Good for You: A Novel (21)

“No,” he repeated.

“Why not?” she said.

“We can talk about it later,” he said obtusely.

“Fine,” she said, because he didn’t look any less stubborn than he had before she’d seen his butt, and she was done fighting with him. “I’ll call Roger and figure out my options for getting what I need so I can get out of here. He mentioned mediation.”

“You sound like you’re threatening to call your dad.”

It was her turn to give him a death glare. “My dad is a jerk who never expressed one iota of interest in helping me with anything. So no, Wyatt.” She hissed his name like a curse. “I sound like I’m threatening to call my brother’s lawyer. If you knew anything about me, or Luke, you’d know we haven’t spoken to our father in years. Now leave me be.”

“Aly, I’m sorry . . .”

His face was all twisted up. But it was too little, too late, and she raised her hand. “Please. I’d like to be alone.”

His eyes met hers briefly. Then he pivoted and closed the bathroom door without another word.

Less than a minute later, Aly heard the door on the other side of the bathroom close, which told her Wyatt had returned to his room. But she remained perched on the end of the bed, seemingly unable to budge, long afterward.

Focus, she commanded herself. You need to focus, so you can fix this.

How, though? She was beginning to understand that there was no “same team” where Wyatt was concerned. The man was a vagabond who couldn’t tell the difference between a plan and a plantain, and he had no interest in even attempting to help her out. Maybe he hated women or had forgotten that his best friend would’ve wanted him to treat his younger sister with consideration, if not kindness. Regardless of Wyatt’s wound—which probably had much to do with his mother, she reasoned, because didn’t it usually?—whatever was broken in him was not hers to fix.

She had no choice but to play hardball. Yes, she’d call Roger immediately, and a mediator if she had to. She’d forge Wyatt’s name on the real estate documents if it came to that. And if he protested, she would post all over social media about how this so-called friend of her brother was such a monster that he was making her declare bankruptcy. (Could she declare bankruptcy when she had no assets aside from the one that yoked her to Wyatt? She had no idea how that worked and made a mental note to ask Harry, who knew everything.)

But after she’d finally showered and put clean clothes on, she emerged from her bedroom to discover . . .

Tape?

Bewildered, she stepped over the blue painter’s tape just outside her door. While she’d been bathing and trying to get her head on straight, Wyatt Fricking Goldstein had run a line down the center of the hallway. And apparently the stairs, too. And the entire living room and kitchen, including the fridge, and even the patio.

The man had literally split the house in half.

She screamed in exasperation, hoping that wherever he was, he could hear her. And maybe she was hollering at the heavens, too, because now she was as angry at Luke as she was at Wyatt. What had he been thinking? The last thing she needed in her life was someone who was unreliable and unpredictable and quite possibly unstable.

She found a message scribbled on a sticky note on the counter. It took Aly several seconds to try to decipher Wyatt’s chicken scratch. Here’s the plan, he’d written. Do whatever you want with your half of the house. Don’t touch mine.

“Fine,” she muttered, balling up the note even though she wasn’t going to throw it out—she needed it as evidence for the mediator, or maybe even court. “I get it, Wyatt.”

And she did. This wasn’t hardball.

It was war.





TWELVE


Aly didn’t see Wyatt that evening, or at all the next day, which made her wonder if he had a girlfriend nearby. Because as much as she loathed him, she’d rather he was sleeping over at someone’s house than camping out in his car, as the latter would only make him even more ornery. Regardless, he was definitely avoiding her as a result of their little bathroom blowup. So she fully expected her next interaction with him to be unpleasant, and perhaps even combative.

But when she came downstairs Sunday morning, she discovered that he’d already poured her a cup of coffee.

“Thanks,” she said, resisting the urge to ask him if he’d slid the mug over on her half of the kitchen island, or his. Because he hadn’t labeled the sides, and she’d removed all the tape before the Realtors had come by the day before.

“Morning,” he said. Then, apropos of nothing, he asked, “When’s the last time you ate something other than a protein bar? Do you want some eggs or something?”

She blinked furiously. This was another trick, wasn’t it? Because why else would he push her secret button—the one that got triggered when someone tried to do anything that remotely resembled caring for her?

“I’ll have you know that I had a banana,” she retorted. It had actually been her dinner the night before, and she’d woken up with a gnawing feeling in her stomach. Maybe she’d make some oatmeal for breakfast, or rice with milk and cinnamon. She and Luke used to joke about writing a cheap-foods cookbook one day; they knew all the budget-friendly staples, and the myriad ways to combine them.