Page 14 of Cuts like a Knife
I’ve been too busy worrying about getting fired to focus on this whole thing with Drew, which is obviously getting out of hand. I’ll have to put a stop to it.
I can’t control the mystery emailer, I can’t necessarily control if I can canned again, but Drew? Drew is something I can control.
Chapter Four
So the Drew thing.
I don’t want to think about it.
I mean, Drew is obnoxious.
Not right now, fine, he’s just texting me about tonight, but usually. He’s usually obnoxious. Historically. Often.
He is historically and often obnoxious.
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone more infuriating.
He was such a flirt in high school, I couldn’t barely tell which Madison he liked best. Me, one of my sisters, or my mother. He was an equal-opportunity flirt, which is just one of the many reasons we aren’t together and will never be officially together.
He double cheek kisses people38.
Once a cad, always a cad. I’m like an elephant. I never forget!
Another text pops through before I can think of a response to his winky reference to our time in Claire’s barn.
DW: Am taking a car service. Work expense. I could pick you up?
Trust him to find a way to call attention to the fact that I don’t work downtown anymore. Not like he does — at his big fancy advertising agency.
Citidaze is such a crappy little publication. We’re way out in a warehouse-like building in the suburbs. But Drew and his fancy job can pick me up with a car service. La-di-dah.
Eye roll. All the eye rolls.
This is good. This is the energy I need to sustain to stop messing around with him once and for all. If he hadn’t said something annoying just now (classic) I might have been derailed by his comment about the last time we were together at Claire’s, and what happened in the barn. And that would be bad. That’s how the whole mess with him started. His dang sexiness. And now he thinks we’re going to be something real.
When we’re not. We’re definitely not!
People you cannot date publicly, according to all societal norms:
Your baby sibling’s best friend.
Anyone who has ever flirted with your mother.
Someone for whom you used to babysit.
These are just the rules. I didn’t make them!
So how did I end up in this particular pickle?
Here’s what happened: Drew and I had been chugging along as semi-sarcastic family friends for a long time. Years and years, actually. Sure, there was a little childhood history there, some teenage misadventure, but nothing I hadn’t put out of my mind39. Ancient history. He was Gray’s friend, nothing more40. I hadn’t thought about him — not like that — in forever41.
But then Drew played a major part in getting Claire and Adam their new gig — it’s a whole story, but the lifestyle show thing was basically his idea — and as a result, all of the Madisons found ourselves seeing a lot more of him at launch events and other stuff for Claire and Adam.
As kids, all of us (the five Madisons, as well as Drew, then still called Andrew) spent lots of time together.Lots of friends were in our orbit, but Drew was around more. Almost constantly. My mom felt sorry for Gray because he’s the only boy. And she was friends with Drew’s mom, Donna. So he was like an extra Madison. An adopted, second baby brother, a companion for Gray who I guess my parents thought might be negatively affected by all the estrogen or something.
We would go on holiday together, spend summers together. There was a time when we all saw each other pretty much every day, but by the time Claire’s blew up and got the whole show thing off the ground, all that was long in the past. We were all grown up. Busy with our own lives.
It was a change to have him hanging around so much more often again42.
