Page 41 of If All Else Sails
For years Jacob has tried to brush off my assessment of Wyatt as a series of misunderstandings. Just like he did the other day with Wyatt calling the cops on me.
But at a certain point, patterns speak to character. You can only chalk up so many incidents as misunderstandings.
It wasn’t an accident when Wyatt tagged along with Jacob for my nineteenth birthday, which resulted in two of my friends getting into a fight over him that permanently tore apart my friend group. Or when Wyatt also felt the need to come to my graduation celebration, then got a call about some issue with a sponsor that required him to leave in the middle of dinner, taking Jacob with him as well. No biggie. I didn’t need my own brother at my graduation dinner.
And both situations are made worse in the context of the night Wyatt and I met.
During the spring of my freshman year of college, I came home for a long weekend. At the very last minute, my brother decided to come home too. I was thrilled. When Jacob left for college I missed him a ridiculous amount, but inexplicably I missed him even more when I started school.
I got home first, and our house shifted into the usual frenzy of excitement whenever Jacob is involved. My parents and I rolled out all the metaphorical red carpets for my brother. Mom baked his favorite cake—tres leches, which to me is not a cake but a sponge soaked in dairy. The pantry and fridge were stocked with his favorite foods, and I even scrubbed the toilet in our Jack and Jill bathroom, my least favorite chore.
We fell just short of hanging a banner on the front porch. And I think if Jacob had given more than twelve hours’ notice, Dad would have made one at the print shop he owns. As it was, he was too backed up with orders for birthday yard signs and a set of car magnets for a steamy romance author featuring a man’s glistening and overly muscled torso. (I only know because Dad sent me a selfie with the car magnet, his face next to the abs looking appropriately frightened.)
When Jacob’s car pulled into the driveway, however, hewasn’t alone. Mom gasped at the sight of another figure, probably thinking it might be a woman—which would have been a first.
But it was a man who stepped out of the car. Not just technically a man in that he was over eighteen. Where my brother still hadn’t outgrown his boyish qualities, Wyatt already looked like aman. Both in his build—tall and broad—and the way he carried himself. There was something firmer and steadier about him, something more serious about his eyes. And he had the kind of handsome features normally reserved for A-list actors.
All of which made me suddenly feel very young and very self-conscious.
“This is Wyatt,” Jacob said after his required extensive hugging of Mom and Dad. “He plays hockey.”
I stiffened at this, but no one noticed. Maybe no one except Wyatt, whose slate-gray eyes stayed pinned on me even as he shook Mom’s and Dad’s hands.
When Jacob noticed me slipping behind our parents, he yanked me past them and toward Wyatt. “Don’t be shy,” he said. “Come meet the man who’s going to make me rich one day.”
Before even finishing high school, my brother decided he was going to be an agent. Once he had this plan, he never wavered. Clearly, Wyatt was aware, as he didn’t protest or even react to that introduction.
But when Wyatt held out his hand, I had a reaction. It wasn’t about him specifically. More about his size. Who—and what—he reminded me of as he stepped closer, towering over me.
I flinched, taking a big step back, almost behind my brother, like he was going to be a human shield between me and his new best friend.
My reaction, one I hadn’t planned but couldn’t take back orexplain, seemed to mortally offend him. Though I felt bad, I had no intention of explaining to him or my brother.
I scurried into the house and attempted to avoid Wyatt. The same way I’d avoided all Jacob’s jock friends since my junior year of high school. I couldn’t skip dinner together, during which I felt Wyatt’s heavy stare—glare?—on me all the way up until I helped clear the table and retreated back into the safety of my room and its locked door.
When the guys went out for snacks—because the fully stocked kitchen wasn’t fully stocked enough—I headed down to the kitchen for hot cocoa. I intended to be back upstairs by the time they returned, but instead was standing there in slippers, fuzzy pajama pants, and a tank top when Jacob stumbled through the back door, shushing a giggling blond I’d never seen before.
“My parents are asleep,” Jacob stage-whispered to her, putting his finger on her lips before kissing her quiet.
Leave it to my brother to pick up a woman in a grocery store.
Wyatt stalked in behind them, a tall, disapproving shadow carrying Kroger bags. To my utter shock, our gazes locked, and he gave me a little eye roll, like he and I were suddenly in on a private joke. The butt of which was, of course, my brother the lothario.
That one tiny gesture changed things. And though we didn’t talk much after Jacob convinced me to watch a movie with them, it felt for a moment like Wyatt and I had bridged some gap or joined the same team. He didn’t sit too close to me on the couch, but he wasn’t all the way on the other end either. A good distance.
When I was licking salt off my fingers, Wyatt handed me a napkin. I didn’t even mind the feel of his fingertips brushing mine. It actually felt, for the first time in a long time, okay to be touched.
Meanwhile, Grocery Store Girl sat in Jacob’s lap, and they made out like we were not in the room. Or in the house at all. For a little while, Wyatt and I pretended like it wasn’t happening and just watched the movie, ignoring them and the awkward tension completely. Then Wyatt shocked me for a second time that night by throwing a piece of popcorn at them.
It landed in the back of Jacob’s hair, which he was wearing a bit shaggy at the time, and almost stuck. When I giggled, they didn’t even stop sucking face. And for the next few minutes, Wyatt and I alternated throwing popcorn at them and pretending to watch the movie. He never smiled, but his eyes seemed to. There was a connection there—at least I thought there was.
When our popcorn bowls were empty and we were halfway through the forgettable action movie with explosions and a beautiful female assassin whose eyeliner never smudged, Wyatt and I stood at the same time, made awkward eye contact, and then left Jacob with his mouth fused to Grocery Store Girl’s.
Wyatt lingered in the kitchen, looking at me intently but not saying anything. And I, a person who could usually make small talk with a baked potato, got nervous because he was so cute and so tall and broad. And because I didn’t hang out with guys like him anymore. Athletes. With the kind of body shape and size that made me feel powerless all over again.
So, I bolted upstairs.
A few minutes later, I pretended not to hear him on the other side of the Jack and Jill bathroom door, but it was hard to sleep knowing a guy I barely knew was over there—even with my favorite calming music on and my desk chair jimmied under the bathroom doorknob the way I always kept it at night.
