Free The Favor by Megan Hart Page A

sleeping bag’s not 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