Good for You: A Novel (38)

Wyatt cleared his throat. “Got it. Um. Do you think we can try to keep things between us—you know. Normal?”

Normal? She didn’t even know what that meant for the two of them. Was normal when they lobbed barbed comments at each other? Or when they talked about Luke and their pasts? Or was normal her sensing heat between them, and knowing she’d get burned if she got any closer?

“We can try,” she said.

“Thanks,” he said. He looked as tentative as she’d ever seen him, and she almost wanted to reassure him. Then she remembered the Dunes, the way he’d backed away from her as though she had a raging case of smallpox.

“Yeah,” she said. “Don’t mention it.”

“See you later,” he said, meeting her eye briefly before heading for the door.

After he left, Aly decided to go walk on the beach. She needed to clear her head and figure out how to handle her meeting with James. But as she strolled along the water’s edge in her bare feet, she couldn’t seem to focus on All Good. Not when Wyatt’s words loomed over her like a storm cloud.

Normal.

Confused.

Luke wanted us to be friends.

Was that last part true? She thought back to the first time she met Wyatt, nearly a decade earlier. He and Luke had worked together their first year out of business school and had become fast friends, but at that point Wyatt had already moved back to Chicago, and he’d flown in for a quick weekend visit. They’d agreed to meet at a restaurant near Luke’s apartment; the place had a long mahogany bar and tables with red checkered tablecloths, and as usual, it was full of bright young things dressed in business casual, each with a drink in one hand and a cell phone in the other. It was not Aly’s scene, but they sold four-dollar glasses of red wine, and Luke seemed to know everyone there.

“You’ll love Wyatt,” he’d hollered to Aly over the din. “He’s on the quiet side, but he’s sharp as a tack and as loyal as they come. A lot like someone else I know,” he’d said, raising his glass to Aly.

Aly actually had been excited to meet him. While Luke liked everyone, he let few people get close, and she figured that this Wyatt must really be something to have stayed tight with her brother even after he’d moved eight hundred miles away.

But the stone-faced man in a starched button-down and pressed jeans who sat down across from her in their booth had the magnetism of a wet sock, and barely looked at her. Aly tried addressing him by name—repeatedly, in fact—to try to engage him. But even when he did acknowledge her presence, he looked at the space above her head rather than directly at her.

“Don’t leave me with him,” Aly had said under her breath when Luke stood to use the bathroom.

“He’s just nervous,” Luke had whispered back. “You have that effect on people sometimes, Al. Come on. Try to be friendly.”

So Aly did, because when had Luke steered her wrong before?

Questions—people liked it when you asked them questions. She’d read this in one of those self-help books.

“So, Wyatt, what do you do?” she asked after Luke was gone.

Wyatt looked down at his pint glass. “I’m in banking.”

“Right. What kind?” she said.

“Investment banking.”

The questions were supposed to be open-ended—that gave the other person an opportunity to talk longer. “What do you like about it?”

“Not much,” he said, and although he’d been nursing the same beer for more than an hour, he suddenly drained the remainder.

Fine. If he wasn’t going to talk, she’d have to.

“Well, I’m an editor at All Good,” she said.

Wyatt raised an eyebrow. “Good for you.”

She stared at him, aghast. What was wrong with this guy? And honestly, what was wrong with Luke, that he’d chosen such a dud for a friend?

Aly had excused herself for the night soon after Luke returned to their table. She remembered walking from the restaurant to the subway and feeling deeply relieved that she wouldn’t have to see Wyatt again anytime soon. And each time he came to New York to visit, she reminded Luke about their disastrous attempt at conversation and told him that under no circumstances would she be joining them for dinner or drinks or—well, anything.

Then Luke broke Aly’s heart and moved to Michigan, and she no longer needed to worry about avoiding Wyatt.

Aly had made it perfectly clear to Luke that she couldn’t stand Wyatt. Forget buying a place entirely too close to their hometown. What on earth had he been thinking, leaving his house to both of them?

Forget you, Wyatt, she thought, kicking at the sand. Even at ten in the morning, it was already blazing hot. I’ll take Manhattan and you can have Michigan. With her bank account no longer barren, she didn’t have to sell the house as soon as possible. For all she cared, Wyatt could have the whole thing and Cindy could move in with him. What did it matter?

It didn’t. Now that Luke was gone, the only thing Aly needed to care about was getting back to her job and getting on with what was left of her life.





TWENTY


The next day, Aly pulled on one of the few work dresses she’d packed. She wouldn’t be on video for the call with James, but something about doing her hair and putting on makeup and dressing like a professional made her feel like the editor in chief of All Good.