Good for You: A Novel (34)

Now, as Wyatt sped down an open country road toward the Dunes, Aly wished she’d told Luke that he had made a difference, and not with his money. Yes, Mari had helped her with the nuts and bolts of getting out of town and onto the next big step toward her dream. But Luke’s conviction had given her the courage to try, even when she was convinced (as she often was) that she wasn’t the kind of person who could have the kind of life she wanted.

“You okay?” asked Wyatt from beside her. They’d spent most of the drive in silence, and Aly had vacillated between finding it perfectly comfortable and wanting to fill the quiet between them. But she hadn’t made small talk, or even turned on the radio. Just as she’d not pushed down her sadness in the coffee shop, she didn’t try to disguise her discomfort now.

“I’m fine,” she said, trying not to glance at his newly shorn jaw. It was . . . sort of chiseled, to be honest, and it irritated her. She’d just barely gotten used to his mandible mullet.

“Okay.” But the way he said this told her he didn’t believe her.

“I was just thinking about Luke,” she admitted.

“I see.” They entered the state park grounds, and he paid the attendant the fee and continued to the parking lot. Aly didn’t expect him to elaborate. But after they’d parked, and as he pulled his backpack from the trunk, he said, “That happens to me a lot. Thinking about Luke, I mean.”

“Oh,” she said, adjusting her crossbody bag, then falling into step with him as they made their way toward the closest dunes. “You two were close.”

“We were,” said Wyatt. “He was easy to be around.”

Luke was easy to be around. That was one of the reasons people flocked to him. They never flocked to Aly like that, not even after she read all those self-help books. You couldn’t fake charisma; you either had it, or you didn’t. Aly wished she did, but at least she had a brother who brightened everything around him. That had always been more than enough for her.

“That sounded dumb,” said Wyatt. City life had turned Aly into a champion speed-walker, but she could tell he was shortening his stride so she could keep up with him. “Luke was a hell of a lot more than just easy to be around.”

“It doesn’t sound dumb. And for the record, he was,” she panted; she was getting winded. The dune they’d begun scaling was at least ten stories high; she’d be drenched in sweat by the time they reached the top, and that was if she reached the top. Yes, she routinely walked from Union Square to the Upper West Side and back, but she’d forgotten how steep the Dunes were.

“He didn’t want me to be someone I wasn’t.” As he said this, he slipped in the sand, and he began sliding down the hill toward her. On instinct, she put out her arm to keep him from falling.

He grabbed her hand. “Thanks.”

“Of course.” Her eyes landed on him as he let go of her. Admittedly, Wyatt didn’t have Luke’s golden aura. He was more like titanium, and anything but easy. Yet as much as he drove her insane, she couldn’t imagine that the people who loved him would want him to be anyone other than the sharp, sure-footed, and yes, cocky man that he was. “Who on earth would want you to be someone else?” she asked once she’d caught her breath.

He lifted his sunglasses to look at her, and something strange and unknown shot through her. Why did he do that? She didn’t need to make eye contact with him to have a conversation. And yet she couldn’t deny that it shifted the mood . . . even if she couldn’t say what, exactly, the mood was now. “My parents,” he said plainly. “Other people, too. Women I’ve dated, friends, my old boss, his boss. Whatever, none of that matters. The parental wounds are always deepest, right?”

So she hadn’t been wrong about Wyatt’s mother’s role in his problems. “Yes,” she agreed. “But didn’t you get your MBA from, like, Harvard or something? How could your parents be upset about that?”

“Penn,” he said, grimacing.

“Oh, yeah, that’s definitely slumming it,” she said, and they both began to laugh. His laugh was deep and enveloping, and almost felt like a gift he’d picked out just for her.

She stopped laughing when she realized what she was thinking. It was not just for her, and clearly her brain was still on the fritz.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said, smiling.

“Maybe not, but I still don’t get it,” she said seriously. “Who cares if you quit your job? It’s not like you’re a societal dropout or something. You’ll find something else to do. Something good, I’m sure.”

Wyatt looked away. “Yeah, tell that to my dad.”

“What does he care?” said Aly, who knew enough not to add what she was thinking—which was At least his father cares. Because her own father hadn’t reached out to her in two decades, not even after Luke died. In his will, Luke had requested they skip a memorial service—a fact she only knew because Wyatt had told her as much the previous September. She shook her head, as though she was trying to shake the memory right out of it. She didn’t want to go back to hating Wyatt. Not today, at least.

“My dad wanted me to take over his brokerage firm,” said Wyatt. “His father started it and created our family fortune. I was supposed to carry the torch.”