Page 2 of Best Laid Plans
“Elle.” Wyatt’s eyes softened, though he didn’t move closer. Smart man. “You’ve been here for days now.”
She flicked her stare to a half-eaten bag of potato chips,suddenly starving. “Four business days, but okay,” she said, picking up the bag and shoving an indulgent handful into her mouth.
She wasn’t a bad person. She paid her taxes. She volunteered. She’d very discreetly told that woman at the coffee shop when she’d had something stuck in her teeth. There was no reason, as far as she could tell, that fate had organized a line of toppling dominoes that had left her in this… place of despair that she’d found herself in.
Everything in her life was wrong. Jobless. Homeless. Rudderless. Boyfriendless. Well, that last one had been going on for a while now, but it was at least worth an add to the list, given how cataclysmically her most recent relationship had ended.
Wyatt cleared his throat and pulled her attention back from the potato chip bag that she’d been surveying like an artist studying a landscape. “How long do you think you can hide from Mom and Dad? They’re downstairs in the restaurant every day. I’m starting to feel like an asshole for lying to them.” Wyatt ran his hands through his thick hair, fingers digging into his scalp.
Elle knew her decision to hide out upstairs was weighing on him, but after he left, he’d have plausible deniability. She’d tell her parents–eventually–that she’d shown up after he’d already headed to football camp.
There. Problem solved.
And really, she didn’t know how much longer she could put off seeing her parents, for so many reasons. Since coming home to hide out, she’d been assaulted with the incredible smells wafting up from Pierce’s Lobster Co., and not even that could get her downstairs to explain to her parents just how far her life had fallen.
Elle leaned back against the sofa. “Wyatt, your Good Sonaward will never be tarnished, not even on my account. I’m just…”
What was she waiting for? A way to explain her failures? After her parents had given so much to help her succeed in this world.
“I don’t want to worry them,” she said honestly, sinking even deeper into the sofa’s surprising comfort. “I’m not in a great place.”
“Truce?” Wyatt asked with a teasing smile, hands still up as he walked closer.
Elle nodded and pulled the blanket up farther so that only her almond eyes and dark messy bun were poking out.
He sat down, keeping just enough space that, if tempted, she couldn’t reach him. “I’m heading out in a few minutes. Are you sure you’re okay?”
No. But instead of saying that, she let out a long, suffering sigh. “Yes, Wyatt. I’ll be fine. I’m going to take tonight to be alone, and I’ll go down to the restaurant tomorrow and surprise them. Say I came home for the weekend to visit and then figure it out from there.”
Wyatt ran his hands over his jeans, and she was already gearing up for whatever speech he was about to give her. “I know things have been tough for you.”
“I just need to get back on the horse, right?” She bit out. She’d lost her job, had no way to pay back her ungodly MBA loans, and her roommate had asked her to move out. All on the same day! She felt like a little wallowing was justified.
“Look, I know where you are. I’vebeenwhere you are,” he implored.
Maybe he understood the feeling, but only one of them had gotten paid out on a two-million-dollar contract and had this apartment to live in. Which was maybe because he’d bought his parents a house with a good chunk of that money, but still!
Elle pushed an unwashed strand of hair behind her ear and let out a petulant huff. “I’m not a seventeen-year-old boy that you need to motivate on the field, Wyatt.”
He shot her a charming smile and shrugged his shoulders. “But you have to admit I’m pretty good at it, right?”
She smirked. He was such an ass, but for some reason, she loved him all the more for it. “Think you missed your calling as a motivational speaker?”
He stood up, shaking his head. “Boys grow up to be men, so you’re welcome for trying to shepherd in as many of them who aren’t assholes as I can.”
“Ah, yes. The Wyatt Pierce TedTalk on ‘Living With Purpose,’” Elle said seriously, though her grin betrayed her. “Coming to the Rock Harbor Pier this summer.”
He ignored her and walked over to the open kitchen to make a protein shake. He was always making a protein shake. For no longer being an athlete, he still lived his life like one. Disciplined. Focused. An intense degree of personal responsibility.
Elle stood up and stretched before following her brother, like she’d done throughout their childhood. She sat across from him on a bar stool at the small island. “How’s the team looking, by the way?”
In the last five years, her brother had taken the rag tag football team of their former high school and molded them into state champions. And she had no doubt he’d do it again this year.
Wyatt looked past his shoulder and then turned his head to look around again. He dropped another scoop of powder into the blender before meeting Elle’s stare. He drew his eyebrows up comically. “Oh, did you mean me? A question for little old me? Does this mean you’re back from Planet Elle and here with us mere mortals on Earth?”
Elle rolled her eyes. Even if his comment was deserved. Shepointed back and forth between them. “Shut it, Wyatt. I’m trying to be engaged here.”
“And far be it from me to stand in the way of progress,” he yelled over the sound of the blender.
