Good for You: A Novel (6)

Seth must not have seen her; otherwise he’d have immediately realized something was amiss. Not just because she was crying, but because never, during the year they’d lived together, had she put on sweats at six o’clock on a weeknight—to say nothing of the fact that she’d made it home before dusk and wasn’t hunched over her laptop.

Come to think of it, why was he home so early?

“Weren’t you going to work out?” She clipped her shin on the edge of the coffee table as she started in his direction. “Ouch,” she said, folding over in pain. She rubbed her leg and tried to blink away the fresh tears that had sprung to her eyes. She finally got Seth in focus when she stood again. He was at the counter, suit jacket discarded, and shirt sleeves rolled up, already a third of the way through the beer he’d just cracked open.

“I decided to swing by the apartment first,” he said with an unreadable expression. “Are you okay?”

She sniffled. What humiliation! What a complete disaster of a day! But Seth would help her unpack what had happened and help her determine her best next steps. He was nearly as strategic as she was; that was one of the things she liked best about him. “No,” she admitted. “You won’t believe what happened.”

“Oh, I heard,” he said, meeting her eye.

She startled. “What?”

“All of upper management knows you’re on leave.”

“Oh.” Well, that did make sense. “What else did you hear?”

Seth arched his brows, which were nearly identical to James’ but not as bushy. It occurred to Aly, not for the first time, that at some point the Fox genes would fully kick in, and the hair sprouting from Seth’s orifices might get out of hand. All Good would be putting the holiday gift guide together in a few short months. Maybe they could feature electric razors with nose hair attachments. Freebies were one of the few remaining perks of working for a magazine, and although Aly usually let the rest of the staff have dibs, she could ask for this one small item for Seth. “I know you had a meltdown,” he said.

She frowned. Someone, presumably a junior staffer at All Good or one of its sister magazines, had pulled out a phone and recorded her at the salad place, then promptly uploaded it to YouTube. She knew this because James had started to show her the video on his phone when he and Linda came to her office. And she’d told him—perhaps more sharply than she should have, given that he was being awfully nice to her about the whole thing—to turn it off. Immediately. Unaware that she had no recollection of the events that were now digitally memorialized, James had complied.

Only actors, narcissists, and freakishly beautiful people liked seeing themselves on film. But Aly had been on several morning television shows to share All Good household hacks and product recommendations, so seeing herself onscreen was hardly new to her. And while she didn’t love the way her nose often wrinkled as she spoke, she’d been able to sit through the footage. How else would she figure out how to improve for the next time? Yet she hadn’t been able to bring herself to ask James to send her the link so she could view it later, privately. She wasn’t sure why.

Okay.

Yes, she was.

She’d taken one look at the wild-eyed woman who had clearly lost control of herself and understood that she couldn’t watch a single second more. Not then, not ever. Because she sounded entirely too similar to the way she had on the worst day of her existence—

When dreadful Wyatt Goldstein called her and informed her that his sailing trip with Luke had not gone as planned, and now the one person she needed most in life was no longer in it.

Well, what was done was done. Aly had told off two of her staff in public, and according to Linda from Human Resources, this was in violation of Innovate’s code of conduct. Now Aly was on a month-long unpaid leave while the company conducted an “internal review.” Whatever that meant. She couldn’t get over the unpaid part. Here she’d volunteered to slash her own salary for the sake of the magazine, and this was how they thanked her?

“Complete meltdown?” she bluffed. “I wouldn’t exactly call it that.”

“I don’t know, Al.” The buttons on Seth’s shirt strained as he shrugged; what free time he had, he mostly spent working out. “I kind of would call it that. It wasn’t a good look for you. And it was weird.” He regarded her with what seemed like a mix of suspicion and reverence. “I had no idea you were even capable of using the F-bomb, let alone lobbing it more than once.”

She cringed. Bad enough that she’d called Meagan a beach, but the F word? Luke would’ve been horrified.

Now her eyes pricked with new tears. It was too bad she’d never have a chance to talk to Luke about what happened, because he would have helped her shed the shame. Assuming she remembered the incident at some point. And she would. Wouldn’t she? She didn’t have dementia or head trauma, and her cruddy childhood was in the past. Memories didn’t just go missing indefinitely.

Did they?

Seth continued. “I still think you should see someone. Don’t you think this has something to do with . . . you know, Luke?”

Of course it did. Everything had to do with Luke. That didn’t mean she could afford to see a therapist she had to pay out of pocket for. As she’d discovered while trying to find someone after Luke died, the in-network options for Innovate’s health plan were booked into the next century. “Am I not allowed to have an off moment?” she asked quietly. It occurred to her that no one would mistake her for normal now. Normal adjacent: that had a decent ring to it. Maybe that could be her goal until she had this whole mess sorted out.