The Drought (The hilarious laugh-out loud comedy about dating disasters!) (5 page)

“
I’m glad we
sorted this out,” Stacey said cuddling up to me. “I forgive
you.”

What did she
say? I started to panic. She thought this was
make-up
sex, not
goodbye
sex. I cursed myself for
being so stupid. Goodbye sex would have been tender and soft,
something we could both take away and remember. And longer than 117
seconds. We just had classic animal, aggressive make-up sex. This
was awkward.

“
But I thought
that was goodbye sex...” I said it out loud without even
thinking.

“
What?” Her
tone was more anger than shock.

“
I thought...
I mean...” I stuttered and stumbled.

“
Get out!” She
screamed so loudly I was sure the Russians on the space station
could hear her. I tried to explain again, but suddenly the door to
her bedroom burst open and there stood the wild-haired Sophie,
holding a baseball bat. “I fucking warned you!” she screamed at
me.

Sophie launched at me, swinging
the bat with a crazed look in her eye. I dived across the room as
she smashed the bat into the pillow where my head had been lying
just seconds before. I still had my jeans around my ankles so I
could only hop and shuffle towards the door like a penguin.

“
Get him!”
Stacey shouted. What the hell happened to forgiveness?

Sophie was up off the bed in a
flash and swung for me a second time, this time crashing the bat
into the door frame as I ducked and headed toward the stairs.
Sophie was right behind me and as I took the first step on to the
stairs I lost my balance and tumbled head first, landing in a heap
at the front door.

Sophie stood at the top of the
stairs looking down on me like raging bull. She started down the
stairs toward me. Frantically I dragged myself up and grabbed for
the door latch, pulling it open just as Sophie threw herself on top
of my back.

We rolled out onto the
pavement, my jeans still swinging around my ankles. The bat went
flying off to one side as we hit the floor. I tried to make a run
for it, but she grabbed the top of my jeans. Scrambling to my feet
I turned to push her away but she grabbed hold of my testicles and
squeezed tightly.

My face went purple and then a
shade of green. I tried to scream but couldn’t get the sound out. I
kicked her in the shin and she fell back clutching her leg. I
crumpled to my knees in a heap, the colour slowly returning to my
face. I sluggishly pulled my jeans back up and looked up to see
Stacey now on the doorstep.

“
Sophie! He is
getting away,” she cried out to her pit bull.

I pulled myself up and leant
against a car, still doubled over in pain. Sophie was now back on
her feet and had retrieved the bat. She swung it above her head
like a cavewoman swinging her hunting club, and moved quickly
towards me. I ducked at the last spilt second, and heard the glass
from the passenger seat window shatter, setting off the car
alarm.

“
You crazy
bitch!” I screamed, still trying to catch my breath, but had to
quickly roll to safety as she attempted another bat attack which
crashed into the tarmac.

This time I took off as fast as
I could. Sophie made chase for about 50 yards before giving up and
standing in the middle of the road; the bat raised above her head.
“If you ever come near her again I’ll kill you!”

I didn’t look back. I kept
running until I was certain I was clear and free. And that pretty
much brought the curtain crashing down on the most meaningful
relationship I’d had in my life up until that point.

It would also
prove to be the last day I would have sex for a
very
long time.

Chapter 4:
Back to Work

Monday, January 5, 2009 -
9.17am

Drought Clock: 3 days, 21
hours, 55 minutes

Monday morning. Back to work
and in the office. The festive holiday was well and truly over, in
more ways than one.

It had been four days since I’d
broken up with Stacey and stared death in the face. I had dared not
tell the boys what really happened. They would crucify me with
their taunts if they knew how the baseball bat-wielding Sophie had
nearly decapitated me. I wasn’t quite ready for their onslaught of
ribbing and banter just yet.

But I had been desperate to
talk to someone, and I knew I could trust Kelly to be the voice of
reason and offer some words of consolation.

“
That is the
funniest thing I’ve ever heard,” Kelly somehow managed to get the
words out through fits of hysterical laughing, holding her stomach.
So much for being the voice of reason.

“
It’s not
funny,” I smiled. “I could have been seriously injured. Or worse.
Dead!”

Kelly held one hand over her
mouth to try and stem the flow of laughter while she waved the
other hand at me apologetically. Her long brown curly hair bounced
up and down as she tried to control her giggling. “I’m so sorry,
babe,” she managed to finally calm herself down.

I had worked
with Kelly Campbell for a little over four months now after she
came on board as a sales executive at Maxwell Media through a
graduate scheme. We sold online advertising to a range of different
industries across the three business-to-business websites. I had
been with the company a little shy of a year, but I’d been bored
shitless before Kelly arrived. She was bright, bubbly, and had this
infectious laugh. She was an easy person to get along with. Before
meeting Kelly I had never bought into the theory that a man and a
woman could
really
just be friends. I’d had female friends before, but
inevitably one person would always fancy the other person. Normally
I was the one who did the fancying.

But with Kelly it was
different. Don’t get me wrong, she was attractive, but I think the
fact we were both in relationships meant that neither one of us
felt the need to try and impress the other person. There was no
pretence. No bravado. Kelly had been with her boyfriend Paul for
nearly a year now, and I had met him a few times when he had come
to meet her after work. He was a good guy and they seemed really
happy together.

“
So, how have
you been doing?” she asked genuinely.

“
I don’t know
really, it all feels a bit empty,” I said. “I still think it was
the right thing to do, but it still feels a bit
strange.”

“
That’s
normal,” Kelly reassured me. “You were with each other for a long
time. You get into a routine. It takes time to adjust to the
change, especially when things happen so quickly.”

Kelly was right. For the last
three years my daily routine had always revolved around Stacey in
one way or another. I was now in an unfamiliar situation not seeing
or talking to her every day. With no contact, I couldn’t shake the
feeling that something was missing, almost like not being able to
remember where you last saw your keys. But no amount of head
scratching and searching under the sofa would remedy this
issue.

“
I thought
about contacting her but I’m not sure that would be the best thing
to do,” I said.

“
Too
soon?”

“
Gut
instinct,” I said. “Plus this text I received from her last
night.”

I got my phone to read the text
out to Kelly. “You will never find anyone as good as me. I can’t
believe I wasted three years of my life with you. PS – your small
cock never satisfied me.”

Kelly burst into laughter
again. “I’m sorry, babe,” she managed to say.

“
Got time for
personal calls, have we, Hilles?” Richard Mussel slapped both hands
on both my shoulders from behind. “Good strong shoulders,” he said
massaging me. “I would have thought you’d have loads to catch up on
after being out of the office for two weeks.”

“
Yes, Richard,
I was just...” I tried to offer before I got cut off.

“
How many
times do I have to tell you?” Richard said. “I prefer
Dick.”

It was bad
enough having to call my boss Mr Mussel, even though he insisted it
was pronounced
Moo-Cell.
Who was he kidding? His preference to the name
Dick left me with a comical dilemma when you put the two names
together. “Okay, Dick,” I said trying to keep a straight
face.

“
I need those
sales plans on my desk before midday,” Dick said in his irritating
middle-class monotone twang before dashing off to ruin someone
else’s morning.

“
Happy New
Year to you too,” I said under my breath. Kelly poked her tongue
out and flipped Dick the finger behind his back as he stomped off
towards the editorial department.

“
Okay,
Campbell,” I said in my best Dick impersonation. “Pick those phones
up, update those boards. I want to see you driving this business
forward. And will you please refer to me as Dick
Mussel.”

I insanely typed at the
keyboard and picked the phone up and down during this little
charade. Kelly laughed, but suddenly her expression changed, but I
was too caught up in my improvisation to notice. Then I felt those
hands clamp down on my shoulders for a second time.

“
Midday,
Hilles. If I don’t have that sales plan on my desk we will need to
have a little chat,” Dick informed me. “And update those
boards.”

“
Why didn’t
you warn me,” I threw a piece of paper at Kelly as Dick marched
back to his office like a bear with a sore head.

“
I tried,”
Kelly protested, throwing the piece of screwed up paper back in my
direction with a wink.

I smiled and got up to update
the boards, grabbing a piece of tissue and wiping away December’s
figures. I reached down for a red board marker and that is when I
saw her. I froze on the spot. At that precise moment, nothing else
mattered. She was a picture of pure unadulterated beauty. An
untarnished image of an angel that would melt the coldest of
hearts. Her black hair swayed like she had stepped out of the
perfect shampoo advertisement, while her dark smouldering eyes
burned a glowing passion inside her.

“
Dan, close
your mouth,” Kelly whispered. “You’re practically
drooling.”

I knew Kelly was speaking
because her mouth was moving and words were coming out, but I was
completely transfixed with the vision before me. She wore a white
silk shirt, unbuttoned to the third button, hugging her slim
athletic body. It was tucked into a tight-fitting black skirt that
forced her to take each stride like a catwalk model.

And then it happened. It might
have only been a split second, but at that precise moment it felt
like an eternity. It was a moment I would later relive over and
over in my head. It was a story I could boast about to the boys
down the local. Hell, I might even tell my grandchildren about this
one day. Because at that moment, as this vision of sex on legs
walked past, I swear to God she looked straight at me. And it
wasn’t a run-of-the-mill type of look either. It was an eye-fuck –
a 100 per cent genuine bona fide unspoken look of lust.

“
Who
was
that?” I
gushed.

“
That is
Dick’s new PA,” Kelly said. “Her name is Shaila Saxena.”

Shaila Saxena. Even her name
was hot. She looked like an Indian Goddess. The type of girl you
fall in love with the moment you lay eyes on her.

“
Did you see
that?” I asked Kelly. I needed confirmation that someone else had
just seen the future Miss World give me the
look.

“
I saw you
standing there with a strange crooked grin on your face and your
tongue hanging out of your mouth like a demented dog,” Kelly
replied raising her eyebrows.

“
No way. She
looked at me. She gave me the
look
.”

“
What?” Kelly
said in a slightly high-pitched voice. “She barely glanced at
you.”

“
Hey, it was a
look, okay?”

“
Daydreaming
again are we, Hilles?” I turned and saw Pete Crowford the IT geek.
He was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt with four different
coloured biros in his top pocket. His five strands of hair were
stuck to the top of his head in a Bobby Charlton style
comb-over.

“
What do you
want, Crowford?” I asked.

“
That is one
sweet piece of candy,” Pete said pushing his thin-framed spectacles
back up the bridge of his nose. “But word of warning,” Pete
continued, straightening my collar. “I saw her first.”

Kelly let out a laugh and Pete
shot her a look. “Don’t worry, Kelly,” Pete said, tilting his head
so he could look over his glasses at her. “There is plenty of love
to go around in the IT department for you too.”

“
Oh, please,”
Kelly said almost insulted, flicking her hair back.

“
Get the hell
out of here, Crowford,” I said pushing Pete away and kicking him up
the backside in the process. He threatened me with a back-hand
before slowly slinking off back towards the IT department gently
rubbing his butt.

I turned my
attentions back towards Shaila who had now taken her seat at her
desk outside Dick’s office. “I’m telling you, Kelly, she
looked
at
me.”

“
Well whatever
it was, it’s probably not going to get Dick off our back.” Kelly
paused in thought and then turned back to me. “You know, it doesn’t
matter how often I say that sentence it still sounds wrong, you
know?”