The Favour - Megan Hart

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really big enough for two, but they manage to squeeze into it, anyway. Janelle pulls the flap up over their faces like a tent. Other girls smell like perfume. Janelle smells of cigarette smoke and hair spray and fresh air.

      “Why’d you bring me here?” She turns on her side, her butt against his groin, and takes his arm to put around her.

      It’s easy to answer her when he doesn’t have to see her face. “Because...I thought you’d get it. You’d understand.”

      She doesn’t say anything for a long time, so long Gabe starts to doze. If this was another girl, she’d expect him to kiss her now. With another girl he wouldn’t be able to sleep like this. His heat has warmed the air inside the sleeping bag, enough that a trickle of sweat tickles down his spine. She’s linked their fingers and put his hand flat against her belly, inside her coat, under her shirt.

      “Understand what?” She sounds as sleepy as he is, and somehow this also makes it easy to answer.

      “How it feels to need a place that’s only yours, so you never have to...”

      Janelle takes a snuffling breath. “Never have to what?”

      “Rely on anyone for anything. You know what it’s like to want a place of your own so that when everyone else leaves, you still have a place to go.”

      She’s quiet for another long few minutes, so long he starts dreaming. When she shifts and rolls toward him, her head does fit right under his chin. His arms go around her. Her knee nudges between his. They fit together like puzzle pieces.

      He’s wide-awake now, embarrassed to be wrong. His heart pounds. He tries to push away from her, but the sleeping bag’s too small, and Janelle’s got her arms around him, too tight.

      He’s said too much.

      Janelle doesn’t tell him he’s right.

      But she doesn’t tell him he’s wrong.

      TEN

      AT THE KNOCK on the door, the old man shouted, “Tell them we don’t want any!”

      Gabe, who’d been reading on the couch, ignored him. At this time of evening it wouldn’t be a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness, but that didn’t mean whoever was on the other side would be any more welcome. He answered it, anyway, surprised to find Janelle.

      She wore a heavy coat, a knit cap squashed down over her hair, a long striped scarf wound around her throat. She smiled brightly. “Hey.”

      Gabe didn’t open the door wide enough to let her in, and he didn’t glance over his shoulder to look at the old man, who shouted out, “Who’s there? Who is it?”

      “Hey, Mr. Tierney,” Janelle called, peeking around Gabe. “It’s Janelle Decker from next door.”

      “Jesus, don’t keep her standing in the cold. Let her in.”

      Gabe didn’t move to do that. He stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind him. “What’s up? Andy’s not here.”

      “What makes you think I’m here for him?”

      “Because he’s been over there a lot since you moved in.” Gabe’s breath became smoke, and he wished it was from a cigarette. “Just figured you’d want to talk to him. But he’s at work until ten.”

      “I know. I came to talk to you.” She bounced on the soles of her feet, still grinning. “You’re not going to let me come in?”

      She’d never, in all the times he could remember, ever come in the front door. Always through the bedroom window. Once or twice through the back. Never through the front, and tonight wasn’t going to be the first time.

      He hadn’t said a word, but her smile faded. “Umm...okay, well...I just came over because Andy said you could fix our dishwasher.”

      “What’s wrong with it?”

      “I don’t know. It doesn’t wash the dishes. I guess if I knew more than that, I could fix it myself, huh?” She eyed him. “I could call a service center. I just thought I’d ask you instead.”

      “Save yourself some money.”

      Janelle’s smile tipped a little wider. “No. I’ll pay you. It’s not that, Gabe.”

      He didn’t ask her what else it was, but she told him, anyway.

      “It’s good to see you again. I thought maybe...” She trailed off, sounding uncertain in a way he could never remember her being.

      He didn’t want to hear any more. “Yeah. I’ll come. Let me grab my tools. Now?”

      “Sure. Or another time, if you want, that’s fine. I mean, sooner rather than later, obviously.” She bounced again, rubbing her mittened hands together and blowing out a steamy breath. “God. So cold.”

      “I guess it would be, when you’re used to California.”

      Janelle paused, tilting her head just a little. “You know about that?”

      He’d said too much. “I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

      He shut the door in her face. The old man looked at him expectantly. “Was that the Decker girl? What did she want? Why’d you make her stay outside? Ashamed of your old man, that’s what you are.”

      Ashamed wasn’t the right word. Gabe ignored him and got his tools from their place in the kitchen closet. He thought about going out the back door without a word, but the old man would wonder, and it would be worse when he came back.

      “I’m going next door to the Deckers’ to see if I can fix the dishwasher.”

      “Oh, she crooks her finger and you go running?”

      “Dad, please. Shut up,” Gabe said. “You don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, okay?”

      The old man laughed heartily and pointed. “Maybe if I had a set of titties you’d be more interested in fixing things around this shit hole.”

      Gabe’s jaw went tight, but he knew better than to rise to the old man’s jabs. Ralph Tierney wanted to be discontent and grouchy, and he’d always find a way to do it. Gabe lifted his tools in farewell instead, and left his father alone.

      Next door, he entered a world of warmth and the good smells of something baking, and laughter. A boy, Janelle’s kid, slapped down an Uno card on the table and tossed back his head, his hair too long. He crowed with glee as Mrs. Decker, sitting across from him, fanned out her cards and shook her head.

      They both looked up when he came in the door. Mrs. Decker appeared surprised, the kid only curious. Janelle poked her head around the kitchen doorway.

      “Hey!”

      “Gabe Tierney,” Nan said. “What on earth?”

      “I asked him to come over and fix the dishwasher,” Janelle explained. “Come on in. Bennett, this is Mr. Tierney.”

      “Gabe. Mr. Tierney’s my old man.”

      “You’re Andy’s brother,” Bennett said. “He said you were good at fixing stuff.”

      “I guess we’ll find out.” Gabe lifted the tools, uncomfortable under Mrs. Decker’s scrutiny.

      She gave him a steady, solid look that made him feel like that seventeen-year-old punk again, the one defiling her granddaughter. He’d lived next door to Maureen Decker his entire life. She’d never been unkind to him, but she’d never been overly sweet to him, either, the way some adults had been while he was growing up. If “those Tierney boys” had ever curled Mrs. Decker’s lip or moved her to pity, she hadn’t shown it. She’d given him Popsicles and chased him out of her apple tree and put candy in his trick-or-treat bag. She’d hollered at him more than once, when she thought he needed it. She’d treated him like

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