Page 58 of A Favor Owed

I go to Finnegan’s a little early, sit at a booth facing the door, and order a Guinness. Thankfully, Kelsey isn’t there. She’s already given me an earful about Angela being mopey and how she suspects from Angela’s radio silence about me that it’s all my fault.

My phone buzzes with a text.

Where are you?

Oh, crap. Not now.This is a really bad time, Mom. Can I call you in a couple hours? I promise I’m not dodging you.

Where are you, Brady?

At a bar.

What’s the name of the bar?Why the hell does my mom need to know the name of the bar I’m in?

Finnegan’s, I text.We’ll talk soon.

You better believe it.

I turn my ball cap backward and rest my forehead on my fist. This is drama overload for me.

Angela decides to show up fifteen minutes late, undoubtedly to make me sweat. It works. I nurse my beer and decide I wouldn’t be all that upset if the earth just swallowed me whole. But finally, she strolls through the door and sits down in front of me, not saying a word.

“Thanks for coming,” I say, like this is a funeral or a board meeting or something.

“Mm-hm.”

“Do you want something?”

“No.” She checks her phone.

“How’s it going?”

“What do you want, Brady?”

“I just want to talk.” I haven’t thought this through. Absolutely nothing has changed since I was home. I still used her, I still can’t tell her, I still can’t be with her. I still feel like shit all the time with her gone.

“You seemed like you needed a little bit of space before I left,” I say. I mean, she did tell me I shouldn’t have anything to do with her.

“You must be joking.”

Okay, yeah, bad start. Terrible, terrible start.Try again, idiot.“I have some stuff going on—”

“You had a party the night you got back from New York,” she interrupts me. “I wasn’t invited.”

“Yeah, that was…wrong,” I say.

“Look, Brady. You don’t owe me any apologies or explanations. We were nevertogethertogether, so…”

“There’s some stuff going on with my family,” I blurt. “I’ve been having a hard time dealing with it.”

“So you thought it would be a good idea to ghost me? I somehow strike you as a teenager who can’t handle an adult discussion and just needs to be dropped? That’s great. Thanks, Brady. Good talk.” She drops her phone in her bag and starts to slide out of the booth.

“Can you please let me try to tell you what’s going on?”

She’s perched on the edge of the booth, looking wary and annoyed. “I’m listening.”

Well, this is it. I can’t tell her specifics, but I can give her enough to explain my behavior. “So, there’s this thing going on with my dad—”

The bar door slams open, letting in sunlight and a red-haloed vision of fury that makes me choke on my words and stare in horror. The vision approaches and points a finger at me.

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