Page 31 of A Favor Owed

We hang up, and I stretch out on my sofa, my dick twitching and my mind racing. Girls don’t usually play hard to get with me. I never have time for that shit. It’s on, or I’m gone. But I’ve also never gone after a girl with a secret the size of the Grand Canyon. This is a whole different set of rules from what I’m used to, and they’re Angie’s rules.

My phone rings, and I groan when I see the number.

“Hey, Lou,” I say.

“How you doing, Brady?” says the rough voice on the other line. “Listen, your dad’s being stubborn as ever and my associates are busting my balls over it. They’re ready to move on this.”

“Haven’t you tried to call Angela?” I ask. “See if she’ll talk to you?”

“No, I don’t want to spook her. She’s good at running, and obviously good at covering her tracks. We’ll need her eventually, and I’m not willing to lose her for this. Either your dad gives up the names or I convince the folks here we’ll be able to fry some much bigger fish.”

“She won’t talk to you, but you think she’ll talk to me?”

“You’ve confirmed she’s there. You got me her address and her phone number. Go the extra mile here and see if you can get me something big I can use. It’s a last-ditch effort, but I’m willing to stall them one more time to help your dad.”

Something big would require not just more effort, but more alone time with Angela. For now she’s just a casual hookup. I don’t need to know anything about her other than her favorite positions and the location of her G-spot. But I’ll never find out anything real about her.

I think of my mom on her knees, clutching me as she screamed, the strong arms that wrapped around us and promised to keep us safe.

“Yeah, sure,” I say. “I’ll get you something.”

I end the call and flop back on my sofa. Shit. This sucks. I don’t want to get my heart involved with Angela Pines. But she owes me. Her little disappearing act with her family, her gesture of independence or whatever the hell it was, cost my family big. This is my only chance to set that right.

I go for a long run followed by a long shower to clear my head of all things Angie, but it doesn’t happen. The Angie Army—purple hair and fake eyes and tattooed shoulder and deep curves and long legs—has begun a full-scale invasion of my brain and my body.

She is just a girl, man, I remind myself.

But when I finally fall asleep, I dream about those eyes. And they’re not turquoise. They’re brown and gold and the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. When I wake up the next morning—too early and unable to fall back to sleep—all I can think about is her.

Damn. Another long run is in my immediate future. I climb out of bed, brush my teeth, and put on my running shoes.

Running in the cool morning air, before the sun is fully up and the air polluted with commuter exhaust, isn’t helping as much as I’d hoped. It’s not until my playlist is interrupted by a phone call that my mind turns to other things.

“Hiya, Brady,” says my mom loudly. I can hear the noise of Manhattan in the background: car horns honking, buses screeching, people talking on phones. She’s on her way to her receptionist job in the city. “You all set to fly out on Thursday?”

“Yeah, Ma,” I say, slowing to a jog. “Flying into LaGuardia around ten p.m.”

“I don’t understand this, Brady,” she says, and I can hear the frustration in her voice. “You got accepted to one of the best law schools in the country, close to home, and you decide to pick up and move to the other side of the country to go to some school no one’s ever heard of?”

“I just needed a change for a little while,” I say, guilt starting to vibrate through my bones. “I’m already set to transfer to Columbia for the spring semester.”

“Do you even like it out there?”

“No,” I assure her. “They’ve got actual tumbleweeds and shit. And you can’t get a decent slice of pizza to save your life.”

“All right, then,” she says, and I could tell from her voice that I made her smile. “I’m just getting to work, hon. I’ll talk to you later. Can’t wait to see you.”

“Me too,” I say.

I hang up, and my phone switches back to my playlist. A familiar feeling of heavy sadness briefly clenches my chest as I think about the reason for my upcoming trip home, but I shrug it off and keep running. It’s all in the past.

An hour and a half later, I pull into the parking garage at school and snag a spot near the bike rack. As luck would have it, Angie rides up just as I’m getting out of my car. Okay, maybe I waited a few minutes with my engine idling to make it look like we’d arrived at the same time…

“What’s up, Pines?” It’s a pink poodle skirt day, complete with a pink blouse knotted at her midriff and black-and-white saddle shoes. Where does she find this stuff and how the hell does she make it look sexy?

“Hey, Brady,” she says, slightly breathless as she hops off her beat-up pink beach cruiser and grabs her books out of the basket. Her hair is all bound up in one of the elaborate braids she favors. It occurs to me that I’m probably the only one in our class who’s seen that hair in all its waist-length glory.

That thought sends an unexpected wave of possessiveness through me that I quickly tamp down. Never in my life have I felt possessive toward a girl—with the sole exception of the night that asshole at the bar put his hands on Angie—and I’m not about to start now. She isn’t mine, she will never be mine, and most importantly, I don’t want her to be mine. I’m going to do what I need to do, then transfer to Columbia, head back to New York, and forget all about Angela Pines.

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