Good for You: A Novel (37)

So naturally she was focusing on Wyatt; she hadn’t been focusing on work. Fortunately, that was a fixable problem. And now it was time to get down to business.

There was still coffee in the pot, and though it was cold, she poured herself a mug anyway. Then she went up to her bedroom, took her notepad and pen from the nightstand drawer, and sat on her bed. After a minute or two, she scribbled Multimillion-Dollar Brand at the top of the page and Constantly Declining Revenue at the bottom. Then, without censoring herself, she began to write in the gap between them.

Nearly an hour later, her mug was empty, and she’d filled twelve pages with ways to turn the magazine’s fortunes around. Some of her ideas were ridiculous, as they required resources that she and the company didn’t have. But more than a few ideas had real promise. This is why I’m perfect for this job, she thought, rereading her proposal to pair with a streaming service to create original content. And this is how I’m going to convince them not to fire me. Innovate was worried about her video circulating on the internet? Fine—they’d squeeze those lemons into dozens of curated All Good videos, which would quickly bury the footage of her unfortunate meltdown. And in doing so, the magazine would become something greater. Because as much as it pained her, Innovate needed to recognize that the time for print magazines was nearly over. In order to survive, they would have to—well, innovate. It was the only way.

She couldn’t exactly send her barely legible pages to James. It was a shame she’d relied on Innovate for a laptop all these years, but maybe she could use a computer at the local library to type up her plans.

For now, though, she simply needed to do one thing.

She pulled out her phone. James, she wrote in an email from her personal email account, I’ve come up with a plan for making All Good stronger than ever. Can we talk soon? —Aly





NINETEEN


The next morning, Aly tapped on the email icon on her phone with trembling hands. The sun was still hiding beneath the horizon, but the adrenaline high from the previous day’s brainstorming session had yet to wear off, and she’d awoken without an alarm.

And there it was: a new message from James, sitting at the top of her inbox.

Glad to see you’re feeling like yourself, he’d written at four that morning. Let’s hop on a call. Can you do one o’clock tomorrow? He must have assumed that she could, as one of his assistants, who’d been cc’d on the email, had immediately followed up with a calendar invite with dial-in information.

Aly’s elation evaporated when she saw he’d scheduled a conference call. James hated conference calls. And on a Friday afternoon? That had termination written all over it. Worse, Linda—who James relied on to deliver bad news—had been invited to said call, too.

Was James going to fire her?

He was, she realized with a sinking sensation. That’s why he hadn’t reached out sooner, and why Jada had called to tell her about a job opportunity. Complicating matters, the call was scheduled just an hour before her flight to New York. Given that Aly had not yet figured out how to breach the space-time continuum, she obviously would not be taking that flight. Not when there was a possibility—an impossibly slim one, but still—that she could somehow save her job.

Yes, she decided. That was exactly what she’d do. Because her other option—admitting defeat—was too unbearable to consider.

Wyatt was in the kitchen when she came downstairs. “I’m just leaving,” he said as he put a lid on his travel mug. He did not look at her as he spoke.

That terrible confused feeling came over her again—the one that made her want to cry but also scream at him, or at least run the other direction. “Okay,” she said carefully. “But you don’t have to.”

She saw dark circles under his eyes when he glanced at her, and he’d grown a five o’clock shadow. Aly hated that he still looked attractive to her—maybe even more so than he had before. “I know that,” he said. “I just wanted to give you some space.”

“I didn’t ask for space. What I’m asking for is for you to not be weird to me.”

“If I’m being weird, it’s not because of you,” he said, looking away from her again. “And I’m sorry I, uh, crashed into you and made things . . . tricky.”

“It’s fine,” she said.

“Well, I’m sorry.”

I wish you weren’t, she thought, but she couldn’t make her mouth open.

He fiddled with the lid on his mug. “I know you’re leaving soon, so I’ll try to stay out of your hair until then. And if you want me to move out before the fall, just say so, and I’ll take off.”

“Um.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’m actually going to need to stay a little bit longer. I have a meeting tomorrow that conflicts with my flight, so I have to postpone it. And, uh, my best friend and his family want to come visit next weekend.”

Wyatt’s eyes widened in surprise. “Oh.”

“If that’s a problem, I can tell them to wait.”

“No, that’s not it,” he said quickly. “I just—well, when I suggested you stay the month, you didn’t seem into it.”

“I wasn’t,” she admitted. “But things have changed.” She didn’t volunteer that if the meeting went poorly, it was possible she’d have no reason to return to New York.