The Favor

  But Bennett was her kid. Andy was his brother, and an adult. Gabe frowned. “I just don’t want him to be a pain, that’s all.”

  “He’s not. Believe me, if he were, I’d tell him so and send his butt home.” Janelle grinned.

  Her smile didn’t make Gabe feel much better, but he nodded stiffly and gathered up the last bits of garbage from the painting project. “You ready?”

  “Yep.” She followed him through the kitchen, where he tossed the trash, and out the back door. Then to his truck, parked in his driveway. Silent the whole time. Until he pulled into the street, anyway. Then she cleared her throat and half turned toward him. “You take good care of him, Gabe.”

  He didn’t look at her. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what? It’s true.”

  “I don’t need you to pat my head. He’s my brother. That’s all.”

  More silence. He leaned to switch on the radio, punching the button to play the CD he had loaded. Old-school, Violent Femmes, the song order set to shuffle. Too late, he remembered she’d been the one to turn him onto the Femmes.

  “Is this my CD?” Janelle asked after the first two songs had played through and they were nearing the edge of town, almost to the twenty-four-hour department store.

  Gabe didn’t answer her.

  “Gabe Tierney,” Janelle said with a laugh. “I know this is mine. You borrowed it and I never got it back before I left.”

  “Well,” he said tightly, because what she said was true, “you left in such a hurry I didn’t have time to give it back.”

  They pulled into the parking lot, but he didn’t turn off the ignition. The music kept playing. Janelle tapped her fingers to the beat, then her feet. Twisting to face him, she started to sing along.

  “Listen to this song,” she says. “It’s a great song.”

  Janelle dances, hair swinging, hips swaying. Eyes closed. She twirls. She’s magic when she moves, and all he can do is watch her.

  “This is a great song,” she said now, dancing in the passenger seat even with the seat belt restraining her.

  “I know,” Gabe said, and turned off the truck to make the music die.

  “Hey,” Janelle protested. She got out when he did and came around the front to follow him toward the store. “I was listening to that.”

  “I have stuff to do. Need to get home. You do, too,” he added. “You shouldn’t leave them there alone for too long.”

  She had to take a couple running steps to catch up to him. “They’re fine.”

  “I don’t want to be out here all night. I have stuff to do,” he said again.

  “What sort of stuff?” she demanded from behind him. “Big date? What?”

  That didn’t slow him, but he did glance over his shoulder. “Do you really want to be out at Wal-Mart all night? Is that your idea of a good time?”

  “I’m just happy to be out of that house,” Janelle said crisply. She stopped walking. “God. Wow. I’m just glad to be away from there for a little while.”

  Gabe turned, walking backward, watching her get farther and farther away. He waited for her to move, to catch up to him, but she didn’t. She stayed right where she was, right in the middle of the dark parking lot.

  Gabe stopped.

  They stared at each other across the asphalt, the glare of the parking lot lights making shadows on her face.

  “Let’s go somewhere,” she said.

  “We are somewhere.”

  Janelle smiled. “Somewhere else. Just for a little while, Gabe.”

  Gabe said nothing as she took a step closer, then another and another until she was right up next to him, her face tipped to look into his. He didn’t move when she brushed her hand down the front of his shirt, or when she tugged at the hem of it. He couldn’t move.

  “God help me,” she whispered, “I just want to get away for a little while. Is that wrong? Am I a terrible person?”

  “No.”

  “Take me somewhere, Gabe,” Janelle said.

  He let out a long, slow breath. “Where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t know. Somewhere...somewhere away. Like the song says, somewhere only we know.”

  If nothing else had happened just then, he might’ve said yes. He might’ve taken her into his truck and played the Violent Femmes at top volume as they drove and drove and drove, someplace in the dark, someplace away. But a horn blared at them as a car passed, someone shouted at them to get out of the way. Janelle let go of the hem of his shirt and stepped back. The moment was lost.

  She didn’t say another word to him before they split up and did their shopping. They didn’t talk when they met up again at the register, or when they paid, or even when they got back into his truck. But when he slipped something from one of the plastic bags and handed it to her, she let out a small, breathy sigh. She turned the square plastic container over and over in her hands, then ran her fingertips over the title of the CD.

  Violent Femmes.

  Then she said, “Thanks.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  JANELLE JUST WANTED to dance. That was all. Drink a couple beers, listen to some music, get her hips swaying and her feet shifting. She didn’t even need a partner, though it would be a miracle if she got out of here tonight without at least a few offers, she thought as she tipped her first greenie to her mouth and sipped the crisp, yeasty flavor.

  “I haven’t had a Straub’s in... God. Years. Decades.”

  “You can’t get it out in Cali?” Betsy asked. She had a green bottle of her own. “You probably just spent all your time drinking mimosas or whatever, anyway, huh?”

  Janelle wanted to assume her cousin was joking, but couldn’t be sure. “Oh, sure. Me, Brad and Angie totally hung out in the hot tub all the time just quaffing Cristal and OJ.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  Janelle laughed. “Um. Yes. I’m kidding. The closest I ever got to a celebrity offering me a drink was when I helped Justin Ross originate a mortgage.”

  “Who’s that?” Betsy twisted in her chair to survey the rest of the bar. “It’s pretty lame in here tonight. It should get a little better soon. I hope.”

  Justin Ross was the star of Janelle’s favorite TV show of all time, Runner. It was in its last season, and she hadn’t been able to keep up with it. She mourned the loss in a totally embarrassing way she wouldn’t have shared with her best friend, much less a cousin she’d barely seen in the past twenty or so years. “It’s okay if it doesn’t,” Janelle said when Betsy turned to her with a look both expectant and apologetic. “I’m happy to just get out for a little while.”

  “I hear that.” Betsy sighed. After a pause, she added, “How’s Nan been since the picnic?”

  “She has her good days and her bad days. You should bring the kids over to see her more often.”

  Betsy looked guilty. “Oh. I didn’t want to tire her out.”

  Janelle hadn’t meant to make her cousin feel guilty or anything...but. “She’d love to see you.”

  “The kids are maniacs,” Betsy said in the sort of voice all mothers who think their kids are perfect use when they’re trying to pretend otherwise. “But I’ll come over. I will. And hey, Bennett could come over sometime, what do you think?”

  “Sure. Of course.” Janelle wasn’t going to argue. It would be good for Bennett to get to know his cousins better. “They seemed to get along fine at the picnic.”

  Betsy nodded with a grin. “Sure, sure. He can come over, spend the night some weekend. We always have tons of kids over playing video games and watching movies. I bet he’d have a blast. And it would give you a bit of a break, huh? Where is he tonight, hanging out with Nan and my mom?”

  “He’s at a sleepover.”

  “Oh...so he’s making friends in school? That’s good.” Betsy nodded again and lifted her beer bottle.

  Janelle clinked her bottle to her cousin’s, wondering if she could tell Betsy about everything that had happened, or if she should just count her blessing
s that he’d finally made a friend. It was a boy in his math class, a quiet kid named Rodney. She decided on simplicity. “Yes. He’s made some friends.”

  “Thank God, right? When we moved from Dubois to Kersey and my kids had to change schools, I thought they were going to die. Well, they said they were going to die.”

  “He’s been having a rough time,” Janelle blurted.

  Betsy nodded as though she was expecting it. “Big changes?”

  “Yes. He’s always been such a good kid. I never had to worry. Never had to get on him about his work. Never had to worry about him making friends. And here...” Janelle shook her head. “It’s so different.”

  “And what about you?”

  Janelle sipped her beer. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, what’s it been like for you? You lived in California for a long time. Coming back here to St. Marys has to be sort of tough on you. Different, at least.”

  “Yeah. Different. Really different.”

  Betsy lifted her bottle again. “Here’s to new beginnings, right?”

  It was the right thing to say. Janelle waved at the bartender to bring them another two beers, and ordered a platter of mozzarella sticks, because what difference would a few more lumps and bumps in places she didn’t want them make? Just like Dorothy after she stepped out of the house that had crunched the Wicked Witch of the West, Janelle was in a whole new world. One where the fashions were far more forgiving than in California.

  “I’m so glad you came out with me tonight,” Betsy said. “I bet you don’t get much time to go out. Being a single mother and all that. And taking care of Nan.”

  “I get out. To the store,” Janelle said with a laugh. “That’s about it. But it’s okay. Mostly, I’m fine to stay home with a book or a movie. Nan gets up so early....”

  Scanning Betsy’s face, watching her cousin’s expression change from interested to slightly blank, Janelle let her words trail off. The first one of her circle of California friends to get pregnant and then have a baby, she’d quickly learned most people tuned out overly long descriptions of Bennett’s sleeping, eating and pooping schedules. It was going to be the same regarding Nan, she saw.

  “Thank God for my mom, I guess.”

  Janelle took another drink before answering, to keep herself from sounding snarky. “Yes.”

  After what Janelle’s quirky brain insisted on calling the Great Potato Salad Incident, Kathy had been a little more overbearing than usual. It was one thing for her to call to check in on Nan, see how she was doing. To actually talk to her mother-in-law as if she were having a normal conversation. It was another thing altogether for her to call to check up on Janelle. When she’d offered to come and “sit with Mom” for an evening so Janelle could go out, it had been a welcome offer, but not necessarily a generous one.

  “Say no more.” Betsy held up a hand. “She’s my mom, but I totally get it. Personally, I think she has too much free time.”

  Janelle laughed and lifted her bottle to clink it. “Amen.”

  The conversation turned to other topics after that. Janelle was happy to find out that she and Betsy had more in common than she’d thought. Betsy knew a number of the girls Janelle had hung out with the year of high school she’d spent here, since many of them had sisters in her grade. Janelle hadn’t heard from any of them in years, but Betsy was happy enough to fill her in on the gossip.

  They had something else in common, too, Janelle discovered when Betsy let out a low hum of appreciation as they took a break from dancing to grab another couple of drinks. “Ooh, Gabe Tierney,” her cousin murmured, glancing across the room.

  Janelle couldn’t help laughing. The beer had helped her mood immensely, the dancing even more so. “What about him? You think he’s hot?”

  “Don’t you?” Betsy’s eyes went wide. “I used to have such a crush.”

  More laughter snorted out of her at that. Liquor lubricated Janelle, made her loose; beer made her warm and fuzzy. “He’s an asshole.”

  “Whatever.” Betsy waved a hand. “It’s not like I’d be able to take a shot with him. But you could.”

  That sobered Janelle a little bit. She eyed Gabe, watched him lean against the bar with his beer tipped to his lips. Watched him scope the room like...like what? A wolf stalking a deer. “Oh, please.”

  “He still lives next to Nan, right?”

  “Yes. Him and his brother Andy. And their dad.” Janelle shrugged as though it didn’t matter. As though if she pretended hard enough, that could be true.

  “So...?” Betsy grinned expectantly.

  Janelle looked at him again. Some young blonde in a tight denim skirt had snared him with the hair toss, the hip sway. “So, nothing.”

  “Too bad,” Betsy said. “He’s really, really cute.”

  “I told you—”

  “How is his brother, anyway?”

  Janelle paused. “Who, Andy?”

  “The one that lives with him. Yeah.”

  “He’s fine.” Janelle shrugged again. Gossip didn’t seem quite as much fun when it was about people she knew.

  “He works at the grocery store, right? Has that funny hand.”

  Janelle thought of the curled, hard-to-use fingers. “Yes.”

  “He’s cute, too,” Betsy said with another grin as the music changed. She let out a whoop and got off her bar stool to grab Janelle by the wrist. “I love this song! Let’s go!”

  And since that was what she’d come to do, that’s what Janelle did. They danced hard, too. Heads bopping, hips popping, hair flying. Janelle had a couple beers in her, enough to blame for her abandoned footwork, but the truth was, she hadn’t danced like this in way too long, and she needed to get it out. In California she’d managed to go out dancing at least a couple times a month. Sometimes looking to hook up, sure. But most times just to have fun.

  Her dancing did attract a bit of attention. She saw that easily enough. A woman knows when a man’s eyeing her, especially one she wants to be sure is noticing the way she moves.

  She’d danced for Gabe a few times, back in the day, though never with him. He wasn’t a dancer, he’d always said, and that didn’t seem to have changed. He stood along the wall, beer in hand, watching. Despite the blonde’s aggressive attentions, he was watching Janelle.

  So...she danced.

  The song changed again to something a little more old-school, a remix of The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love” mashed up with some new pop song she didn’t know. With her eyes closed, she could almost imagine she was seventeen again, her hair dark and spiked, her eyes lined with black, her fingernails painted to match. Back when she’d thought dancing might actually be her life, her living, not just a hobby. She wore flats that could easily have been the ballet slippers she’d favored back then, and she had the same moves, even if a few of them were a little more...painful...to do.

  Breathless, sweating, laughing, Janelle shimmied. She shaked. She looked across the room and she met Gabe’s gaze, and she smiled, dancing now not just for herself, but also for him. And when the music changed suddenly, becoming slow and dreamy, she took a couple steps toward him, waiting for him to meet her halfway.

  Some other guy got to her first. He stepped between her and Gabe, his smile open and friendly and gap-toothed. He wore a flannel shirt unbuttoned over a T-shirt with a sports team logo on it. No baseball cap, but the line in his hair showed he wore one more often than not.

  “Wanna dance?”

  The blonde was wriggling in front of Gabe. They weren’t slow dancing, not quite, but she did take his hand and put it on her waist as Janelle watched. The other hand still held a beer he tipped to his lips, his gaze on Janelle.

  “Okay,” she said. “Sure.”

  How bad could it be? She discovered that a few minutes later as Jay, her partner, kept pulling her closer and closer. Where was that ruler the nuns had brought out at school dances? Janelle wondered, uncomfortable as Jay insisted on pulling her so close that she couldn’t
even look at his face without it blurring. She turned her head, refusing to put it on his shoulder or, God forbid, go cheek-to-cheek with him. But God help him if he put his hands on her ass.

  He didn’t. Jay talked, though. Asked her where she was from, said he knew she couldn’t be from around here just by the way she looked. He told her about his job working at the Sylvania plant, and his ex-wife who spent too much money and thought it grew on trees, and how his parents had named him Jay because his mom had dreamed about jaybirds when she was pregnant with him. All this in the span of one song, which seemed to last forever instead of approximately three minutes, and which, to Janelle’s horror, blended immediately into another slow number.

  All around her, couples were snuggling. Betsy had gone back to the bar, her head bent close to a woman telling a story that involved a lot of hand gestures. Janelle tried to catch her attention, to call for backup, but couldn’t. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she caught sight of Gabe locked deep in a tongue-wrestling match with the blonde. It shouldn’t have made her jealous or anything; it had been years since she and Gabe had been a thing...not that they’d ever been a “thing....”

  “You know that guy?” Jay had caught her staring.

  “Oh. He’s my neighbor.”

  Jay’s frown eased. “Oh, okay.”

  Janelle put another inch or so between them, but it was almost impossible to fight Jay’s rubber-band hands. She’d inch back, he’d ease her forward again. It was a dance within a dance, and it made her laugh.

  “What’s funny?” Jay asked, but all she could do was shake her head and giggle.

  That’s when Jay leaned in and took a long, deep breath of her hair. She’d worn it in loose curls around her shoulders tonight, but now it hung limp and tangled from all the dancing. She startled when he took an exaggerated sniff.

  “I’m getting a buzz off your hair,” he said.

  The giggles got worse. She tried to bite them back, but short of clapping a hand over her mouth, couldn’t totally contain them. They’d been spinning slowly as they danced, and this last shuffle brought her facing Gabe again. His mouth was no longer fused with the blonde’s, though she’d turned around to wiggle her butt against him.