Dinner Disasters: Drake and Quinn

Chapter 3 (Quinn): Getting Past This

When facing the man you love for the last time, you prepared. I'd gotten up early, showered, dried my hair and curled it. I considered my hair my best feature, thick, luxuriant and long, and Drake loved to play with it.

And wrap it around his hand, while I was on all fours and he was behind me -- but I wasn't thinking about that now. Nothing good would come from thinking about that. No pun intended.

I used my favorite tinted moisturizer, a little concealer to hide evidence of my sleepless night, a touch of mascara and a bit of tinted lip gloss. Quite a few steps above just rolled out of bed and many steps below ready to attend a formal event. The perfect balance.

I pulled on my favorite pair of jeans, the ones Drake never could resist getting me out of immediately -- these should be illegal with the way they make your ass look, Quinn -- and a thin sage green shirt that clung and conformed to my in-your-face breasts. The ones Drake had always claimed he couldn't keep his hands from.

Right at nine, the doorbell rang so I fluffed my hair and applied a little more lip gloss. Head high, Quinn. Chin up. Shoulders back. I-couldn't-care-less expression activated.

I answered the door and Drake was in front of me, the box of my belongings in one hand, takeout bag in the other. Surprised at how small the box was -- I'd left a lot of things over at his house since I was there half the time -- I considered just taking it out of his hand and shutting the door firmly and forever in his face.

But he was already walking in, face set in a determined and serious way that I'd never seen on him. This was the face of a man who'd run into a burning building to save people.

"Quinn, I told you last night that I was hoping we'd talk today, but fuck that. There's no hoping to it. We're talking. I'm not letting this bullshit get in between us and I'm definitely not letting you go. So we're going to talk, Quinn, even if you're dressed to kill me."

I compressed my lips and shook my head.

"Baby," he said. "I don't think I've ever given you any reason to think I'd walk away from you at all, much less easily, but I can guarantee it's not happening."

I took the box out of his hand and opened it up. There was one thing in it. One thing. My night moisturizer.

"This is it?" I snapped. "Where is everything? Where's my favorite sweatshirt? My favorite ripped jeans? Where's my perfume? My extra glasses? Why wouldn't you bring any of that back? Why the hell is there only one thing in this box? There's only one thing of mine in here!"

"Exactly."

My head lifted from the box I was peering into, as if glaring into it would suddenly make all of the missing items appear.

"What's that supposed to mean? Exactly...what?"

"I'm not bringing your things back all at once. I'll bring you back one thing at a time until you realize we're not breaking up and we're going to get through this and come out stronger for it."

"You only talked to me because of a bet. A bet that you wouldn't date the ugliest girl in the bar."

"Don't say that, Quinn, because it's not true."

"You can't deny that they picked me because I was the total opposite of the girl you'd dated before me."

"Wouldn't try to deny it. You are the complete opposite of her, and thank fuck for that. You're smart, you're sweet, you're kind, you're funny and you care about what's inside people and not what they look like or what they can do for you or what you can get out of them. So, yeah, Quinn, you're the opposite of her and that means nobody can compare to you, inside or out, and I go to sleep every single night grateful as fuck that you're who you are."

"I noticed you didn't say I was beautiful or even pretty."

Could I be any more obvious or pathetic? If the Nobel Peace Prize people had come to my door because I'd managed to achieve world peace, I'd probably be disappointed that they weren't there to award the Nobel Beauty Prize. Why was it always about looks? Why didn't our accomplishments matter? Why did women boil things down to our appearances?

"I think you're fucking gorgeous, Quinn, and you damn well know I do. I tell you and I show you how attracted I am to you. I'll tell you what happened that night, no fucking bullshit. I came over to you because they were riding my ass, wouldn't let up about the bet, and I wanted to shut them up and win the bet. But honest to God, the minute I looked into your eyes, I fucking fell for you so hard, I knew I'd never let you go. So I asked you out not to win the bet but because everything in me wanted you."

"Drake, they made the bet with you because you were moping around about your ex. You expect me to believe you looked in my eyes and forgot all about your beautiful, perfect ex?"

"Nothing to forget," he said. "She broke up with me because I wouldn't commit to her."

"And you were moping for months about her."

"Why would I mope about someone I wouldn't commit to, Quinn? I was moping that every woman I dated wanted a commitment. I was moping because I hated the idea of starting to date again. I was moping because I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me that I couldn't commit in any of my relationships. I was moping because I couldn't find any woman who interested me. Then I walked across a bar to you, looked in your eyes and I was done moping because I finally had found the woman I wanted to commit to."

"And the money had nothing to do with it?" I was skeptical.

"I never took a penny. You can ask them."

"That becomes secondary," I said. "The point is, you were willing to make a bet. You also have friends who are mean enough to make a bet like that. What you did was horrible."

"It was. I was horrible for even thinking about it and not shutting it down. I regret that we started wrong because I was acting like a stupid kid, but I couldn't tell you that because I didn't want you to stop seeing me. As far as I was concerned, it was a dead subject."

"Did you honestly think it wouldn't come out?"

"Yeah, because I talked to everyone there that night. Told them how I'd fallen for you, didn't want the money or anything to do with the bet and that they'd better never mention it again."

"You let me hang out with people who had been making fun of me."

"And they realized how special you are and have apologized at one time or another about the shit thing it was that we did."

"I'm sure Jessa was the first to apologize."

"Not her. But she's the only one."

"She's horrible. But thinking about all the times we went out and they all knew and were laughing at me..."

"They were never laughing at you."

"I can guarantee you that Jessa was."

"Well, fortunately, I won't be seeing her for much longer, or anybody else from the station. I'm switching stations. Monday, I'm putting in for a transfer."

That was huge because I knew they'd all worked together for a while. So many parts of his life were wrapped up with these people from the station.

"Don't do that on my account, Drake. I'm no longer a factor in your life."

"The hell you aren't," he said angrily. "I'm going to marry you, Quinn. You know that because I've mentioned it often enough."

"That was before I found out that I was just a bet at the beginning. What do we tell our children? that daddy met mommy because she was the ugliest girl at the bar?"

"No, Quinn, because that isn't even close to true. We tell them that the second daddy met mommy, he knew he'd found the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with."

"Good luck with that," I said. "Because I don't see myself getting past this, Drake."