I peek up at him, at the man I have loved for longer than I haven’t known him for. After last night, he fucked me into a stupor this morning and made me forget his actions. It was a routine. A coping mechanism that I am comfortable with.
I smile around my glass, resting my hand on top of his. “I’m fine.”
Tonight is no different than any other time we have sat in this very booth. Some nights we would sit here for hours and watch people swim between each other, bumping against the low music. It’s never loud, just enough to be tasteful. The lights are dim, with small bulbs drooping all over the ceiling in various lengths. Waiters and bartenders move through the sea of people, stopping at each booth to offer more drinks and food before moving on. Halsin is small, but Rockity is about fifty miles west and is tucked between thick shrubland, which backs onto a waterfall that spills down to the riverbed of the very same that travels through Halsin. Rockity has a population of about fifty thousand, which makes it bigger than Halsin but smaller than New York City. Ideally, I would have liked to live here. Thank God we still have roads, but back when the original settlers of the land discovered this town, they didn’t. They built the town around the lake, using wooden canoes to get from shop to shop. The same lake is still connected to the township, with some of the original shops, but as soon as humans could modernize the town, they did. Now it’s flipped and the new shops are built on the opposite side.
I could never decide which town I liked more.
I think I always come back to Halsin. Rockity is prestige and opulent. People come here to live a busier life without being NYC busy, but Halsin is something else. Halsin is a town that doesn’t have to try too hard to be loved. People go to Halsin and they feel it in their bones. The history, the loss, the love, the hate. Halsin is all of those things.
Luca leaning over to rest his arms on his knees distracts me for a moment and I watch as his blue eyes search the bodies below. Crossing my leg over, I rest my arm above the chair while dangling my cocktail between my fingers.
“Her,” I say, nudging my head at the girl below. Her brown hair wraps around the man she’s dancing against.
I take his hand and pull him up from his chair, moving through the people who are gathered around.
Luca smacks my ass as I walk down the stairs, my eyes on the young girl who now has her legs wrapped around the man’s waist as she grinds over his crotch.
She spins in his grip, eyes on me, and smirks when she sees Luca and me.
“Well.” She pulls up the man she’s dancing with. “This became a party.”
I don’t know when it was that Luca and I became what we are, but everyone knows about it. The only thing that spreads faster than lies in this town is gossip, especially if it has my name connected to it.
“Where is Luca now?” Cece asks, lowering herself onto the sofa in my living room. She blows on her coffee a few times and I watch as the mist sails up and evaporates on the tip of her nose.
“He’s gone back to work.”
“Work,” Cece mumbles beneath her breath. “That’s a nice way of saying he’s gone to do weird Christian shit with his dad.”
The least she knows, the better. It’s not like I’ve ever had to lie to Cece or Mira. They made up their own assumptions about Luca, and I never corrected them.
“And Niko?”
“Niko is…” I pause, losing my trail of thought. Niko is what? Frustrating, stubborn, ridiculously fucking sexy? All of the above, but mostly… “Niko is going to be a father.”
Cece gasps, lowering her coffee cup to her lap. “What? How do you know?”
My cheeks flush when I realize I have to admit something to my best friend. I don’t offer much about me, everyone knows that, but this is something surface level that I know they’ll appreciate me giving.
“I went up to talk with him during the cookout and he was already occupied, let’s just say that.” When Cece doesn’t answer straight away, my eyes fly up to where she’s sitting. “Say something.”
She sighs, leaning forward and pinning me with her stare. “You know that children aren’t traps.”
I roll my eyes. “Are you kidding? What is with you and Ma? I hate Niko! He left me, Cece!” I shoot up from the sofa and make my way to the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooks the quiet city below.
“Look, Mer. I’m not making excuses as to why he left when he did or the manner in which he did it. All I’m saying is that we all know you and Niko are soul mates—”