WORK IN PROGRESS: Dinner Disasters: Drake and Quinn

Chapter 1 (Quinn): The Relief On His Face

***TW for body image issues***

When things seem too good to be true, they probably are.

My mother had said that to me countless times when I was growing up. It was always an admonishment to me for thinking something good was happening to me. Kind of like, Quinn, honey, you're not a girl who should expect wonderful things. You're not your step-sister.

The popular girls asking me to sit with them at lunch? Awesome! Until they humiliated me by dumping my lunch tray in my lap, pouring my drink over my head and getting everyone to laugh at me.

The quarterback asking me to homecoming? Unbelievably thrilling! Until he didn't show up for me and the pictures of him with his #TheRealDate were showing up on social media. Followed by #QuinnWaitingAtHome and #AllDressedUpAndNowhereToGo.

The laughter had followed me down the hallways at school for a solid week after that.

When my step-sister was getting married, she'd asked me to stand up with her. Maybe she liked me after all! Until she regretfully told me that I didn't fit her aesthetic...unless I could lose about thirty pounds in the next three weeks before her wedding.

So, I was understandably hesitant to believe it when good things happened to me. I approached people with a guilty-until-proven-innocent sort of mentality, always waiting for the other shoe to drop because it always had in my life. I wasn't cynical, just realistic.

I knew what I looked like and understood I'd never be mistaken for Miss America, but I was realistic about my strengths. I was smart, I was funny and I would help anyone in need. It was who I was, and maybe a psychologist would tell me that I was trying to make up for my lack of beauty by being useful and kind, but I was OK with that. I looked around at the world, I looked at the mean people I'd known and thought the world had plenty of beauty but needed more kindness.

But Drake Chevalier had turned me into a believer that there were still good men in the world. He was gorgeous perfection, absolutely stunning, but he was a man who could look past my lack of physical beauty and appreciate the person I was. A man who, despite being perfect and impossibly handsome, had chosen me. Looking at us, we didn't make sense. I saw people staring at us as we walked hand-in-hand in public, and I could read the look in their eyes: what's a man who looks like that doing with a troll?

Drake was crazy about me. He couldn't keep his hands off me and when we were together, he was always touching me somewhere, needing contact with me -- a hand on my thigh, holding my hand, his arm around my shoulders. Right now, as we were sitting around a table with eight of his friends from work and their significant others, his left arm was around my shoulders and his right hand was on my thigh. He was turned toward me, keeping me close as he always did when we were out. His thumb traced circles on my shoulder as we all talked over wings and beer.

It was getting late, and I knew Drake was getting ready to tell everyone goodnight. Some of his fellow firefighters were pretty well hammered, but Drake rarely drank much.

"I've seen the aftermath of too many accidents," he'd told me once with a shake of his head.

I'd been watching the man across from us, Connor, with concern all night. His girlfriend of three years had recently broken up with him and he was drinking one beer after another, until there was a large collection of empties in front of him.

I leaned toward him. "Connor, are you OK?"

He tipped his beer bottle toward me with a grin. "You bet, QuinnyQuinn. Why're you asking?"