The Favor Read online

  “I need a smoke.” He patted the breast pocket of his shirt.

  With a sigh, Janelle followed him out to the back porch. When he offered her a cigarette, she waved him away. She found a place on the concrete retaining wall and drew her feet up, her arms pinning her knees to her chest as she watched him. In the flare from the lighter, he looked like a stranger, if only for a second.

  Gabe drew on the cigarette, making the tip glow in the dark. She heard the hiss and whoosh of his exhalation, and smelled the smoke on the fresh night air. Above them, the stars were sharp and cold.

  “He thinks you two used to be together.”

  “Who? Andy? And me?” At this, she had to stand. The sidewalk was rough under her bare feet, but she paced, anyway. She shivered suddenly. Held out her hand. “Okay, give me one. That’s...ridiculous! Why?”

  The light from the house illuminated only bits and pieces of Gabe, but she could see enough to watch him shrug. “I think you know why.”

  He lit the cigarette for her and handed it over. Only the first drag ever tasted any good, and she savored it for a few seconds in silence before taking another. Gabe shuffled his feet, kicking at the porch step.

  Sickness roiled in her belly, and she pressed a hand to it. “I thought you said he didn’t remember anything.”

  “I guess he remembers some stuff, maybe just a little. Or maybe just feelings.”

  Janelle frowned. “You have to tell him it wasn’t...like that. It wasn’t true. I mean, not like that.”

  “Do you think that will change how he feels about you now?”

  “It might,” she said. “And if it doesn’t, you still have to tell him, Gabe. Jesus. And you have to tell him that we’re...that we—”

  Except, of course, what would Gabe tell his brother? What were they? Friends with benefits, or something more? They’d never talked about it.

  “I’m not telling him anything!” Gabe tossed the cigarette to the concrete and ground it out. “Neither are you. You say nothing to him, you hear me?”

  “Yeah. I hear you.” Sullen, she threw her own cigarette to the ground, where it lay burning, until Gabe did her the favor of stepping on it. “I get it. You don’t want to tell your brother that we’re together because he has a crush on me. Because that would be so much worse than just letting him think he has a chance with me or something, right? Worse than letting him find out the hard way, like tonight, when it will only make him feel betrayed?”

  Gabe said nothing.

  “Oh, God,” Janelle said, after a moment of staring as his dark form, unable to see his expression. “You don’t want to tell him, you don’t want to tell anyone. Right?”

  “Janelle...”

  She turned away from him, her arms crossed over her chest to help warm her against another wave of chill. “I’m such an idiot.”

  “You’re not. I’m an asshole.”

  “You keep saying that,” she snapped, “like it’s a good excuse.”

  “It’s not an excuse. It’s true.”

  She bit at the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood, before she could trust herself to speak without her voice cracking. “Well. Fine. I’ll tell him, then. I’ll tell him the truth.”

  She moved to go inside the house, but Gabe grabbed her. It was an echo of that long-ago last night she’d seen him, though they’d been in his bedroom then. She’d carried the marks of his grip for almost two weeks, and sometimes had pressed the bruises, making them hurt, to remember how his hand had felt on her. The pain had been a sort of guilty pleasure.

  She threw his hand off her now, no longer some messed-up eighteen-year-old girl who didn’t know which end was up. “Don’t!”

  He put his hands up immediately, though he didn’t move away. “I’m sorry.” A pause, a breath. His voice, lower. “I’m so sorry.”

  He tried to hold her again, but Janelle pushed away from him. He caught her again on the top step, his fingers shackling her wrist loosely enough for her to pull away if she wanted to. She didn’t. She turned.

  “You can’t tell him the truth,” Gabe said. “Because Andy doesn’t know.”

  “I know he doesn’t remember, but if he’s thinking that we were together, then he must have some idea—”

  “No,” Gabe said hoarsely. “You don’t get it. It’s not just that he doesn’t remember. It’s that...he doesn’t know. The truth. And he can’t know, okay? He can’t ever know.”

  She thought of what Gabe had said upstairs, how he’d asked her what she thought about what had happened. If she’d believed it. That it had not been an accident, which meant it had been on purpose.

  Gabe had shot his brother on purpose.

  “So...what is the truth?”

  But if he’d meant to tell her earlier, the moment had been lost. Gabe let go of her wrist and stepped away. He shook his head.

  There was no way she could keep her voice from shaking this time, and she didn’t even try. “That’s it?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Not sorry enough,” she told him.

  Then she went inside.

  FORTY-SIX

  Then

  MICHAEL—HE DOESN’T LIKE being called Mikey anymore, not even Mike—sips at the beer and makes a face. “Bleah.”

  Andy, on the other hand, is already finished with one and halfway through another. He keeps tapping his fingers on the side of the bottle until Gabe wants to strangle him to get him to stop. He’s nervous as hell himself, and the clink-clink of Andy’s class ring on the glass is driving him nuts.

  “Where is she? She’s not coming.” Michael looks as if he’s ready to bolt.

  “Shut up. She’ll be here. She said she would.” Gabe moves in front of his brother as if he means to stop him, and Michael steps back. “Stop being such a pussy.”

  “Maybe she lied to you.” Andy tosses the bottle into the woods, where the glass shatters on a rock. He’s bouncing on the balls of his feet now. Sweating.

  “Jesus, Andy. Calm down. She’s never going to get into this if you look like you’re nuts.” Saying it out loud, Gabe wishes he hadn’t said it like that, but Andy doesn’t seem to notice. He pulls another beer from the cooler and cracks the top. “And slow down. You’re gonna be too wasted to do anything.”

  “She’s not coming,” Michael says again, then sits on one of the logs around the fire.

  Gabe spits to the side. “She’ll be here. She’s a girl. They’re always late. She’s probably fixing her hair or something. Or she had to do something for her grandma.”

  “Maybe she got lost.” Andy is up again, pacing, kicking at the dirt so small stones clang against the metal tire rim they use for a fire pit. “Maybe she got...she got abducted by aliens. Or Bigfoot.”

  Now he really sounds like a lunatic. Could be the beer talking. Could be that other stuff, those things that have led Andy to write all those letters and poems that have worried Gabe so much. Lots of shit has been going down, but Gabe would rather believe it’s just the booze and not his brother’s brain.

  There’s a crackling in the leaves, a snapping of branches, and a minute later, she’s there.

  She’s taken the time to do her hair and makeup, that’s evident even in the fire’s shifting light. Her clothes, too. She’s made a real effort for this, and though he doesn’t want to let it, jealously shoots through him. She’s never made an effort like that for him. He can tell himself he likes her better with her hair soft and her face clean, and it would be true. But this Janelle is scorching hot, and it’s not for him.

  But it’s too late now.

  “Hi, guys.” Her voice is lilting, breathy. She points at the cooler. “Got one of those for me?”

  If she’s nervous, she doesn’t show it. Her hair’s grown long enough now for her to flip over her shoulder. It’s such a girlie move, so flirty and not like her at all, that Gabe takes a step back. She’s not looking toward him.

  “Yeah. Here, you can have mine.” Andy holds out the bottle to her.