Dinner Disasters: Drake and Quinn

Chapter 5 (Quinn): Pretty Much Over

In no time at all after receiving my SOS call, Celine and Keres were on either side of me on my bed, holding my hands. Although I tried, I really did, to keep my voice strong when I told them about the bet, it didn't quite work out that way.

"You'd think I'd be used to it now," I sighed when I finished spilling my guts to them, and then I immediately despised the self pity. That wasn't me, and I refused to let it be me. No wallowing, no poor me-ing, no being pathetic.

"OK, that sounded pitiful and I'm not going to be that girl," I told them with a rueful laugh, and I felt better that my voice sounded much stronger. "I just thought...maybe he was the one. I thought he really loved me."

Everything Drake had done had shown me he cared. Every last thing. I think any girl would have believed it, from the way he looked into my eyes, the reverent way he touched me as if I were the most precious person in his life, the ridiculously sappy smile he got when I looked up and caught him watching me. The way he always wanted to be around me, the way he'd stop by for no reason with flowers, the way he'd say my name as if it were a prayer. He brought me groceries when he was off work and had dinner waiting on me when I got home from work. He took care of my car for me, too, so I didn't have to mess with it on my days off. 

He wanted to know everything about me and asked me endless questions, really listening to the answers until he might have known me better than I knew myself.

"You weren't the only one," Celine said. "I thought the same thing. There was something about him, the rat bastard. I thought he was the most genuine man I'd ever met, and the way he watched you? That man loved you. I would have staked my life on it."

"Oh, shit. Fuck. I feel like I'm having an out-of-body experience," Keres gasped, and she sounded panicked. "Somebody pinch me to make sure I'm awake. I must be dreaming. Oh, shit. Shit. Shit. Please let me be dreaming. What the fuck is wrong with me?"

Celine and I turned to her. ""What? What's wrong?" I asked.

"Are you OK?" Celine demanded. "You need to breathe."

"I don't know what's happening," Keres was practically panting. "Normally, I'd be heading out to fuck up Drake. But I'm -- this isn't right. This isn't right. Something's really wrong with me!"

"What?" Celine and I cried at the same time.

"I think...I think you should talk with him, Quinn! OhmyGod!"  she wailed. "What's happening to me? I can't believe I thought that much less said that! I'm having a breakdown!"

"Who the hell are you?" Celine almost shrieked at her. "You're hysterical or something! Should I slap you? Snap you out of this?!"

I grabbed Keres by the upper arms. "What the hell are you talking about? You should be grabbing a bat or something!"

She covered her face with her hands. "I just...I just need a minute. Give me a damn minute. I can't even catch my breath. It's like my body's been taken over by aliens!"

Celine and I exchanged troubled glances. We had no idea how to handle a non-violent Keres.

"OK, listen," Celine said soothingly. "We just all need to take a deep breath and calm down. Keres, this will pass. It's just a temporary aberration, like some fluke kindness or something equally horrible. Think about Jessa to get back on track. What do you want to do to Jessa?"

"Now, see, her I want to fuck up. She took pleasure in hurting Quinn. She wanted Quinn to be devastated. She was mean about it and she wasn't taking Quinn aside privately to say look, girl, this happened, I just thought you should know since we women need to have each other's backs. No. Instead, Jessa waited to pounce, she held onto this and let loose for maximum impact while she laughed about it. Same for Connor. That little bitch was drunk, hurting because his girl dumped his ass -- no big surprise since he's an asshole -- and he wanted to bring down Quinn. Or Drake. But either way, he was out to cause damage. So Connor needs his ass kicked, too. Both of them intended to harm our girl."

"OK, good. That's a good start," Celine encouraged Keres. "Now keep going. Let's move on to kicking Drake's ass up to his shoulders and causing the bastard some serious rip-his-balls-off kind of pain." Celine paused for a minute, her face horrified. "Holy shit. Now it's happening to me. I want to kick Drake's ass. I'm trying to get Keres to kick his ass instead of talking about this reasonably. What the hell is happening to us? It's like...it's like Freaky Friday or something and we've switched bodies. What's going on? We've all lost our minds."

"Stop it," I said. "No one's delivering a beat-down to anyone, got it? I just needed to talk, let you know the situation, with no action required other than listening to me. Thank you for that, by the way. You two are the best."

Celine hugged me. 

"I could go get the car," she whispered. "We could take a drive by his house with some eggs --"

Despite everything, she made me laugh. 

"No, I really think we need to talk about this," Keres said. "I'm pissed as hell with Drake, but this isn't the man I've come to know. I believe him when he said he called off the bet."

"So what if he did call it off?" Celine argued. "He still hung out with the people who made the bet with him, still let Quinn be around them, still let them laugh about her. For that alone, he deserves a lot of pain."

Keres rolled her eyes, her face anguished. "I hate this so much. I wasn't born to be like you, Celine, but here I am trying on reasonable for the first time in my life. What if, like Drake said, they had all apologized to him? Well, except for Jessa, but we don't expect anything from her anyway. What if they regretted what they'd done? What if they recognized their shitty behavior for exactly what it was? People do shitty things and they can either regret them and rise above and be better or they can stay in the muck. I'm just saying, unless you're an emotional asshole, you can't help but love Quinn so they had to have felt bad, unless they're sociopaths. But they couldn't say anything to her because one, the bet no longer existed, and two, telling her about it would hurt her."

Keres flopped onto her back on the bed, groaning as if she were in terrible pain.

"I need alcohol. I need to not be like this ever again. Trying to be fair and reasonable is exhausting and I hate this feeling. I want to go deliver some pain to some deserving assholes, so could one of you please knock me out so I can wake up and be back to my normal, vindictive self? My life as I know it is pretty much over if I'm going to feel like this forever."

A knock came at my door, and we all heard a male voice calling my name rather desperately.

Drake.

What was he doing back here already?

"Well, here's your chance to return to normal because that's Drake knocking," I said to Keres, and suddenly she was running for my door.

Celine and I looked at each other and then ran after her, but by the time we got to the door, it was too late.