My Best Friend Used Me, Now She Pays novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Gil's Garage

Gil moves the girls in and Nina calls the clinic; Donal says Dane told him not to hire her.

My father carried the last box up the garage stairs himself, bad hip and all.

I had told him three times to let me.

"I've carried roof bundles up a ladder at sixty feet," Gil Faulk said. "I can carry a box of textbooks."

"You had surgery in January."

"And the surgeon said walk."

He set the box on the floor of the room over his garage and stood there, red-faced, breathing hard and very pleased with himself.

It wasn't much of a room.

It had a slanted ceiling, a window that looked out at his tomato cages, and two cots he had borrowed from a church.

Bea took one look and flopped onto the nearer cot with her arms spread.

"I love it," she said. "It smells like sawdust and old coffee. Mr. Faulk, I'm moving in permanently."

"Gil," my father said. "And you pay in dishes."

"I can do dishes. I can also lift your truck."

"Don't tempt me."

I stood at the window and watched my father's old Buick and the roofing truck sitting side by side in the yard.

Last time, I had slept on Kyla's guest bed for four months.

I had been so busy being useful I hadn't visited this house once.

My father had eaten Christmas dinner alone out of a Pyrex dish.

I hadn't known that until years later.

"Neen."

He had stopped fussing with the boxes.

He was holding the corner of my ledger in his hand, because it had slid half out of my bag.

I went still.

"That's the same green I gave you at ten," he said, turning it over. "They stopped making these years ago. Where'd you get it?"

"A thrift store," I said, which was the stupidest thing I could have said.

He gave me a long look.

Then he opened it to the first page and held it a foot from his face, because his glasses were downstairs.

I did not breathe.

"Can't read a word," he said at last, and handed it back. "Good. Not my business."

"Dad."

"Rule I taught you. You write down what you lend, to keep people honest."

"I remember."

"The other half of the rule is, family doesn't go in the book."

I took the ledger and held it against my chest.

"I mean it, Neen. Whatever you think you owe me for the garage, the dinner, the hip, you put down a zero and you leave it."

Bea was very busy unrolling a sleeping bag.

"Zero," I said. My voice cracked in the middle. "I can do that."

"Good." He cleared his throat and headed for the stairs. "I'm making spaghetti. Don't help."

By the third bite we both knew why.

The noodles were stuck in one block, and the sauce had been warmed in the can.

Bea ate two plates anyway, and told him it was the best she had ever had, and he glowed.

I loved them both so much in that moment that it hurt.

After dinner I took my phone out on the back step.

The clinic card from my bag had a number on it, and a name in blue ink.

Connolly Sports Rehab, Kettering. Internship begins May 12.

It was April 15th, and I needed hours, and I needed a paycheck, and I needed someone to say yes before the Drapers had a chance to put another notice on my life.

It rang four times.

"Connolly."

The voice was low, tired and a little rough.

"Hi. This is Nina Faulk. I'm the Wright Valley senior who interviewed with you in February. I know I'm starting in May, but I wondered if there's any way I could come in early."

The line was silent long enough that I checked the screen.

"Faulk," he said.

"Yes."

"The one who did the hamstring case study. With the loading curve that nobody in your department understood."

I had written it freshman year and forgotten it.

Last time I had never put it in my application at all.

"That's me."

"Hm." A drawer opened on his end and closed. "I'm Donal Connolly. I own this place. You were my first pick."

"Were?"

"Hold on."

I heard him get up and walk, and a door shut, and the clinic sounds dropped away.

When he spoke again, his voice was lower, and flatter, and very careful.

"Ms. Faulk, I got a phone call this morning I didn't enjoy."

My stomach turned over.

"From who?"

"A man who said you were a talented kid who wouldn't survive a real clinic. He said you were somebody else's, and that I'd save myself the trouble if I let your offer lapse."

"Who called?"

"He gave his name like I should know it."

The kitchen light came on above my head.

My father was at the screen door, drying a plate and pretending not to listen.

"Dane Seidel," Donal Connolly said. "He phoned me this morning to say don't hire you."

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