Merritt had not actually told anyone this. People seemed to assume Graydon had broken things off with her, and she had been so desperate to put it all behind her that she hadn’t bothered to correct them. What did it matter in the end? They were done. She was out of his life. But now this book had dragged her back in.
“I ended things because I didn’t want to be the person he wasturning me into.” She was repeating herself. “He was this magnanimous man, invested in me and my career, and he would say things about the importance of women’s voices and my voice in particular, but it was all hollow. He just wanted me around and said what he needed to keep me there.”
Rambling, she thought,you’re rambling.
“And then he went and didthis.”
Merritt raised her hands, at a loss.
Whit looked at her then. She watched his white teeth push into his now-beardless lower lip, and she was struck by the thickness of his mustache, the fullness of his lips and eyebrows.
“Merritt,” he said at last, and her name coming from his mouth was like a bell piercing the silence of a church service. He pulled her mug from her grasp—her emotional support mug!—and set it on his other side. Then he turned on the step so that his knees touched hers, and her hands, which felt like they were flailing wildly, looking for something to grasp, were taken into his.
“You don’t have to explain yourself.”
The words did not immediately compute.
“Yes, I do,” she said. “Ian said that—”
“Ian is one of the most socially inept people you’ll ever meet. Nothing he says should be taken seriously.”
Merritt’s heart was pounding; she felt the places his skin touched hers with a sharp keenness, as though her other senses had dulled themselves to focus her energy on only those points of contact. It was really getting cold, but their fingers folded over one another like tiny cords of warmth.
She found herself speaking without really meaning to.
“But he was right, Whit. Apparently, this is just something Graydon does with people like me, and I was too stupid to realize—”
“Why are you defending him?”
“I’m not defending anyone, I’m just—”
“Putting yourself down?”
She pulled her hands from his to push her fingers through her hair.
“I don’t know, Whit. It’s just... he...”
Whit reached up for her hands again and pulled them down, slowly and carefully.
“So the book is about you,” he said, all frankness.
“Yes. I think so.”
Merritt felt her head dip low, pulled by shame. It hurt to hear him say it.
Whit’s hands slipped from hers—God, he felt the shame, too—but then he leaned forward slightly, so he could look her directly in the eye. “Who gives a shit.”
He enunciated each word so that they sounded like pebbles dropped one after another.
“That’s easy for you to say.” Merritt said this, not because she necessarily believed it, but because his face was close to hers and the heat from his body was palpable, a blanket of Whit-ness, and she needed to speak to avoid complete brain shutdown.
“It is easy, you’re right,” he said, still looking at her head-on.
She felt his leg push against hers. Her hands were back in his.
“But it’s also the truth. Ian Hoult is a bonehead, and Graydon Lyons sounds like a real dick. He took your private life—the life you trusted him with—and made it into some lurid story that he knew would get him attention? Whatever. That’s ruthless, Merritt. It’s gross.”
Finally,finally, Whit moved a few inches away, relinquishing her hands in the process. She found her entire torso turned his way, all on its own.
