He smiled a little. “You should.”
She waited for him to continue, to elaborate whether he meant with him or just in general, but he didn’t.
She should’ve known better by now. What she saw with Niko was what she got. The problem was, she could never be sure exactly what she saw.
She smiled awkwardly. “Okay.”
That seemed to satisfy him. He moved to open the door for her, and she brushed past. When she was halfway down his driveway, he called out to her.
“Merritt?”
She whipped her head around. “Hmm?”
His grin got wider. “Nowwe’re even.”
It took her a moment to process what he meant. The bathroom. The painting. The nudity. But by the time she figured it out, he’d already closed the door, and she was alone again.
7
“I can’tbelieveshe came overwhen I wasn’t there,” Jo fumed from behind the bar, slicing lemons so haphazardly that Niko was afraid they’d lose a finger. It had been almost a week since Merritt’s visit, but Jo seemed to get only more pissed by the day. “You’dbetterinvite her here soon.”
Theherein question was Off the Rails, where Jo bartended several nights a week.
“Or what?” Simon teased from the stool next to Niko, his attention fixed on the muted soccer game behind Jo’s head.
“Or I’ll burn our house down.”
Niko looked up from his beer in alarm. “What?”
Jo laughed and reached across the bar to pat him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, Niko.” Their expression darkened in mock-seriousness, and they stuck a finger in his face. “As long as you get her over here.”
He shrugged noncommittally. “Maybe.” It was hard topicture Merritt at Off the Rails, which was as dive-y as it got in this town. Then again, it had been hard to picture her smoking a joint in a folding chair in his garage until he’d seen it himself.
Niko had lost track of how many roommates had rotated through his house over the past seven years, but in the eight months they’d been living there, Simon and Jo had grown to be two of his favorites. They were friendly, laid-back, and courteous of the fact that, even though they were all technically renters, it was undoubtedly Niko’s home. Simon was always bringing home extra food after his shifts at Last Chair Pizza, and they drank for free on the nights Jo bartended.
Since the rent was on the expensive side compared to most ski bum housing, his roommates tended to be either people who juggled three or four jobs and came home only to sleep, or those who had other mysterious cash flow sources to supplement the few hours of shift work they picked up every week.
Jo and Simon were definitely the latter—not that Niko would judge them either way. They’d already been best friends before moving to Crested Peak, taking a gap year between graduating from Stanford and starting their New York hedge fund jobs. Niko still wasn’t exactly sure what a hedge fund was, no matter how many times they explained to him it had nothing to do with shrubbery, but neither of them seemed to worry much about money.
Simon shoved a handful of pretzels into his mouth. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she shows up on her own.”
“What do you mean?” Jo moved on to polishing pint glasses.
“She’s, like, fully in love with Niko.”
Niko choked on his beer so violently he felt like it was going to come out of his eye sockets. “What? No, she’s not. That’s—What? Why?”
Something happened on TV that made Simon half rise outof his seat, shouting and gesturing. “Oh, come on!” He settled back on the stool and took another sip of his drink, his eyes still glued to the game. “The whole time she was over, she couldn’t stop staring at you. You didn’t notice?”
Niko blinked. Was that true? He’d been too preoccupied with trying not to stare at her to notice. “Maybe I had something in my teeth.”
Jo snorted. “Don’t be so modest. You’re a strapping young man.”
Simon frowned, finally tearing his eyes away from the game. “Wait, if nothing’s going on with you two, then what were you doing in your room with her?”
“I was showing her my bed!” he said, a little too indignantly.
“Fuck yeah, you were.” Jo held up their hand for a high five. Niko scowled and drained his beer.
