Page 55 of A Favor Owed
I know Kelsey wants to ask me about Brady, but I also know she’s too cool to do it. She knows that if things were going well, I’d have mentioned him at some point. And I haven’t mentioned him at all.
That night, I can’t sleep. I sit up in bed, the only light in the room the glow from my laptop, and google “ghosting.” I thought I had a pretty good handle on its meaning, but I’ve never actually been on the receiving end. “The practice of ceasing all communication without any warning or justification.” Yep, that’s what I thought. Brady is definitely ghosting me.
Confronted with the words on the screen, I feel the hurt and humiliation even more acutely. I wonder again which stupid thing I did had been the final straw. Then it finally occurs to me, like a giant slap to my head. It wasn’t any particular thing. It’s just me. I don’t exactly have a cheery disposition. I have a hard shell, I’m closed off, and I’m weighed down by secrets. I’m the walking definition of emotionally unavailable. Brady is sweet, happy, fun, and loved by his family. Why would he want to be with someone like me?
Figuring it out doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. After working so hard over the summer to overcome the fear and loneliness of being on my own, I feel like I’m back at square one. Brady is the only person I’ve let in, aside from Elisa, and I’ve barely told her anything. Kelsey is cool, but she doesn’t know anything about me, and I’m not about to dump this on her. People at school are acquaintances, not friends. And the more people who know anything about me, the more I would put them and me at risk.
Well, fine. I got over fear and loneliness before, and I’ll just get over them again. But the sad, pathetic truth is that aside from feeling alone and scared again, and despite knowing that this is best for him, I miss Brady. I miss everything about him.
Chapter Twenty-One
Brady
She was never my girlfriend. We went out one time, two if you count the party. She lied to my face. She got my dad in trouble. She has attitude for miles.
So why do I feel like complete shit? I’ve never been much of a pity partier. But with Angie out of my life, I’m wallowing in that shit.
The day after I get back from New York, more hungover from missing Angela than from the Forget Angela party I threw last night, Lou calls.
“Human trafficking, huh?”
“Yep.” I could not be less in the mood for this conversation.
“I like it. Maybe she’s a little more committed to bringing down Daddy than I gave her credit for,” he muses. “This can all go away if she talks.”
If shetalks? Hell to the N-O. “That wasn’t the deal.”
“We never had an actual deal. What we’ve got here is me doing your dad a big favor. Anyway, a lot of this is out of my control, kid.”
“She’s scared enough as it is. She’s not going to talk to you.” And I don’t want her talking to him. I don’t want her putting herself at risk.
“Did you forget?” says Lou. I can hear his smirk all the way through the phone. “She already did. Before she took off for Cali, she tipped us off. It’s the whole reason your dad agreed to help her.”
“Anonymously, though,” I counter.
“So she thought. But these days, anonymity is hard to come by.”
I did something they’ll never forgive.She meant it. She was never planning to go back home to her luxurious existence. I didn’t believe it—or want to believe it—but hearing it from Lou and having gotten to know Angela a little, I have to face it. She’s committed to that walk-up in Queens.
“Still, man,” I say. “She’s a twenty-two-year-old law student. What could she possibly know beyond what she already told you?”
“That’s what we’d like to find out.”
“That’s on you. I can’t get her to do that.”
“You’ve done enough, Brady. Now it’s between me and your dad. And Angela Pines.”
We end the call. I should feel great. I’ve done what I could to help my dad, and Angela never found out. Debt paid, no more favors owed. We’re even.
But I feel worse than ever. Every protective instinct in my body is telling me I need to be close to her, protecting her with everything I have. Instead, I’m leaving her on her own.
I look at my phone. I still have that picture of us on my home screen. I should just call her. I’ve blown her off for only a couple of days. I can explain that away. Why am I doing this again? Oh yeah, because I used her and exposed her to danger and she’s going to find out and hate me.
At the end of the day, Angela needs to move on with her life, and I need to get back to mine—in New York, attending Columbia Law School, close to my friends and my family. In short, I need to wrap things up here and get the hell out of California.
About a week after returning from New York, I get a call from my dad. I’ve been avoiding him ever since Siobhan opened her big mouth at dinner. But I’m lying on my sofa after the gym, wondering if Angie got home from work okay the night before, and feeling like such a pathetic loser that I take his call just to hear his voice.
“You sound like shit.”
