Drive Me Crazy

by Portia MacIntosh

  ‘Wha-what are you doing here?’ he asks her, stunned.

  Emma slides her arm around Chris’s waist, slowly like a slithering snake. She smiles widely as she announces with pride: ‘I’m Chris’s girlfriend.’

  I watch the colour drain from Danny’s face. I can tell from the look of anguish on his face that this has not only blindsided him, but it’s hurting him too, seeing this is the girl who broke his heart with his best friend, and no one thought to tell him – probably because it would hurt him. The look on his parents’ faces confirms this.

  As mad as I am at Danny right now, as much as he infuriates me and as much as I wish I wasn’t on this trip with him, something kicks in. I know what it feels like to hurt, to be betrayed. I feel weirdly loyal to him. If you’d told me that this was going to happen around the time I discovered my tattoos or got taken to the police station, I would have anticipated enjoying watching Danny suffer like this, but I’m not. I don’t like it, and I certainly don’t like the smug look on that bitch’s face.

  I jump up from my seat, unable to allow my colleague to suffer a second longer.

  ‘So nice to meet you both,’ I say. Danny is standing in front of them awkwardly with his hands in his pockets, so I hook my arm through his and rest my head on his bicep.

  ‘And who are you?’ Emma asks me, rudely.

  ‘I’m Candy,’ I tell her brightly. ‘Danny’s girlfriend.’

  ‘You’re his girlfriend? I thought you were just colleagues,’ Danny’s mum squeaks, elated. ‘He’s never brought a girlfriend home before. This must be serious.’

  Danny does his best not to let his relief show, and falls into the role of my boyfriend effortlessly, kissing me on the forehead.

  ‘She’s the first girl I’ve wanted to bring home,’ he tells his mum, smiling at me.

  ‘You brought me home,’ Emma interrupts.

  ‘Yeah, only because you lived next door,’ Chris chimes in, his loyalty to his friend creeping back in. Too little too late, of course. Knocking off the ex who broke his heart behind his back probably quashed that loyalty a little.

  I hear my phone vibrating on the table behind me so I let go of Danny’s arm and go to grab it.

  ‘I’d better take this,’ I say, before I even know who it is. I wonder if it’s Will, and the thought of what I’ll say to him fills me with panic. I step out of the room, pulling the door to behind me.

  It’s the office, but it isn’t Will. It’s Caroline, so I decide not to answer it. I definitely cannot face Sweet Caroline right now. Anyway, it’s Saturday, and only the first proper day of the trip. I don’t need her checking up on me already.

  I’m just about to walk back into kitchen when I realise that I’m the topic of conversation, so I hang back.

  ‘You’re never going out with her,’ his dad says in disbelief.

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ Danny asks.

  ‘Well…you know…’

  ‘That I’m an ugly twat?’ Danny laughs.

  ‘Something like that,’ Chris jokes.

  ‘No, no,’ his mum says hurriedly. ‘You’re my handsome lad – of course. It’s just…you’re a little rough around the edges, and she’s a very beautiful young lady.’

  ‘Cheers, Mam – I think.’ Danny laughs. ‘Princesses do kiss frogs sometimes,’ he reminds them. ‘Speaking of frogs, when did you two start seeing each other?’

  ‘Oi, my baby is not a frog,’ Emma says, stretching up on her tiptoes to kiss Chris.

  ‘I wasn’t talking about Chris,’ Danny replies. This is my cue to go back in there, to stop him showing how hurt he’s feeling.

  ‘Just work, checking up on us,’ I tell Danny. ‘Making sure we’re getting some work done.’

  Everyone is sitting around the table now. All five chairs are occupied, so I sit myself on Danny’s lap, hooking my arm around his neck.

  Everyone stares at us for a second.

  ‘So…’ Danny starts. ‘What time is our Clare getting here?’

  ‘Speak of the devil,’ she says, bursting into the room, dragging two small children by the hands. ‘Danny!’ she gasps, surprised to see her brother, before moving her gaze to me. ‘Holy shit! How much are you charging him per hour?’ she asks me.

  I blink at her in disbelief.

  ‘Oh, I’m not saying you look like a prostitute,’ she backtracks. ‘Just that you’re way out of my brother’s league.’

  I laugh politely, kissing Danny on the cheek.

  ‘How the fuck did you end up with my brother?’ she asks, jumping up on the worktop, ready to hear the story.

  Danny looks at me, like maybe I had thought this through. My hesitation must tell him that I haven’t. Well, I’m making this up as I go along, aren’t I?

  ‘Well, we work together. We met at work,’ Danny tells them, but everyone looks disappointed, like maybe we might have had a better story for them, to explain how such a supposedly odd couple wound up together.

  ‘We actually didn’t get on very well to start with,’ I tell them honestly. ‘He annoyed the hell out of me.’

  ‘That I can believe.’ His sister laughs.

  ‘I actually asked her out during my first day on the job,’ he tells them as he gazes into my eyes.

  ‘Your first hour,’ I correct him.

  ‘Well who could resist you?’ he gushes.

  ‘I’m gonna throw up,’ Emma says, and we both shoot her a glance in unison before getting back to our story. The key is to make it believable, so it’s probably best I use as much truth as possible.

  ‘So he kept asking and I kept saying no. You see this?’ I ask, holding my wrist up.

  ‘That ugly bracelet?’ Emma asks, scrunching up her face.

  I ignore her bitchy comments and tell my story.

  ‘One night we were on this work’s night out, and they can get pretty messy,’ I explain. I see a few eyebrows shoot up, like they can’t quite believe I am capable of messy nights out. ‘Long story short, there was a bit of a misunderstanding at the tattoo parlour that we all somehow ended up in, and I wound up with the most stupid tattoo on my wrist – I was mortified. The first thing Danny did was get me this bracelet, to cover up my mistake so that no one could see. So long as I’ve got this bracelet, no one will ever see it, and as long as I’ve got Danny, I know that I’ve got someone looking after me, cleaning up after me, fixing my mistakes.’

  I lean forward and hug him, burying my face in his neck so I can smile to myself, proud of my Oscar-worthy performance. I don’t mention that this was less than twenty-four hours ago, that it was Danny who got me so ‘mortal’ I did such a stupid thing, and that I’m so mad at him right now I want to strangle him. In fact, I don’t even know why I’m doing this for him. Perhaps if I do, he’ll go easy on me for the rest of the trip, you never know. Protecting him just feels right, and even if he was instrumental in my stupid tattoo, he did get me the bracelet to hide it.

  As his mum makes delighted noises over how cute we are, Danny and I look at each other, neither of us saying a word, but I can read his mind. He didn’t know I had this in me – both my acting skills and my kindness.

  ‘Well, enough mush,’ Paul says, clapping his hands as he springs to his feet. ‘Time to fire up the barbeque. Give me a hand, lads.’

  Chris jumps to his feet like an excitable puppy. Danny places his face close to my neck, as though he was going to kiss it, but he doesn’t. Instead his whispers into my ear, ‘Thank you.’

  I smile at him, to let him know that he’s welcome. I guess I just know what it’s like to feel hurt and betrayed by the person you care about. It doesn’t matter what they do to you – even if they cheat on you – you can’t just switch the feelings off. Had Will not betrayed me, I probably wouldn’t have done this for Danny. Then again, had Will not betrayed me, I wouldn’t even be here in the first place.

  I grab my phone and check it – just in case Will decided to text me in the last ten minutes – but no such luck. I decide to text him again,
so I’m not just the kind of crazy person who double-texts, I’m triple-texting, but I just need to hear from him. My missed call from Caroline is my in – I’ll text him and ask if he needed me for something work-related. It’s a desperate move, but I suppose I’m a desperate girl right now. I think for a second. No, I need to be smarter than this. I’ll leave it until later.

  ‘It’s just so weird that Danny has brought a girl home,’ his sister Clare thinks out loud now that it’s just us girls.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought you were his type,’ Emma adds.

  ‘Well, types change,’ I say, reminding myself not to act like a bitch in front of Danny’s mum.

  ‘I’m just so pleased he’s found someone,’ Andrea says as she potters around the kitchen. ‘He’s not one for staying still.’

  ‘Well, I don’t plan on letting him go,’ I lie, smiling sweetly.

  ‘But, do you not think he’s a huge geek?’ Clare continues.

  I suppose, being his sister, she’ll never realise just how attractive her brother is. To her he’ll just seem like a big IT dork.

  ‘We have our differences, but we accept them,’ I say. Another lie, considering I never have a clue what he’s talking about and he thinks I’m the most boring girl on the planet.

  Thank God we’re not a real couple, huh?

  Chapter 22

  I’m just going to come right out and say it, spending time with Danny’s family has been so much fun. We’ve spent the evening eating, drinking and being merry. Well, I haven’t really been eating. The food looks absolutely incredible, and as much as I would love to shovel it in now that I don’t have Will trying to dictate my diet to me, I’m being silly and stubborn. After insisting to Danny that I have been healthy eating for myself and for no other reason, I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me pig out, so I’m stupidly keeping up the charade.

  Danny walks over to me and holds out a glass of red wine.

  ‘No, no,’ I insist. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ He laughs.

  ‘You know I don’t drink well and I’m tipsy already.’ I laugh too.

  It’s weird, but pretending to be friendly and happy with Danny has sort of tricked my brain into being that way. I’m still mad about the previous night, but right now I couldn’t care less. I’m just happy being happy.

  ‘Says who?’ he persists.

  ‘There’s a voice in my head telling me to stop drinking,’ I tell him.

  Danny takes a step closer to me, our faces just inches apart.

  ‘Don’t listen to it,’ he says softly. ‘It’s drunk.’

  Before I have a chance to cave in to peer pressure, I feel Danny bump into me, spilling the glass of red right down the front of my cream top.

  ‘Oh, whoops,’ Emma says, without a hint of sincerity. ‘Clumsy me bumping into you like that, Dan.’

  ‘Candy, your top,’ Danny says, frozen in position because he knows what to do about as much as I do.

  Andrea comes rushing over.

  ‘No drama, Candy, nip into the loo and take that off. Danny, come with me, I’ll get you something to help with the stain,’ she instructs.

  I glance back at Emma as I head for the bathroom, feeling myself growing increasingly angry at her smug look. She’s clearly jealous. Well, I’ll give that bitch something to feel jealous about.

  I close the door of the downstairs bathroom behind me, quickly taking off my top. As I sit on the bathroom counter in my bra, in my drunken state, I finally realise how I’ll get Will’s attention: I’ll send him that dirty picture he asked for. There’s no way he’ll be able to resist that.

  I hold my phone at a flattering angle, pull the biggest most over-the-top pout I can contort my face into and push my boobs together with my elbows. I’m drunk, but not so drunk that taking my bra off seems like a good idea. Instead, I pull one strap down, allowing one of the cups to slip aside just enough to show a hint of nipple. I’ve never done this before, but less is more, right?

  I snap what I think is a good one, just as Danny starts knocking on the door.

  ‘Can I come in?’ he calls from the other side.

  ‘Hang on,’ I call back, a little snappy, as I fidget with my phone to try and get this sent before I let him in.

  ‘But I miss you,’ he calls back. Someone must be there.

  ‘Just a sec, honey,’ I say sweetly.

  I try to hurry up, rushing my way through the motions of attaching a photo and…sent.

  ‘Right, come in, dear,’ I chirp, having made sure my bra is back in place. Then I grab the nearest towel and wrap it around my upper body.

  As Danny walks through the door, his phone makes a noise. He takes it from his pocket and glances at the screen.

  ‘Did you just send me a text?’ he asks.

  ‘Me? No,’ I reply, glancing down at my own phone in my hand. That’s when I realise that I have drunkenly, absentmindedly sent my slutty selfie to Danny instead of Will. I snatch his phone from his hand.

  ‘Listen, I need you to just trust me: type your passcode in on your phone and let me delete it. I didn’t mean to send it to you and it’s embarrassing.’

  ‘Embarrassing? Well normally I’d be all over that, but you did me a huge favour today. Go on then.’

  Danny does as he is asked and I quickly delete the photo. Crisis averted.

  ‘I know you’re pissed off at me, so it must have taken a lot for you to do what you did for me today.’

  ‘No worries,’ I reply.

  ‘Well, I want to return the favour. I remember your friend saying something about you not having a date for her wedding – and I think I overheard the two of you talking about maybe seeing if I’d go with you out of pity. Well, here’s the pity. You showed me mercy; I’ll do the same for you. I’ll go with you.’

  ‘Really?’ I ask in disbelief.

  ‘Yeah. Why not?’

  I suppose I’m just surprised because I know how hard it was going to be to get Will to go, even before everything that happened.

  ‘Well, thank you,’ I tell him. ‘I’m going to hold you to that. Speaking of holding you…’

  I notice Emma, peeping into the bathroom from where she is sitting in the living room. She has a perfect view, and as unsubtle as she’s being, I pretend not to notice her. Instead, I wrap my legs around Danny’s waist and pull him close, gently kissing his neck.

  ‘Emma is watching,’ I whisper. ‘Play along.’

  Danny runs his hands up my back slowly as I kiss my way up his neck and nibble on his earlobe. He makes this cute little noise.

  ‘Very convincing,’ I whisper.

  I keep my eyes on Emma, who is getting increasingly annoyed at our display. She soon gets up and walks away, so I stop, but Danny doesn’t let go.

  ‘Danny, she’s gone, you can let go now,’ I tell him.

  ‘Hmm?’ he says. ‘Oh, right.’

  He releases me, but he looks a bit awkward.

  ‘You OK?’ I laugh.

  ‘Yeah, I’m good. Give me your top. My mam says she’ll clean it. I brought you this to shove on while it dries.’

  Danny hands me a T-shirt with the slogan: ‘Talk QWERTY to me’ emblazoned across the front.

  ‘You truly are a massive nerd.’ I laugh.

  ‘Yeah, well, you’re welcome,’ he replies. ‘Hey, I’m glad we’re getting on,’ he says as he leaves the room, and he sounds sincere.

  ‘As mad at you as I am for last night…I’m glad we’re getting on too. You don’t know how much I need a friend right now.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll talk about it,’ he says with a smile.

  ‘Maybe.’ I smile back.

  Chapter 23

  ‘Well, I’m beat,’ I announce as I pull myself to my feet. It’s ten p.m., and as much as I’m enjoying spending time with Danny’s family, sitting out on this warm summer’s night, drinking too much wine, I know that we’ve got an early start.

  ‘I’m pretty tired too,’ Danny agrees – well,
neither of us got much sleep last night, did we?

  ‘Oi, oi,’ Chris says. ‘They’re gonna be bucking tonight.’

  I feel my cheeks flush.

  ‘Oh, no.’ Danny laughs. ‘I told Candy she can have my room. I’ll kip on the sofa.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ His mum laughs. ‘We were young once; we don’t mind if you share.’

  I shoot Danny a look.

  ‘Honestly, Mam, we don’t mind.’

  ‘It’s fine, really,’ Andrea insists.

  ‘What are you, a prude?’ Emma laughs.

  ‘No at all.’ I smile. ‘Just respectful of my boyfriend’s parents.’

  ‘Well, that’s lovely,’ Paul says with a nod. ‘We’re not used to that around here.’

  ‘Well, goodnight, pet,’ Andrea says. ‘Danny, your dad will run you for your car in the morning. You sure you can’t stick around for breakfast?’

  ‘Thanks, Mam, but we’ve got to hit the road early.’

  Danny walks me to the kitchen door.

  ‘Your mum just called me pet.’ I chuckle, both amused and warmed by her Geordie charm.

  ‘It’s a term of endearment. A term of endearment is a nice name that you call someone who you like,’ he teases, stressing certain words for emphasis. ‘I realise the concept is alien to you.’

  I laugh sarcastically.

  ‘Listen, you go to bed. I’ll sit up for a bit and then sleep on the sofa after everyone has gone to bed. Don’t worry,’ he whispers.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I reply.

  ‘I’m sure. Thanks for everything. Sweet dreams.’

  I smile at him for a second before heading indoors and upstairs.

  I take off all of my clothes except Danny’s T-shirt, which I’ve decided I’ll sleep in, scrub off my make-up and climb into Danny’s bed. He’s got a double bed squashed into the corner of the room, so I climb in and sit with my back against the wall. I glance at my phone – still no word from Will. It’s sad, but when I was with Will, life was just bridging the gaps between moments with him. Whether it was being called into his office for no real reason or just receiving an unexpected text from him over the weekend, when he acknowledged my existence, unprompted, it meant everything. It would send me soaring up on a high that I felt like I’d never come down from…until the next quiet period. My mood was all over the place. I suppose now that he’s ignoring me, at least my mood is balanced, even if I am permanently in a bad one.