She must have been stunned silent for a beat too long, because even in the dim light of the bar, she could see color rising in his cheeks. A dozen questions ran through her mind, each more invasive than the last. She cleared her throat. “So…three was a crowd?”
He shifted, leaning his hip against the pool table. “Not at first. It actually kind of worked. Things were good. Much better than they had been.”
Merritt thought back to Olivia’s version of events, which now appeared to be missing a few crucial details. “But it was a secret.”
He nodded. “Not on purpose. It just…wasn’t really anyone else’s business. We all already lived together. People saw what they wanted to see. Or didn’t see.” He paused. “I don’t care if you tell Olivia or anything. I don’t regret trying it, I’m not ashamed of it. It was fun while it lasted.”
“So what happened?”
He shrugged again, a little helplessly. “She wanted to close the relationship again. Just…without me in it.” He looked down and swallowed. “I guess monotony was only a problem with me.Monogamy.Whatever. Both.”
“Wow.” She was silent for a moment, then lifted her beer. “Well. Cheers to silver medaling.”
He clinked his bottle to hers before they both drained them. “Can I get you another one?”
She hesitated. “I should probably switch to water.”
He returned from the bar shortly, handing her another glass. “I get it. Silver medaling. Because we both came in second.” He didn’t seem amused, though.
She tilted her head back and drank. “It was just a joke. You don’t agree?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really think of relationships—love—as a competition. If it feels that way, you’re probably with the wrong person.” He met her eyes, his face solemn.
For the second time that night, she was rendered speechless. She leaned back against the pool table, one arm curled across her stomach and the other holding her glass idly against her lips, staring at him like she’d never seen him before.
Niko was the first to look away, glancing down at the table. “I have no fucking idea whose turn it is, do you?”
“Not a clue.”
He bent over to rerack the balls, and she allowed herself a brief moment to openly ogle him, her eyes going slightly unfocused. She was almost drunk enough to lean over and drape her body over his, press her cheek to his back, slide her hands up the hard planes of his chest.
She was so preoccupied with that idea that it took several long seconds for her sluggish brain to process that the song on the jukebox had changed, and an all-too-familiar piano riff was reverberating throughout the bar.
She tensed automatically, then forced herself to relax, unclenching her jaw, then her shoulders, moving down her body one muscle group at a time.
It had been too easy to forget that she and Niko weren’t theonly people there. As casually as possible, she looked around, quickly zeroing in on a nearby table where a group of four or five snickering twentysomethings were trying and failing to act like they weren’t watching her. This wasn’t a bar that attracted a lot of tourists, but she didn’t recognize any of them, so they must have been. At least none of them had their phones out. Yet.
Once the vocals came in, Niko’s head jerked up, his eyes darting immediately to her, then following her gaze to the table. He stood up straight and moved beside her, placing a steadying hand on her shoulder and looking at her with a question in his eyes. She shook her head slightly, then turned away from them.
She lamented the loss of his hand on her when she bent over and tried to line up her shot, willing her hands to stop trembling as her teenage voice cooed seductively all around her. Hearing her own music didn’t usually rattle her this much, but everything about tonight had her feeling beyond unbalanced.
She attempted to break the rack, but her cue only glanced off the ball, sending it spinning lazily toward the center. Niko watched with a perturbed expression, then looked back up to glare at the table of gawkers. He set his cue down and strode over to the jukebox, pushing a combination of buttons that cut the music off sharply. She forced herself not to look over at the group, but she heard some annoyed murmurs from that direction.
He wasn’t done, though: the silence didn’t last long before a pulsing disco beat took its place, seemingly twice as loud as her song had been. She felt her chest loosen, anxiety giving way to amusement as soon as she recognized it—“Hot Stuff” by Donna Summer.
Merritt expected Niko to return to her, but instead he approached the other table, whose occupants were all pretendingnot to notice him. Her heart caught in her throat, and she willed him not to tell them off or make some kind of scene.
But he didn’t say anything. He just started dancing.
At first, they tried to ignore him, but when he circled their table, shimmying and gyrating, it didn’t take them long to pick up their drinks and beat a hasty retreat, casting a few guilty looks in Merritt’s direction.
She was shocked by the power of the laugh that escaped her, so much so that she clapped her hand over her mouth. She expected to feel at least a twinge of embarrassment at Niko’s display, but instead she laughed so hard she was wheezing, doubled over, leaning on the pool table for support.
It wasn’t that he was a bad dancer. Even though she could tell his moves were purposely goofy, he definitely had rhythm and was surprisingly graceful. It was laughter of relief, of gratitude, of affection. She wiped tears from her eyes as he danced back over to her, his face breaking into a radiant grin when he saw the change in her demeanor.
He leaned forward and shook his shoulders at her, and she burst out laughing again.
“Okay, okay, we get it, Magic Mike.”
