Dan Western Stole My Girlfriend

“So, uh… do you want a drink or something?” I asked as Dan and I walked into the house. I kept going into the kitchen and he followed behind me.

“Water’s good,” he said casually. I bit my tongue to refrain from snapping at him. His lack of manners always bothered me but with him being so down lately, I tried to ignore it. I nodded and turned my back on him, busying myself with getting the both of us glasses of water. Once I handed Dan’s to him, he immediately, without a word, began gulping it down.

“You’re welcome,” I muttered, taking a sip of my own. Dan raised an eyebrow at me while he was still drinking, indicating that he’d heard my little remark.

“Problem?” he asked once the entire glass was empty. He smirked at me, knowing exactly what my problem was.

“A ‘thank you’ would be nice,” I complained.

“Thank you ever so much,” he said in a posh, girly voice as he pretended to curtsey. He looked and sounded ridiculous, making me have to fight to hold back a smile.

I rolled my eyes instead. “You’re an idiot,” I mumbled.

“You love it,” he replied, lightly punching me on the arm. My heart stuttered at his words and actions. What the hell? “So, are you gonna take me to your room, or are we just gonna stand here all afternoon?”

A wave of heat moved up my chest to settle on my face as my mind took what Dan had just said and twisted it into something sexual. “W-what?” I stammered feebly.

Surely, he didn’t mean it in the way I’d interpreted it – as in ‘take me to your room and remove your clothes’ – although I can’t say I would have minded. Since having that embarrassing dream, I’d been thinking about hooking up with Dan more and more. I didn’t think that I actually would if the opportunity arose but it was definitely on my mind a lot.

“Your room, dumbass. To hang out? What the hell is wrong with you?”

I had just opened my mouth to reply, when another voice joined in.

“Hey, Avery, who’s…?” my sister, Willow, began as she came in from the garage. She cut herself off when her eyes fell on Dan and immediately went bright red. “Um… hey Dan. I didn't know you'd be here.”

She brushed her hair back from her face and tucked a strand back behind her ear. Then, she sent him a brilliant smile and subtly pushed her shoulders back, effectively thrusting her chest forward slightly. Oh my god, she was trying to flirt with him. No. Nope. Nuh-uh. That was not going to happen. Not happening. I had a brotherly duty to make sure that my baby sister didn’t get hurt by moronic boys, and that meant that it was my duty to stop Willow flirting with Dan by any means necessary.

“Yep, yes, Dan is here for a – uh – project and we’re very busy and must go now to start the project. Sorry Will, but he just has no time to chat. None at all. We have to go now,” I babbled, before I grabbed Dan by the wrist of his good arm and yanked him out of the kitchen, dragging him all the way to my bedroom. I shut the door and released Dan, breathing a sigh of relief. Dan was staring at me like I’d completely lost my mind.

“Uh… are ya right?” Dan asked after a few seconds of silence.

“What? Yes, I’m fine. Are you?”

“You’re acting really weird. You’re not having another panic attack, are you?”

“No, I’m fine, really,” I took in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “See? Breathing is normal.”

“Okay…” Dan said slowly. We were quiet for a moment. Dan seemed to be thinking about something which brought a smirk to his face. “Dude… Willow’s getting kinda hot.”

“No!” I shouted suddenly, making him jump. “Shut up. Don’t talk about her like that.”

“I knew it. I knew that’s why you went crazy out there. You don’t want me going after your sister.”

“She’s fourteen, Dan. Besides, you already have a girlfriend, remember?” I said bitterly.

“Yeah, that’s true,” he said. He looked around my room, appearing to look for something that would change the subject, and his eyes fell on my guitar in the corner. “You still play guitar?”

“Mmhm,” I replied, a little embarrassed. He’d always teased me about my love of music – or rather, the music I chose to listen to and play.

Dan went over to my guitar and removed it from its stand. He handed it to me, then sat down on my bed. “Play me something,” he told me.

“What?” I said, shocked. I looked down at the guitar then back up at him.

“You heard me. Play me something. What’s the last thing you were playing?”

“You probably won’t know it… or like it.”

“I don’t care. Just play it, Avery. Take my mind off my shitty life for a minute, would you?” I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant by that but he cut me off. “Don’t. Just play. Please.”

I nodded, sat down on my bed and positioned my guitar on my knee. As I started to strum the chords of ‘With Me’ by Sum 41, I noticed Dan shut his eyes.

I played up until the lyrics began and then stopped, not sure if I should continue on or not. It was only when Dan opened his eyes and said just one word, “Sing”, that I kept going.

“I don't want this moment to ever end; Where everything's nothing without you. I'll wait here forever just to, to see you smile; 'Cause it's true: I am nothing without you,” I sang softly.

I played through the whole song, never once taking my eyes off Dan, who had closed his eyes again and was gently nodding along to the music with a slight smile on his face. He looked so serene as he listened to me sing, and it made me happy to know that it was me who made him look like that.

“…I'll hold on to this moment, you know; 'Cause I'd bleed my heart out to show that I won't let go,” I finished. A few quiet moments later, Dan finally opened his eyes.

“I love that song,” he told me. He caught my eye, holding me in his stare. My heart pounding, I struggled to pull my eyes away from his, but I knew I had to because if I didn’t, I'd probably end up doing something I'd regret – like kiss him.

I finally managed to wrench myself out of his invisible grasp and stood up. “You hate my kind of music,” I commented as I went to put my guitar back on its stand and then sat back down on my bed, trying to avoid eye contact and failing miserably.

“No, I don’t, I just say that to make you mad,” he said, showing me a small smile.

“Why?”

I wanted to know why he always wanted to make me mad. I expected him to act like he didn’t know what my question was referring to, but he surprised me.

“I don’t know, really. I just like to mess with you. You’re an easy target because you show all your emotions on your face so it’s simple to tell when things are getting to you. Like, right now, you’re surprised I’m even answering you. I can read you like a book, Ave.”

I carefully rearranged my face to hopefully show nonchalance, even though my heart had decided to pound out of my chest at the nickname. Fuck’s sake. I didn’t want to like him, but he was making it extremely difficult not to.

“Ah,” was the genius response I was able to come up with.

“Avery! Willow! Are you home?” I suddenly heard my father call from downstairs. Was it six o'clock already? Where had the time gone? I was glad for the interruption, because it had gotten very awkward between me and Dan after his confession.

“Come on,” I muttered to Dan now, as I got up to greet my Dad. I heard Dan get up and follow me downstairs.

“Hi, Avery,” Dad said as I came into view. “And hi, Dan.”

“Hey, Brad, how’s it going?” Dan said easily.

“Good, good. And yourself? That looks like a nasty bruise.”

“Yeah, but it’s fine. Doesn’t hurt much,” Dan lied. I frowned at his words and Dan's eyes shifted briefly to me, knowing that I knew he was lying through his teeth. What was with him and lying about it all the time?

“Okay then,” Dad said, noticing the slight tension. “Avery, your mum called me and said Mr Kingsley asked her to stay back another hour, so I’m going to cook up some sausages and mash for when she gets home. Does Dan want to stay for dinner?”

“Dan would love to,” Dan answered for me before I could even open my mouth.

“But don’t you have to…” I started to protest but he cut me off.

“Nope. I have nothing on. I’d love to stay, thanks Brad.”

“Fine,” I whispered to myself.

~

Dinner wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Dad's sausages and mash were delicious as usual (I wasn’t concerned about that aspect of it), but I was surprised that it wasn’t more awkward. Dan sat beside me, which was unusual, because he always sat across from me during our family Christmas dinners so that he could kick me in the shins to his heart's content. The issue was that it's not a big table, so we had to sit very close together. Our thighs occasionally touched when one of us moved and I had to fight to not have any sort of reaction even though it felt like lightning bolts had shot through me. Memories of my dream also kept popping up in my head, which did not help with my composure.

My brother got home around the same time as Mum, so he was also there, sitting across from me and Dan. When Dan had turned to chat to my mother about something, Jamie looked at me with raised eyebrows and mouthed 'what the fuck?', before nodding in Dan's direction.

I just shrugged in reply, because honestly, I had no idea. I couldn’t figure out what Dan's angle was. Was he really just avoiding home, or was this something else entirely? Some other way to mess with me? Lure me into some sense of security before attacking and revealing my darkest secret? He had been so different the last couple of days since I'd had that panic attack at school. It was unsettling. I had to find out what he was doing one way or another and so I was determined to talk to him – really make him talk – as soon as dinner was over.

All of that flew right out the window when we went back to my room and Dan immediately switched on my X-Box, inserted a game and grabbed the two Guitar Hero guitars that were leaning against the wall near my tv. He took his injured arm out of the sling and left the piece of fabric hanging loosely around his neck.

"Bet you're not as good on one of these as you are on the real one," he said with a smirk, holding one of the controllers out to me.

I'm not one to pass up a challenge so of course I conceded to play a few rounds, which turned into at least fifteen rounds. We played until we had both shouted and swore ourselves hoarse and our fingers were aching, finally giving it up for the evening at around 10:30.

While I busied myself with switching off the tv and X-Box, I thought about how I was going to bring up the conversation I wanted to have with Dan, but by the time I had finished (I took much longer than necessary), I turned around and saw that Dan had spread himself out on my bed and was lying there with his eyes closed, breathing deeply.

At first, I thought he was just messing around.

"Hey! Get up," I said as loudly as I dared. I knew my parents and sister would be getting ready for bed by now. I was actually surprised that nobody had come into my room and told Dan and me to stop playing the X-Box so loudly. “Dan!”

I moved closer to the bed and nudged his shoulder.

“Mmh, shut up,” he mumbled sleepily, not opening his eyes.

“You have to go home,” I insisted, shoving his shoulder a little rougher. He lazily batted my hand away. “It’s late. Won’t your parents be worried?” Dan just ignored me. “Dan!”

I briefly considered yanking the pillow he was sleeping on out from under his head and hitting him with it, but after spending a few moments watching him and hearing his breathing start to even out, I decided to just let it go and let him stay in my room. I knew I’d probably regret it in the morning, but I didn’t mind too much, being as tired as I was at 10:30 at night. Well, I didn’t mind too much until I realised that Dan was taking up my entire bed.

“Where the hell am I supposed to sleep now?” I asked out loud even though I knew Dan was clearly asleep.

I had a couple of options. I could go downstairs and sleep on the couch (that thing is as hard as a rock and I’m pretty sure Jamie’s had sex on it at least once), I could sleep on my bedroom floor (the timber floorboards are only slightly less comfortable than the couch) or I could suck it up and sleep next to Dan and pray that he won’t beat the shit out of me the next morning when he finds out we shared a bed.

I considered my options for a few minutes, until I finally made my decision. It was my bed and I had every right to sleep on it, so that’s what I was going to do and Dan could just deal with it.

As gently as I could, I tried to roll Dan over so that he wasn’t sleeping in the middle of the bed but it didn’t work out too well. It seemed that even in his sleep, he was determined to have his own way. I rolled my eyes and pushed a little bit harder, and was finally able to move him over, just enough to give me room to lie down. I made myself as small as possible so that we weren’t touching in any way, and shut my eyes tightly, hoping that just for one night, I could sleep without having a nightmare.

It took me a while to fall asleep, but once I did, I dreamed I was at school eating lunch with my friends, including Holly. We had a giant gummy pizza in the middle of our circle and everyone was trying to decide how we were meant to eat it, because it wasn’t cut. Hansel suggested that we all just rip chunks from it and eat it that way but Taylor was saying that we should borrow some scissors from the art room and cut it into pieces. Everyone was shouting at each about how we should go about dividing the pizza and it was total chaos, until Dan randomly turned up and said “how about you use a pizza cutter you fucking morons?” before pulling one out of his pocket. He cut the pizza into even slices, put the cutter back in his pocket, kissed Holly on the cheek, kissed me on the mouth and then disappeared in a literal puff of smoke.

I woke up just as we were all reaching for the pizza, utterly confused but also very warm. It was only when I tried to move that I realised Dan’s good arm was draped over my body and his hand was gently brushing my bare stomach since my shirt apparently rode up during the night.

“Oh fuck,” I whispered to myself. This was not good. If Dan woke up with us both in this position, I’d never hear the end of it. I tried to wriggle out of his grasp without waking him up, but it wasn’t long before he let out a quiet moan which let me know that I’d failed my mission.

I held my breath as I waited for him to realise what he was doing, but the shout of surprise and anger never came. Instead, Dan just sighed softly and his quiet snores started up again. I let out my breath and tried again to get off the bed.

This time, just as I was about to pull free, Dan’s arm tightened around me, pinning me to his body.
He mumbled something under his breath that made my heart stop. Of course, I couldn’t be 100% sure, but whatever Dan said, it sure sounded like my name, followed by “don’t leave me”.

Whether that was what Dan had actually said or not, I respected his wishes and finally let myself relax and fall back to sleep in the arms of this ridiculously confusing, disturbingly attractive individual.