Page 57 of A Favor Owed

I pinch the bridge of my nose and lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Did she lose her shit?”

“She was handling it…until she found out that you were involved.”

“Oh no.” Anxiety for my mom instantly turns to anxiety for my own well-being.

“Yeah. So, uh, she’s not talking to me at the moment. She just left to go to your aunt Marianne’s house. I’m sure you’ll be hearing from her soon.” He says it in the same tone he would use when I brought home a less-than-stellar report card.

Sure enough, my phone vibrates with a text from my mom.Call me now, Brady.

“I gotta go,” I say.

I hang up with my dad and debate ripping the Band-Aid off and calling my mom. Then I remember her temper and decide to give her a little time to cool off.

You’re ignoring me at your own peril, she texts an hour later.

I set an alarm for five o’clock the next morning, when she’ll be drinking her coffee at our (or my aunt’s) kitchen table before heading to work, and hope that will give her enough time to calm down.

When my phone alarm wakes me, the room still dark and my head pounding after a night spent tossing and turning, I call her. Her phone goes straight to voicemail. I breathe a sigh of relief, leave her a message asking her to call me, and go for a run before heading to school.

It’s still early when I arrive on campus. Angela’s beach cruiser is the only bike on the rack. I head to the library on autopilot, looking for silver-and-purple hair. Then I remind myself that I’m a selfish jerk who doesn’t deserve her. I’m going back to New York and she’s staying here. I’m not going to mess with that; it’s not fair to either of us. I turn around to leave.

And I run smack into Angela Pines.

“Oops, sorry!” she says as she bends to retrieve the phone she dropped. “I was looking at my…phone.” Her voice drops off as she stands up and realizes who ran into her. She freezes briefly, her eyes locked on mine, before recovering herself and stepping around me.

I grab her elbow. “Ange.”

There’s a brief moment where she remains facing away from me. Then she turns and presents me with a perfectly blank, very beautiful face. “Yes?”

“Hey, um, what are you doing?”No, Brady, what areyoudoing?

She looks around the library with her usual snark. “Studying?” The “you idiot” is implied.

“Right,” I say. “Are you free after class?”

“For what?”

“I thought maybe we could talk.”

“Nope. See ya.” She starts to leave.

“Angela.”

She turns back around and huffs out an annoyed sigh. “Whatever you have to say to me had better be good, Brady.”

Yeah, well, I’m not promising anything. “Can we go get a coffee or a drink or something?”

She hitches her backpack higher on her shoulder and folds her arms. “I’ll meet you at Finnegan’s at three thirty.”

A burst of highly premature relief shoots through me. “Yeah, yeah, that’s great. I’ll see you there.”

She heads deep into the library without another word.

Well, great, you idiot. What the hell are you planning on telling her? “Hey, Angie, I’ve been totally using you to get my dad out of trouble. It might have even put you at risk. Now that I’ve got that off my chest, how about we catch a movie?”

I guess I’ll just figure it out as we go. The mere thought of sitting across from her is enough to set my pulse racing. Even if she ends up leaving after an hour having said nothing but “You’re an asshole”—a point I would decline to argue—I’ll still be happy I got to spend time with her.

The rest of the morning drags by. I take notes in class but can’t remember what we actually discussed. Afterward, I watch Angela pack up her stuff and leave. I wonder if she’llmeet me at three thirty. There’s every chance she won’t.

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