Good for You: A Novel (27)

Outside, the lake was choppy, and dark clouds loomed in the distance. Aly unlocked the French doors and went to sit on the edge of the patio before it stormed. Then she sighed deeply, but it only made her think of Meagan doing downward dogs in the middle of their shared cubicle back in the day. They used to talk about opening their own magazine together—after they’d taken over All Good, of course.

Had Meagan posted the video?

In her heart, Aly knew that the video was never coming down. Even if she or one of Innovate’s legal eagles had it removed from that platform, it would end up on another one, and then another, or emailed or texted from person to person. Anyone who ever looked her up online would, with a very small amount of digging, come across her meltdown. Sure, she could hire one of those pricey reputation management firms to bury it beneath more flattering search results—and maybe after selling Luke’s house, that’s exactly what she’d do. Still . . .

No one would ever mistake Aly for normal ever again.

How on earth would she come back from this? Because there was no scenario in which she would not want to return to New York and get her job back. Who would she even be if she wasn’t a magazine editor?

The old version of herself. And that was simply not acceptable.

Which meant she’d have to learn to live with this.

Wyatt stood behind Aly now. With the wind continuing to pick up, she hadn’t heard footsteps, yet she could just sense his presence. But she didn’t turn around; instead, she waited for him to announce himself.

A few seconds later, he sat beside her on the stairs—not shoulder-to-shoulder, like Luke used to, but close enough that she could smell that he’d showered. She nearly smiled: she might have been a thorn in Wyatt’s side, but at least she’d upped his hygiene game.

“Hi,” he said.

Aly’d barely seen him since their dinner. But no matter how late he got in—if she heard him come in at all—he always had fresh coffee waiting for her the next morning. And unless her eyes were playing tricks on her, he’d been making less of a mess, too. Sometimes he actually put his dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and she nearly fell over when she realized that he’d run the machine. She wasn’t sure what his objective was, and she wasn’t convinced that this wasn’t all some sort of long con to get what he wanted out of her . . . which was probably to keep lazing about the house for the rest of the summer. But at least for now, her life was a little bit easier than it had been when she arrived.

“Hey,” she greeted him.

“Hey. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but that didn’t sound good,” he said.

“Oh,” said Aly, still staring straight ahead. “You heard.”

“Just a little. Did your ex put up a video of you or something?”

She snorted. “No, my ex would love for the video in question to not exist. He works for the same company I do, and . . .” Should she spill about the rest? She had no idea if she could trust him. Then again, anything she was about to say would soon be public knowledge, if it wasn’t already.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” said Wyatt, stretching his long legs out in front of him.

She expected his feet to resemble a hobbit’s, but they were clean and normally shaped, even sort of elegant looking. What a strange mix of contradictions this man was.

Oblivious to her scrutiny, he continued. “I just wanted to see if . . . I don’t know. If you wanted to talk or something.”

Maybe it was spending most of the past week in silence, but she kind of did want to talk.

So she did. She told him about how she’d been named editor in chief less than three months after Luke’s death, and how it was the only thing that had gotten her out of bed each morning at a time when her instinct was to simply rot into oblivion. She told him about how working at All Good had been her lifelong ambition, and how she’d never in a million years imagined that she’d achieve it so early. And then she told him what had happened at the salad place.

Wyatt nodded as she babbled on, frowning at times, yet seemingly nonjudgmental about her brain blip. But when she finally came up for air, he put one of his mitts on her back and said, entirely too gently, “Let me get this straight: You don’t actually know what you said to your coworkers?”

“No,” she said. His hand felt kind of nice, which told her just how starved she was for physical contact. “And I don’t want to.”

His brown eyes bored into her. “How can you come up with a strategy if you don’t have all the facts? That’s what you normally do, right?”

She couldn’t hide her surprise. So he had been paying attention. Or maybe she was just an open planner in large print.

“Well, yes,” she admitted. “This is different, though.” Because I don’t want to see myself acting like my mother, she added internally, though she was hardly going to confess this to him.

“Hmm,” he said, clearly unconvinced. “Would it help if I watched the video for you and gave you a summary?”

“Please don’t. I seriously don’t want to know.”

“Aly, what do you have to lose?”

Everything, she thought. Her dignity. The ever-tenuous shred of self-regard she’d managed to cultivate. Her belief that she’d become the woman she’d always wanted to be, rather than the bratty, dumb, worthless girl that her parents had convinced her she was. You just never learn, her father often said before cracking her across whatever part of her body was within reach.