Crazy Girl

by B. N. Toler

  Kegs stopped bouncing long enough to speak. “You look cheery this morning,” he noted, the sarcasm evident in his tone.

  I grunted, “Yeah, yeah.” Apparently, it was obvious I wasn’t in the best of moods. By the time I’d gotten home the night before it was close to 2 a.m. I was running on about two hours of sleep, and had the evening with Hannah been enjoyable, my sleep deprivation would have been worth it. But it wasn’t. She was nuts. I’d had time to think about it the whole drive home after she pushed me out her door. And it pissed me off. Because she was also cool and funny. Sexy even, if I didn’t count the whole mace incident where she looked like a blind, half-drowned raccoon by the end of it. But the good times were small in comparison to the rest of the drama that took place. I shouldn’t have been thinking about her. Normally, I’d wipe a loony woman from my mind faster than I could blink. So why was I still thinking about this one?

  “What’s with you?” Kegs snickered, continuing to rub his hands together.

  “Long night, bro,” I grumbled. “Very long night.”

  “Oh yeah. You had a date last night. How’d it go?” I couldn’t help but chuckle. I wasn’t even sure how to quite describe it to him. “Was she hot?”

  “Yeah.” I chuckled again.

  Narrowing his eyes at me, he quirked his mouth into a questioning smile. “What’s so funny? You get laid? Was she a freak in bed?”

  This time I bent over and full-on laughed. “No, man. Definitely not. No action whatsoever. But I will say it’s a date I will never forget.”

  After explaining the details of the previous night’s happenings, we were both laughing. “Damn, dude. Poor lady.” He shook his head. “She sounds like a piece of work. And you deserve a medal for lasting as long as you did.” Yeah, I really did.

  Zipping up my jacket, I let out a long exhale. “She was something, all right.”

  “Hey, at least she was hot,” he offered.

  I smirked as I thought about her. “Yeah, she was a looker.” I sighed, disappointment setting in that she couldn’t have been more leveled.

  “You met her on that dating app?” he asked before jamming his hands in his pockets.

  “Yeah.”

  “Now see. There’s your problem. Women in that age group aren’t that hot and single. And if they are, it means there’s a reason, and that reason is usually they’re batshit crazy,” he laughed. Giving me a hard slap on the back that made me grunt, he added, “Well at least you saw the crazy right out of the gate, bruh. You’ve only wasted one night on her, saved yourself a lot of time and effort.”

  As he walked away, yelling at our students to line up, I nodded. He was right. I’d only lost one night. “Forget about her,” I mumbled to myself. “You don’t need that chaos in your life.”

  It was after seven by the time I left work that evening. My eyes burned with exhaustion, and it was all I could do to keep them open on the way home. I needed some damn sleep. When I parked my truck in the driveway and cut the engine, I grabbed my bag from the passenger seat, but stopped when I saw something pink on the floorboard.

  Hannah’s scarf.

  Closing my eyes, I growled in annoyance. She’d left her scarf, not even thinking about it in her vision crisis. Leaning over, I stretched my arm out and managed to grab it, pulling it to me as I righted in my seat. Before I knew it, I was holding it to my face, inhaling it. It smelled sweet and clean. It smelled like her. With a jerk of my hand, I tossed it aside, leaving it in the passenger seat before I climbed out of the truck. I was smelling her scarf. If I was going to go smelling a woman’s clothing, why hers? I didn’t want her. It had to be my exhaustion. There was no other explanation for it.

  After a quick shower, I climbed into bed when my phone chimed indicating I had a text. It was Kegs.

  Kegs: They want us in a 5 a.m.

  Me: All right. See you then.

  My job required long days and sometimes weeks without a day off. It made it tough to date and try to turn anything into a real relationship. Women like attention and unfortunately giving it to them requires time, which was something I was short on. But my job was important to me—and I didn’t just mean monetarily, even though I did get paid well. I had been offered this position because I was one of the best at what I did. Chosen to train young men and women to be like me. I was proud of my life and work, even before I took the position at Morrison. I’d served this country as a marine, fighting beside some of the best men and women I’d ever known. It was my greatest honor. They say work isn’t everything, but to me, it was. My dedication, success, and accomplishments were what made me who I was. Some people couldn’t appreciate that. That was their loss. I couldn’t deny I was rigid, stoic even. Even abrasive. I rarely showed emotion and had little tolerance for those who did. It wasn’t because I thought I was better than anyone, or that I lacked feelings, it was that I had trained myself to overcome obstacles and setbacks. When people feel, they tend to let those feelings hinder them; stop them from fighting on to reach their goals. Women especially weren’t crazy about my lack of emotion. Which was perhaps why I was in my late thirties and still single. I hadn’t found one that could either deal with it or found a way to break it out of me, if that was even possible, which I wasn’t sure that it was.

  Before I switched my phone off, I scrolled through and tapped on my photos. The first picture to pop up was the one I had wanted to see. It was of Hannah from the night before. The bright scarf wrapped around her head and face, only revealing her dark eyes, was a great shot. Even though her mouth was covered you could still see the smile in her gaze.

  Letting out a loud sigh, I scrubbed my face roughly with my free hand. “Goddammit, Wren,” I muttered. I didn’t want to do what I was about to do. But I had to. I just had to.

  I texted her.

  Me: Want to have a do-over?

  “Some people never go crazy.

  What truly horrible lives they must lead.”

  -Charles Bukowski

  I had never seen Taz’s face so red. He was laughing—hard. He could barely breathe. Apparently, my mortification humored him greatly.

  “Is it really that funny?” I griped as I stood in front of his desk, arms crossed over my chest, waiting for him to calm down.

  “Yes,” he wheezed.

  “I could have blinded myself, you know.”

  His chest convulsed as he struggled to control his deep laughter. “You’re being dramatic.”

  Was I? I didn’t think so. It had been three days since my date with Wren and my eyes were just now feeling normal again. Courtney, feeling sorry for me, came Saturday night and picked me up and took me to Brentwood, a brewery we favored not too far from us. They’d just released their summer ale, and we did our best to drain them of their entire stock. Since I’d already given her all the gory details of my date with Wren the night before, we’d decided to discuss everything that was wrong with him. That way I could feel better.

  “He was rude. Late!” I’d boomed, raising a fist in the air. A few fellas at a table nearby chuckled as they watched us. “Don’t be late on a first date,” I scolded them. “It’s rude.” They all nodded in agreement. Boy was I well on my way to being hammered.

  “He didn’t look that great,” Courtney added. She had no idea, she was only trying to aid in my anti-Wren effort. I patted her hand a few times and shushed her. “No. No. He was really good looking,” I slurred. Even I couldn’t knock his looks as much as I wanted to make him seem like a waste of time in every way. Then lifting my head, I leaned toward her. “He was too hot,” I added, my tone meaning it as an insult. I leaned back and shrugged as if I’d just made a profoundly deep point. “And that’s just as bad.”

  “Yeah,” Courtney replied with enthusiasm. “I hate guys that are too hot.”

  We both chuckled a little, knowing how ridiculous we sounded.

  “And he was all tight-lipped about his job.” I scrunched my face in annoyance. “I mean, why? What was up with that?” Picking
up my pint glass, I took a large gulp.

  “And even though you’ll never find out for sure, I bet you anything he has a microscopic dick.” With her words, laughter bubbled up and I sprayed her, and the table, with the beer in my mouth. Her mouth flew open in shock, and she held her hands out like she didn’t know what to do.

  “Bitch!” She snorted out a drunken laugh.

  “I’m so sorry,” I cackled as I wiped at my mouth with my arm. “I couldn’t help it. I’ll get something to dry you.” Stumbling to the bar, I grabbed a few napkins and returned attempting to dab her with them.

  “Get right there,” she instructed me as she pointed to her chest. Not paying attention, I did as she asked when I noted her nodding. Looking up, I noticed she was staring at the table full of guys that had been watching us all night as she made sexy faces at them. I hadn’t realized I was dabbing her breast and they’d been watching me touch her boob with hungry eyes. Courtney, being Courtney, decided to egg them on just to torture them.

  “Courtney!” I huffed as I tossed the napkins at her. This only caused her to laugh as she collected them and dabbed at her face and neck.

  “Grown-ass men, I swear.”

  “You were encouraging it,” I quipped before taking the last gulp of my beer.

  She motioned her hand like she had a penis and was masturbating. “Bunch of jerk-offs.” I choked as I brought her hand down and laughed hard. We were, hands down, the classiest broads in the place.

  Eventually, after too many beers and too many gawking men, we decided we’d had enough and needed to take an Uber back to my house and crash. When I pulled my phone out to order the ride, I saw the notification to his text.

  Wren’s text.

  It had been three hours since he’d sent it.

  I couldn’t read it. I was drunk so that didn’t help any. And, admittedly, I was scared to read it.

  Handing the phone to Courtney, I drunkenly mumbled, “He texted me. Read it to me.”

  She squinted one eye, as if she couldn’t see me even though I was only a foot away, her lip curling in a sneer as she took the phone. “Of course he did,” she slurred. Then raising her hand that held the phone, she shouted, “He texted her! I knew he would! Look at her, she’s gorgeous.”

  The guys at the table next to us lifted their pints and made some shouting sounds in agreement. If you couldn’t beat them, join them, right? Raising a hand, I waved, and turned my head from side to side, batting my lashes like I was a beauty queen riding on a parade float. These guys probably weren’t checking us out as much as they were laughing at us. We’d stepped over the line of ridiculous about three beers prior. Courtney and I were in the zone—our zone of crazy, drunken debauchery.

  Staring at my cell screen, her brows lifted and she tilted her head as if she were impressed by what he’d texted.

  “What?” I asked anxiously as I smacked a heavy hand on her thigh to get her attention.

  She rocked a little, side to side, as she met my stare. “I’ll be damned. He wants a do-over.”

  I scowled and snorted. “Pfft. A do-over?”

  Tossing my phone in front of me, she shrugged. “That’s right. A do-over,” she confirmed.

  Was he serious? I half wondered if he was just making fun of me.

  “You’re drunk,” she pointed out.

  I placed a hand to my chest in mock offense. “Moi? Nooooo. I’m as sober as a judge,” I replied in my deepest Southern falsetto, which wasn’t hard considering I had a bit of twang in my accent to begin with.

  “You can’t text him back when you’re drunk.”

  “Yeah,” I said assertively. “No drunk texting. He doesn’t deserve it.”

  “You’re right,” she agreed. “He doesn’t. Your random drunken babble should be saved for only the people you really love.”

  “Yeah!” I yelled enthusiastically.

  “Yeah,” she mimicked me as she pounded her fist on the table. Then, with thoughtfulness in her tone, she added, “But we should definitely give Kate and Deanna a call on the way home. They deserve a good drunk dial.”

  “Agreed. One more beer and we’ll go.”

  We were the worst drunks together. Neither of us could say no to the other. “Let’s do it.”

  And that was the last thing I remembered.

  Until the next morning when my phone chimed, waking me.

  My body felt like weighted lead. I didn’t want to move. Why couldn’t my mattress absorb me, make me part of it? Reaching for my phone on my nightstand, I wondered how I got to bed the night before. And what happened to Courtney? Did we Uber home? I had to find her and make sure she got home okay.

  I unlocked the screen to read the text when my foot hit something warm. Shit! It was a leg. I jerked up, my heart lurching in my chest. Someone was in the bed with me, a pillow covering their head, and I had no idea who it was.

  “Shit,” I whispered. Had I had a one-night stand? There were those guys at the other table that kept looking at us all night. Oh my god. No. I’d never done the drunken one-night stand bit before.

  “Water,” the person mumbled, and my body relaxed when I realized who it was.

  Courtney.

  “You nearly just gave me a heart attack,” I hissed as I gave her ass a hard smack.

  “Ouch,” she whined. “Water.”

  “Does your husband know you’re here?” I queried.

  “Yes, you called him and asked if we could have a sleepover.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes. Maybe didn’t ask as much as you told him we were.”

  I tilted my head, wondering how that went over. I’m sure he didn’t like that. “You think he’s mad at me?”

  “Nah. He’s going on a fishing trip next week for three days, which you pointed out after telling him I was staying over. So he owed me one.”

  My mouth was dry and tasted horrible. I needed water, too. “Why?” I asked no one in particular, raising my head to the ceiling, my tone laced with agony. “Why did we drink so much?” Like the universe was at fault.

  “Because we hate ourselves,” Courtney mumbled from under a pillow.

  I chuckled. It took all of my strength, but I made it downstairs and grabbed us two bottled waters and some Ibuprofen before dragging my tired body back upstairs. We both sat on the bed, gulping water when I realized I hadn’t checked my phone from when it chimed earlier.

  A text.

  From Wren.

  Wren: Really? You’re not going to respond? Not even to say no?

  I snickered. Now that I was sober, well, mostly, I felt safe enough to reply.

  Me: You think I’m insane. Why would you want to see me again?

  He replied within seconds, shocking me.

  Wren: I have your scarf.

  I sneered. He wanted to see me again to give me my scarf? Don’t bother, dude.

  Me: Just drop it off next time you’re in town. Or you can toss it.

  Actually, I loved that scarf, but I wasn’t sure seeing him to get it back would be worth the cost paid in my dignity. I’d sacrifice the favored garment to save face. It was worth the price.

  Wren: Damn, Hannah. Cold much?

  Courtney, who was reading the texts with me, smirked. “He wants to see you, he just doesn’t want to admit it. He’s trying to make it about the scarf.” Was he really that prideful? Before I could continue that thought, he texted again.

  Wren: I’d like to give this one more chance if you are willing.

  Me: Again. You thought I was nuts. I’m not understanding why you would want to hang out with someone you thought was certifiable.

  Wren: I never said ‘certifiable.’ And yes, you kind of did act crazy. But there were also moments where you were cool, too.

  I looked to Courtney and blinked in confusion. “He is literally telling me he thinks I’m crazy and asking me out at the same time.”

  Pulling the tie holding the knot on her head, Courtney let her hair down and said, “You did admit you were
a bit crazy the other night.”

  “Because he was weird,” I defended.

  “Oh.” She puckered her lips. “And you’re so normal.”

  I tightened my mouth. What was this? Gang Up on Hannah Day? Like I said, she was the brutal friend. “I’m weird in a different way.”

  “Maybe he was nervous, Hannah. You guys barely scratched the surface of getting to know one another.”

  “Ugh.” I let out a long groan, flopping back on the bed.

  “If you didn’t want to hang out again, you would’ve said no by now,” she pointed out as she gathered her hair up to retie it.

  I glared at her. “True. I’m just trying to understand why I’m even willing to consider it.”

  “Because deep down you know there is something there. Maybe attraction, or maybe a story.”

  Sitting up, I held my lower lip between my teeth as I thought about it. Everything surrounding Wren screamed at me to run the other way, but there I was, debating it.

  Wren: Can I get an answer today, woman? Yes or no? This isn’t something I do, ya know.

  Me: Something you do?

  Wren: Beg.

  I snickered.

  Me: You consider this begging? You called me crazy and asked me out.

  Wren: Yes or no, Hannah?

  Courtney quirked her mouth up then giggled. He was winning her over. But not me. I’d made a fool of myself the other night for sure, but he’d also been rude.

  Me: If I agree to this, no BS. Don’t leave me hanging. You have to say a time and be there by that time. And if you can’t then let’s just say goodbye now, no hard feelings.

  Wren: Got it. I will make the time.