Good for You: A Novel (63)

“That you’re making plans that don’t include me. Which means you don’t intend on continuing this,” he said, gesturing between them.

“You always knew I was leaving, Wyatt. I never said otherwise. And sure, you asked me to stay once, but that wasn’t a serious conversation.”

“Because you wouldn’t let it be, Aly,” he growled. “I know I told you we couldn’t be together. But damn it, we are. And it feels good. It feels right. So why are you so insistent on pushing me away?”

“I’m not. Come on, Wyatt. Let’s stop fighting. Come inside,” she said, putting her arms around him. But instead of reciprocating, his torso stiffened. She immediately let him go and stepped back. “Who’s pushing away who?”

“That’s not what this is about.”

“Then what? Because your body just responded like I was a porcupine.”

He shook his head. “I just don’t want to move straight to sex when we’re in the middle of an important conversation.”

No? Because she did. Except, hearing him point this out made her feel ashamed—like she’d just broken some sort of code of conduct. She wondered if this was what happened when no one had ever modeled healthy relationships to you: you just kept making a fool of yourself while everyone else was busy being a well-adjusted human.

“Aly, I need a breather,” said Wyatt, opening the back door. Instead of going inside, though, he reached in and grabbed his keys from the hook on the wall.

“You’re always doing that!” she said angrily. The dizzy sensation was getting worse. Well, good. She’d be lucky if this entire episode—the whole year, really—was wiped from her memory.

“Doing what?” said Wyatt, who’d yet to move in the direction of his SUV.

Her eyes bulged as she pointed at his keys. “Running away!”

“That’s rich, coming from you.” He shook his head with disappointment, and Aly couldn’t help but feel that in disappointing Wyatt, she’d somehow let Luke down, too. Which made everything even worse. “I just need a little space. Let me go read this letter and think for a minute, okay?”

“Fine,” she said, because she desperately wanted to believe that it was fine. But as she watched Wyatt climb into his vehicle, she couldn’t avoid the truth: he was leaving.

Just like everyone did when they found out who she really was.





THIRTY-THREE


Aly couldn’t bring herself to go inside after Wyatt drove away. They’d made love in nearly every corner of the house, save Luke’s bedroom, and so each room held a cache of memories that she’d prefer not to recall, lest she be reminded of how her lust surfaced at the most inappropriate times—and worse, how she’d pushed the object of her affection away by . . . well, by being herself.

Instead, she walked to the water and threw herself down in a heap in the sand, miserable if grateful that with the exception of a few beachcombers, she was alone.

And then Aly cried, and then she cried a little more. She was going to have a wicked headache the next day; she could already feel it. But she’d lost control of her emotions, and she was entirely too close to losing control of her career, too. What had she expected—that somehow her harebrained whim to have a fling with her dead brother’s best friend would magically work out? Whims were not how she’d accomplished a single thing in the past. Yet her subconscious had played the worst trick on her of all, making her think that giving in to impulse this one time might—just might—be okay.

This was the problem with . . .

No. She wasn’t going to call it love. With infatuation. Pheromones. Trying to trade emotional grief for physical relief.

And oh, what a relief it had been. When Aly finally reluctantly dragged herself back to the house, she realized that she had yet one more reason to sell the place: now every time she set foot in it, she would think of Wyatt, and how she’d unceremoniously put an end to the most fun she’d ever had with someone other than her brother.

She had nothing to do, so she decided to make herself a sandwich for lunch but ended up cleaning the fridge instead. Then she scoured the inside of the cupboards, even though they didn’t contain a single crumb or speck of dirt. She finally threw together the sandwich that she’d intended to make earlier and ate it joylessly.

When she was done with that, she picked up a book, but the words refused to register as sentences. Instead, her thoughts formed a truly unfortunate trail of bread crumbs. There was the envelope; and how she and Wyatt had fought; and the strange comment he’d made about Luke having a plan; and getting drunk after James and Linda and the stupid conference call; and the incident with Meagan and Ashleigh; and Meagan finding Aly sobbing in the bathroom; and the call from Wyatt that sent her there.

Of course, all of it led directly back to Luke’s death.

How could it only be five o’clock? She wanted the day to be over, so she took a Benadryl because it usually made her drowsy. When that did nothing to slow her mind, she took another and topped it off with a splash of the bourbon she’d had the night she had gotten drunk. Soon her head felt hazy, but strangely, the horrible heaviness in her chest only intensified, so she had a bit more bourbon and that finally seemed to do the trick. Before she crawled beneath the covers, she took some of the blue tape Wyatt had used to divide the house and fastened a note to her door. On it, she’d written, Need to be by myself.