The Favor Lane

Brianna Sampson had been a nightmare for several days, and she knew it. She sat in the passenger seat of Wes's old Corolla and stared out the window at the brown hills scrolling past, doing the math in her head again. Four missed dinners. One slammed door. Two nights of falling asleep before he even got into bed. And one morning where she'd snapped at him over the coffee maker like he'd personally broken it.

"We're gonna stop for gas around Lost Hills," Wes said, tapping the wheel. "Or should we push through?"

"Push through, I guess." She sighed. "Sorry. I'm not great company today."

"You're not great company most days." He grinned to show he was kidding. Mostly.

She swatted his arm. "Okay, that's fair. I earned that one."

Because here was the thing, dear reader, and she'd been chewing on it since Stockton: this whole trip was her fault. Wes's nephew's birthday was Saturday, the drive was four hours, and Brianna had been so cranky about her shift schedule that Wes had nearly offered to go alone. His own nephew. Whom she loved. She was thirty-four years old and she was acting like a teenager who'd had her phone taken away.

So that morning, over cereal, she'd made a promise. One outrageous favor. His choice. No takebacks, no questions asked, redeemable anytime on the trip. Wes had gone very quiet and then very thoughtful, the way he did when she offered him the last slice of pizza.

Now they were three hours out of Sacramento, and the favor was sitting in the back of the car like a wrapped gift.

"Hey," Wes said. "That favor. Still good?"

"Still good."

"Even the no questions asked part?"

"Even that part."

They passed a green sign that said LOST HILLS, 2 MILES, and Wes drummed his thumbs on the wheel like he was winding up to something. Brianna watched him sideways. He had his thinking face on. His thinking face was usually adorable and occasionally dangerous.

"Okay," he said. "Real favor. Not like the time you said you'd do my taxes and then paid H&R Block instead."

"That was a favor."

"That was outsourcing." He laughed. "No. This one is real. And you have to say yes or no before we hit Lost Hills, so you can't chicken out at the last second."

"Name it," Brianna said, and crossed her arms like a woman accepting a duel. "No limits. I promised, and a Sampson keeps her promises."

Wes glanced at her. Then at the road. Then at her again, longer.

"You're gonna laugh," he said.

"Wes. Name it before I change my mind."

He took a breath. "I want you to give me a handjob while I'm driving. And here's the catch. You have to narrate it. Like you're dispatching a unit. Radio voice and everything."

The car was very quiet for about three seconds.

Then Brianna lost it. She laughed so hard she had to grab the handle above the door, wheezing, wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand. "You want me to WHAT? While you DRIVE? In traffic?"

"There's barely any traffic."

"You want a unit dispatch while I... oh my god. Oh my god, you're serious. You're actually serious, you're doing the face, you're doing the serious face."

"I'm doing the serious face," Wes confirmed. "That's my favor. That is the entire favor. Radio calls, ten-codes, the works. You broke my brains all week with your grumpy face, I figure a little comedy plus a little, uh, physical attention is fair payment."

Brianna stared at him. He stared at the road, ears going red, but his mouth was set. He wasn't joking. Two years of dating this man and she still couldn't predict him. She'd been braced for something wild in the bedroom, maybe that thing with the ice cubes he'd once mumbled about, and instead he wanted performance art. With her hand. In his lap. At sixty-five miles an hour.

"If a cop pulls us over," she said slowly, "I'm telling them it's your funeral."

"Noted. My funeral."

"And if I make you crash into a cow, you're explaining that to your sister."

"There are no cows out here. It's all dirt."

Brianna looked out the window. He was right, it was all dirt, brown and dusty and flat as a griddle, stretching away to nothing on both sides. Hardly any cars. A straight road. She thought about how miserable she'd been all week, and how patient he'd been, bringing her tea she didn't drink and not once saying the word period out loud like a smart man, and how this ridiculous, stupid, funny man had just handed her the strangest apology gift of all time.

Oh, what the hell.

"Fine," she said, and Wes made a sound like a balloon losing air. "Fine. But you have to keep the car between the lines, Wes, I mean it. If we drift so much as an inch I stop and the favor converts to a foot rub. Done."

"Deal. Deal deal deal." He was beaming now, adjusting the mirror, checking the rearview like the highway patrol was a real concern, which, to be fair, it was.

Brianna reached down and clicked her seatbelt loose. The belt retracted with a snap and she immediately felt naked without it, which was ridiculous, because she was still fully dressed, thank you, sitting in a Corolla in the middle of nowhere. She unbuckled it anyway and tucked the buckle under her thigh so it wouldn't ding at her.

"Okay," she said. "Okay okay. How do we even do this? There's a console. There's an armrest. This car was not designed for crimes."

"Come around the console. You're limber, you do yoga."

"I do yoga twice a year, Wes."

"Then this is your twice."

She swung her right leg up over the center console, which went fine, and then her knee found the radio and she yelped and the seat moved, because of course her seat was the kind that auto-adjusted, and the whole seat slid back with a mechanical whir while she flailed. "Wes! WES! The seat is alive!"

"Hit the switch. Hit the little switch."

"I don't know where the switch is. There are four switches. Why are there four switches?"

Wes was laughing so hard the car was drifting, just barely, and Brianna smacked his shoulder. "Eyes on the road. You wanted this favor, you don't get to die for it." She wrestled the seat forward, bumped her head on the ceiling, and finally ended up half-perched, half-collapsed in the middle of the bench, right knee wedged against the console, left foot braced on the floor, her body arranged like a crash test dummy that had given up.

"Comfortable?" Wes asked.

"I'm comfortable like a pretzel is comfortable." She blew hair out of her face. "Okay. Okay. We're doing this. But I need, like. Warm-up time. You can't just expect a dispatch quality performance cold."

"Take your time, dispatcher."

"And don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you're already happy. You haven't earned happy yet."

Brianna looked down at his lap. He was, indeed, already happy, or at least well on his way, and she felt a flush crawl up her neck that had nothing to do with embarrassment. Two years together and he still did that to her, which was honestly sort of nice to be reminded of.

She cleared her throat. She sat up as straight as a pretzel could.

"Dispatch to Unit Clausen," she said, in her work voice, the low smooth one she used on panicked callers. "Be advised, you have a, um. Situation developing in your lap sector. How copy?"

Wes made a strangled noise. "Solid copy, dispatch."

"Copy that. Unit Clausen, proceed with caution." She reached over and popped the button on his jeans. Her hand was shaking a little, from laughing or nerves or both, and she had to get her fingers under his waistband twice before they cooperated. "Dispatch is, uh. Dispatch is establishing contact with the, um." She broke off. "Oh god, what do I even call it. Suspect? Package?"

"Call it what you want, I'm not picky."

"Copy. Contact with the package confirmed," Brianna said solemnly, and wrapped her hand around him through his boxers, and Wes swore under his breath and gripped the wheel at ten and two like the safest driver in California history.

"Unit Clausen, your driving just got better. Interesting."

"Motivation, dispatch."

* * *

By the time the Lost Hills exit slid past on the right, empty as promised, Brianna had her seatbelt hanging loose, her knee wedged against the glovebox, and one hand working in Wes's lap with what she felt was genuine professional focus. The radio voice was harder to hold onto now. Her sentences were getting shorter.

"Dispatch to Unit Clausen," she managed. "Status update requested."

"Uh." Wes's voice had gone about an octave lower than usual. "Unit Clausen is. Very good. Over."

"That's not proper radio procedure, Wes."

"Unit Clausen is about to file a complaint."

Brianna snorted and kept moving her hand, slow, feeling him harden fully against her palm through the cotton. The road hummed under the tires. A pickup truck went by in the other direction and she froze, hand flat, like a statue, and the pickup passed and she dissolved into giggles.

"Dispatch is experiencing difficulties," she reported.

"Dispatch is doing great," Wes said, a little breathless. "Dispatch should maybe keep going."

She looked over at him. The sun caught the side of his face, his jaw tight, his hands white-knuckled on the wheel, and he looked so pleased and so nervous at the same time that her chest did something warm and complicated. A week of grumpiness, paid off in one dumb, sweet, terrifying roadside favor. She was really going to have to apologize more often, if this was the return on investment.

"Dispatch to Unit Clausen," Brianna said, and went back to work in earnest, thumb sliding over the head of him, wrist doing that little twist at the top that she knew drove him crazy. Wes made a low sound in his chest. "Status report, Unit Clausen."

"Dispatch is. Unbelievable. Over."

"Flattery noted. Continue driving." He was doing well, too, all things considered. Speed steady, hands at ten and two, eyes forward, jaw clenched like a man at the dentist. For about ninety seconds, the whole operation ran smooth as anything. Then Brianna shifted her weight for better leverage and her elbow slammed into the gear shift. The Corolla's gear shift sat in exactly the wrong place for a woman working one-handed across a center console, and the jolt went straight up her funny bone. "OW. Wes, the shifter is ambushing me."

"You okay?"

"There is a bone in my elbow that I did not know existed until right now." She shook her hand out, blew on her knuckles, and, because she was apparently a glutton, went right back at it. And that was when Wes hit the rumble strips.