“I don’t know, a heart?”
“That feels unnecessarily intimate,” said Dev.
“Yeah,” said Merritt with a grin. “You want her to be like, ‘I love when you give me assignments, thank you, Work Mommy’?”
Olivia huffed at Dev’s burst of laughter, the way she always did on the rare occasion the two of them sided against her. “What do you two know, anyway? Neither of you works in a real office.”
Dev just smiled indulgently at her, but Merritt flinched, even though she knew it wasn’t meant to be an accusation. She shook it off and changed the subject. “Did you just get back from your appointment? How did it go?”
“Everything’s looking good,” said Olivia with a shrug.
“Except her blood pressure’s a little high,” added Dev. “She’s supposed to watch her stress levels.”
“Well, maybe if Carla would stop sending me so many fucking smiley faces,” Olivia grumbled. She pointed at her purse on the counter. “Can you hand me that?”
Merritt brought the bag over to Olivia, who pulled out a small printout and offered it to her. She recoiled instinctively before realizing what it was.
“God. That’s so creepy. Why do sonograms look like that now?”
“I know, the 3D ones are awful. They look like something you’d find deep in a cave,” Dev said.
Olivia scowled at him playfully. “Those are your beautiful daughters you’re talking about.”
He squeezed her shin. “You know I’ll still love them even if they look like little Gollums.”
Merritt glanced up at them, her heart beating wildly in her throat. “Daughters?”
Olivia nodded, her face softening as she held Merritt’s gaze. Merritt looked back down at the sonogram. Now that the initial shock had worn off, she actually started to get a little choked up as she studied it. “They really are beautiful,” she said quietly.
“You don’t have to say that. You’re allowed to say they might be the evidence they’ve been hiding at Area 51,” Dev deadpanned.
Olivia shoved him lightly with her foot. “No, you’re not.”
“I wouldnever.” Merritt ducked into the kitchen to stick the sonogram on the fridge, sharing a magnet with a picture of the two of them as toddlers. When she returned, Olivia looked up at her.
“Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Are you still friends with Nora Lind?”
Merritt frowned, an uneasy frisson shooting up her spine at the mention. “Sort of. Why?”
Nora had, at one point, been one of her closest friends—and one of her oldest, of almost fifteen years. They’d met through one of Merritt’s exes, Russell, who had directed Nora in the movie that had put him on Merritt’s radar, about a young woman struggling with a heroin addiction navigating a harrowing night in New York City.
The two of them had clicked immediately, the kind of friendship that bloomed so deep and fast they swore they must have known each other in a past life. Nora had even played Merritt’s love interest in her first Russell-directed music video—which was immediately banned from TV. At the time it had felt empowering, a fuck-you to her label that had encouraged her tokeep her bisexuality under wraps, but in retrospect the fetishizing male gaze he’d shot it with made her cringe.
They’d drifted apart over the years, as Nora gravitated toward a quieter life of marriage, children, and a stable career on a medical procedural, while Merritt…had gone down a different path. They’d had a major falling-out shortly before Merritt entered treatment, the details of which Merritt’s brain had thankfully erased out of self-preservation, but which was definitely all her fault.
Once she got out, Merritt had made her amends, which Nora had mercifully accepted, but they had never fully recovered. When she still lived in LA, they would catch up over dinner or coffee once or twice a year, but these days they were strictly birthday-text friends.
Of all the relationships she’d fucked up over the years, Nora was one of her biggest regrets—especially considering Nora’s parallel struggles with her alcoholic ex-husband, Ethan, whom Merritt had never warmed to. She knew they would never get back to that kind of early-twenties closeness of few responsibilities and fewer inhibitions, but she still missed her like crazy.
“I heard that she’s about to close on a house on the mountain, not far from yours,” said Olivia. “Gloria’s her real estate agent. I wasn’t sure if it was because of you.”
A lump formed in Merritt’s throat, and she swallowed hard, failing to clear it. “No. It’s, um, not because of me. We haven’t talked in a while. That’s exciting, though. I’ll have to give her a call.”
Dev made a stifled choking sound, which he turned into a cough.
“What?” Merritt asked, glancing between Dev and an extremely amused Olivia. Dev shook his head emphatically, but Olivia ignored him.
“She’s his celebrity crush,” Olivia said with an evil grin. Dev scowled at her.
