Dinner Disasters: Drake and Quinn

Chapter 10 (Quinn): I Heard My Name Called

The first time I got a professional manicure, I found myself flinging and flipping my hands to punctuate whatever I was saying as if I was conducting a choir. I freaking loved the way my hands looked with beautiful nails and what better way to admire them than to wildly gesticulate for even the most basic sentences.

"I" -- tap your chest -- "am going" -- walk your pointer and middle fingers like legs -- "to the grocery store" -- point dramatically in the direction of the store, which is where I was currently headed.

I felt the same way with Drake's ring on my finger. I was right handed, but suddenly, my left hand became dominant when I was pointing. I also expressed dismay and shock with my left hand fluttering gracefully to my chest. Yes, the ring was beautiful, but I liked seeing it for what it represented. Or what it could represent if I could believe Drake again.

A future with a man who loved me. A future with a man I loved.

Marriage. Babies, eventually. Watching our children graduate. Welcoming our grandchildren. Holding hands as we celebrated our fiftieth anniversary.

I could see it. I wanted to see it. But I was scared.

Think logically, Quinn. 

What kind of a man would marry a woman he wasn't attracted to because of a bet or because he felt sorry for her? An idiot, that's who.

Although some might argue otherwise, Drake wasn't an idiot. He'd done something awful, and then he'd allowed me to be around the people who had made the bet with him, but he'd thought it was safe after everyone apologized to him.

Well, everyone except Jessa, who was apparently still driving around with MAJOR BITCH scratched into the side of her car. Drake had sent me a text this morning.

Quest doubled down and called all auto body places within a hundred miles and told them he'd appreciate it if MAJOR BITCH had to wait a really long time for the work to be done. He throws a lot of referrals to them when we're too backed up, so they all agreed.

That had made me laugh, and Keres and Celine had both thought that was the funniest thing they'd ever heard.

"At least one of the guys Drake works with isn't a total asshole," Keres said when she called me that night to check in and see how I was doing.

"I thought we already established that a couple of the fire fighters weren't total assholes."

"I'm talking about the asshole at Sullivan's Autobody. Hux. Rhymes with fucks, as in no fucks given that he's a little bitch."

"What happened with --"

"He mouthed off to me. Me, the potential customer. What the hell kind of customer service is that?"

Not to be disloyal, but...I knew Keres very well and could imagine her pushing a man to his limit so he forgot all about customer service.

"I'll tell you what kind it is: terrible. That's terrible customer service. He wouldn't take my credit card over the phone before the work was done because of stupid rules, and I suspect the work is almost done by now if not already completely done, and he won't tell me anything. Do you know what he had the audacity to tell me today when I called a few times to find out how much the work cost?"

I shook my head slowly a few times.

"He told me he couldn't tell me about the motherfucking truck because of HIPAA laws. HIPAA! So I asked him if he thought I was stupid enough to fall for that. And he said nothing! Which, as we know, is like saying yes. So I told him HIPAA laws don't apply to cars, and he said Sullivan Autobody is like a hospital and every car is treated like a patient. Then, because he amused himself, he laughed like a fucking hyena and hung up on me."

"Well, that wasn't very nice?"

"No! It wasn't. It was rude. I'm stopping by there tomorrow and there'll be trouble if they don't let me pay for the work on Drake's truck."

Damn. I wish I wasn't scheduled to work the next day because I'd pay to see this confrontation. So I texted Drake.

Are you on shift tomorrow or at Sullivan's?

Sullivan's. Why?

Keres is coming in and I need you ready to record. Although stop recording if she kills Hux. No evidence.

Hux can handle her since he's roughly the size of King Kong. I'll get the clash of the titans recorded for you. Love you, my Quinn.

I love you, too, I whispered in case he could hear me through the text connection. But don't get ahead of yourself, buddy.

My Quinn. His presumption should have angered me, but it didn't. It made me feel hope. As if someday the ring might really be on my finger forever.

Slow it down, Quinn. Think about what he did. You don't have to rush into anything. There doesn't have to be an instant decision.

I did nothing but think about Drake, and marriage and the ways he'd hurt me. Then I thought about all the ways he'd showed me he loved me. The plusses outweighed the minuses by a longshot, but the way he'd hurt me struck at my deepest fears and hit me in that secret place pushed way down inside. The one that collected and held onto every nasty word people had ever said to me and every mean thing people had done to me.

Then I could also hear my grandmother's voice in my ear.

After my step-sister decided I couldn't be a bridesmaid unless I could drop a lot of weight before her wedding, my grandmother had dried my tears and held my hands in her arthritic, gnarled ones. 

"Focus on the good that people do, Quinnie. Sometimes I worry that you're so used to hearing the ugly spilling out that you miss when people spill beauty on you. There's so much ugliness in the world but I want you to ignore the ones who say mean things and just realize that ugliness comes from within and spills out. The other part of it is that everyone is capable of ugliness in a weak moment. Everyone. Even good people have moments that they look back on in shame because they weren't as kind as they could have been."

She'd squeezed my hands tightly, her signal that she wanted me to pay especially close attention.

"But ask yourself if ugliness is all that comes from a person or if it was their weak moment. And that will help pave the road to forgiveness and allow you to put things in perspective. Your step-sister, by the way, in case you haven't figured it out, is always spilling ugliness. Her husband is going to regret putting that ring on her finger before six months are up, mark my word."

She'd been right. My step-sister's husband had filed for divorce only eight months after saying I do, and it was no secret they'd been fighting like cats and dogs since month four of their marriage. He'd discovered to an irreparable degree that her outside beauty was false advertising for what the inside held. Basically, my step-sister's husband had discovered she was like biting into a delicious-looking chocolate, only to discover it was filled with coconut, resulting in full-body shivers as you raced to rinse out your mouth before you gagged.

I already knew the answer to where Drake fit on my grandmother's scale. The bar that night had been his weak moment. Letting me hang with his friends had been poor judgment, but I did believe him when he said they'd all apologized to him. And that made sense to me because had they apologized to me for something I wasn't even aware of, well, that seemed like a Jessa move, designed to inflict needless pain.

I sighed from all the heavy thoughts as I got out of my car to head into the grocery store when I heard my name called.

Connor was hurrying toward me from across the lot.