Page 4 of A Favor Owed

“Well, anyone whose mother rocks a leopard-print skirt with her Manolos is bound to beDesperate Housewivesmaterial.”

Another girl snorted. “Some other kind of wife, more likely.”

Bitches.

Anyway, in the three months since I moved to California, I’ve worked on perfecting the West Coast way of speech. I always put a “the” in front of freeway route numbers, I make sure water rhymes with hotter, I pronounce all myR’s, and I liberally throw around “totallys” and “likes.”

“Does your family live in Dos Torres?” he asks.

“I don’t have any family.”

Brady looks at me curiously. “No one?”

“My parents were involved with some illegal activity,” I explain. “They were in and out of jail when I was a kid, and I was in foster care a lot. They both died from drug overdoses.”

“Wow,” he says, nodding slowly. It’s not exactly empathy. It’s more like interest, like it’s mildly fascinating to hear a story about a family with so much unsavory business connected to it.

“What about you?” I ask. “Big Irish family?”

“A younger sister, a younger brother, and two married parents,” he says. “Total Bronx Irish Catholics. Most boring childhood ever.”

“That sounds amazing,” I say.

He looks at me with his head cocked and his mouth tilted up in a smile, like I’m making fun of him.

“I’m serious,” I insist. “You have no idea how much I wanted that. What kinds of stuff did you guys do growing up?”

He stares at me with those otherworldly eyes for a moment. “Okay, I’ll humor you,” he says.

As he tells me about summer trips to the Jersey Shore and pizza Fridays and bagels after church on Sundays, I let myself imagine that I had those things, too. I can feel the warmth and comfort of a mom who bakes cookies and a dad who helps with homework. I picture myself in his sister’s place, screaming as he throws a dead jellyfish at her and making fun of him when he ends up getting a rash from it. I stare at him, sipping my sambuca slowly, laughing at the same time my heart is breaking for a life I’ll never have.

“I’m talking too much,” he says, declining a third Guinness.

“It’s okay,” I say. “I made you.”

“Yeah, you really twisted my arm.”

I glance at my watch and do a double-take. Two hours have gone by without me even realizing it. “I have to go,” I say, reaching for my wallet. I can’t get all comfortable with a strange guy, especially one from back home.

“What’s up, princess? You going to turn into a pumpkin or something?”

I look up at him sharply. “I’m not a princess,” I say, more harshly than I intended. “Why would you say that?”

He regards me through narrowed eyes. “It was a joke. I didn’t mean anything by it. Did I, like, offend you or something?”

“No,” I say, trying to tone down my panic and turn it into umbrage. “I just, um, I work hard. No one gives me anything.”

“Is that so?”

This time it’s me with narrowed eyes. “What the hell would give you the impression that I’m dependent on anyone for anything?”

“Not a thing,” he says, his tone mild. “I’ve got this, by the way.”

I shake my head and put a twenty-dollar bill down on the table, which will be all tip for Kelsey. Since I rarely use my two-drink-per-night allotment, I know Cliff won’t charge me.

“It’s on the house,” I say. “Debt repaid.”

“Do I have to do you a favor or something to get you to hang out with me again?”

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