over, she’d found herself stuck at a mediocre party—back when she was still lying to herself that she could have fun at those things sober—where everyone she knew, including her ride, seemed to have disappeared. She’d wandered over to the balcony, staring out at the lights of the Hollywood Hills, and he’d approached her. She, not realizing they’d already met, had introduced herself.
To his credit, he’d laughed it off graciously, and as their conversation continued, she’d been startled at the spark she’d felt flickering between them. Though she’d spotted the gold ring glinting on his left hand, she’d still given him her number at the end of the night under the pretense of a business connection. But to her relief (and slight disappointment), he never used it.
A few months after she moved to Crested Peak, he’d started texting her. Unsurprisingly, when she looked him up, the first headline she saw was about his recent divorce.
It was exactly what they’d both needed: two strangers, lonely and heartbroken, taking solace in each other across a safe thousand-mile buffer. She’d sat on the back porch at twoa.m.almost every night, murmuring into the phone so she wouldn’t wake Olivia and Dev.
All things considered, it was shocking how long it took for it to turn sexual.
He was masterful at sexting, the best she’d ever encountered. He’d send her sprawling, ambitious emails that were so devastatingly erotic she’d get dizzy reading them—especially since she knew he usually wrote them at work. She’d picture him sitting in the writer’s room, ignoring the junior writers tossing around story ideas, desperate to please him, lazily tapping into his phone how he wanted to bend her over that very same table and fuck her in front of all of them.
