I could never fully walk away from Wyatt, even when he was being an ass. The two of us were tethered by years of friendship, not to mention our loyalty to my brother. Watching Josh retreat his way into a case of agoraphobia had drawn me and Wyatt even closer together the last few years as we’d confided our worries to each other and teamed up to help my brother as best we could.
But now Josh was doing a lot better—seeing a therapist and willingly venturing out into public again—thanks in large part to Mia. He didn’t need us as much, which meant Wyatt and I didn’t need to see each other as much to commiserate and strategize ways to save Josh from himself. Maybe it would be better if we just kept on that way. Maybe with a little more distance between us, I could finally move on and let go. Stop hoping for something that was never going to happen.
Yeah, right.
I realized Mia had started talking again and snapped myself back to the present, trying to look like I’d been listening.
“Josh let me name her. She’s the first generation of kids who’ll be named after female scientists. So I chose a mathematician, of course.”
“Well?” I asked, when she didn’t elaborate. “What’s the name?” My brother had a long-standing tradition of naming all his does after novelists, but he’d run through so many names by now that he’d needed to pick a new theme.
“Emmy, after Emmy Noether, the most creative abstract algebraist of modern times. I’ve got a whole list ready to go for this year’s kidding season. Ada Lovelace, Sofya Kovalevskaya, Katherine Johnson, Hypatia—”
“Cool,” I said before she could finish reciting the entire list for me. I had something else on my mind that I wanted Mia’s take on before we had to get back to campus. “Speaking of my brother, Wyatt told me something the other night that kind of pissed me off.”
Mia’s attention perked up. “You saw Wyatt the other night?”
She always got real interested whenever the subject of Wyatt came up. Specifically, the subject of me and Wyatt. She’d asked a lot of pointed questions about the two of us early on in our friendship, and although I’d vehemently denied any romantic inclinations in that direction, I had a feeling she might have seen through my lies.
“Just at King’s Palace,” I said casually. “I went there on Saturday with some friends.”
“So what pissed you off?” She frowned. “Something he told you about Josh?”
I nodded as I reached for my drink. “I guess Wyatt was pretty drunk, and when some dude got handsy with me, he took it upon himself to defend my honor.”
Mia’s frown deepened. “Are you okay?”
I waved my hand. “Yeah, it was nothing.” The mark on my arm had already disappeared, leaving only a lingering sense of embarrassment for having such bad taste in men.
“Wyatt’s going to get himself hurt one of these days.”
“He kind of got his ass handed to him this time.” I winced at the memory of him lying on the floor, curled up in pain. For a second there on Saturday I’d been scared he was going to land himself in the emergency room.
“What happened?” she asked, sitting up straighter. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine, just a little bruised—both his face and his ego. But when I told him I didn’t need him starting fights on my behalf, he said that Josh had made him swear some stupid oath that he’d always look out for me. Like some kind of dumbass knight protector. This was way back when they were in tenth grade, mind you, and apparently Wyatt took it so seriously that he still thinks he has to play bodyguard around me. Can you believe that shit?”
“Well…actually…” Mia’s brow furrowed as she chewed on her straw.
“What?”
“I asked Josh once if he thought Wyatt might have a crush on you—”
“He definitely does not. Believe me.” I tried not to sound bitter, because I wasn’t supposed to care that Wyatt didn’t see me like that.
“Says you. I’m not so convinced.” Mia gave me a defiant look before she went on. “Anyway, Josh said there was no way, because—get this—Wyatt knows Josh would kill him if he ever caught him ‘sniffing around’ you.” She made air quotes with her fingers so I’d know that choice phrasing had come straight from my brother’s mouth.
“Jesus,” I muttered, getting even more pissed.
“The thing is, he wasn’t kidding around. It sort of freaked me out how serious he sounded about it—not that I think he’d literally murder Wyatt, obviously. But I have a feeling it might end their friendship.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I couldn’t believe my brother was acting like such a Neanderthal. No, actually, on second thought, I could. At least where I was concerned, he’d always been a bit of a caveman. “Since when does he get a say in who I date?”
Mia pointed at me, nodding vigorously. “That’s exactly what I asked him!”
“He can fuck off into the sun with that patriarchal bullshit.” I crumpled the aluminum foil my burrito had been wrapped in, wishing it was my brother’s face. I’d been planning to make a dragon out of it, but now I was way too mad.
It was a tradition at Groovy’s—every time you finished one of their gargantuan burritos, you made a sculpture out of the leftover foil. Every available surface around the restaurant showed off the foil shapes people had created—animals, flowers, monsters, vehicles, and anything else you could imagine. Everywhere you looked, they decorated the windowsills, counters, tops of the cabinets, and even dangled from the ceiling.
“I agree,” Mia said. “But he told me it wasn’t about that. He said…” She paused, like she was trying to remember Josh’s exact words. “He said he trusted Wyatt with his life, which meant he also trusted him never to hurt anyone he loved. So if Wyatt ever treated you the way he treats the other women he messes around with…all bets were off.”
“What if I want to be treated like that?”
Mia’s eyes widened. “Do you?”
“Of course not. But that’s my decision, not anyone else’s. Definitely not my stupid brother’s.”
“You’ll have to take that up with Josh,” Mia said with a shrug.
I damn well would.
But there was a more important question on my mind now.
Should I take it up with Wyatt?
After lunch, I dropped Mia back on campus and drove up to the state park. Spring ended early in Central Texas, giving way to the crushing heat and humidity of summer by May. But we had a few weeks of temperate weather left yet, and the fields along the highway were covered with swaths of bluebonnets and scarlet paintbrush.
I spent the rest of the afternoon deep in the park’s northeastern woodland area collecting red oak samples to test for Bretziella fagacearum—the fungus responsible for oak wilt—but as I trudged through the forest undergrowth, I kept thinking about what Mia had told me.
Had Josh threatened Wyatt to keep him away from me? Was that part of the promise my brother had extracted from him? I kept coming back to that somber, knowing look in Wyatt’s eyes when he’d told me about the promise he’d made Josh.