Free Crazy Little Thing by Saxon Bennett, Layce Gardner Page A

was the same look
she had worn when she had thrown Ollie’s stuff out the door and into the
driveway.
    “Well, I haven’t forgotten it either!” Claire
responded in a peevish drunk voice that Ollie had never heard her use before.
There were some people that should never Bruce and drink. Obviously Claire was
one of them.
    “Claire, you’re drunk. You don’t know what you’re
saying,” Ollie said. “You’re making a fool of yourself!” She was trying to
sound reasonable and self-assured, but instead her words came out sounding
whiny. She was sounding more and more like Scarlet every day.
    By now the Furries were all quiet and watching the
drama unfold. “I love lesbian drama!” Ollie heard somebody say. The Furries
swiveled their heads back and forth in unison between Ollie and Claire like
they were the crowd at Wimbeldon.
    “You know what she did?” Claire shouted at the
crowd.
    The crowd shook their heads.
    Claire continued, “She drained my pool. I paid
twenty grand to have a liver-shaped pool put in my backyard and she drained all
the water out of it!”
    “In my defense,” Ollie shouted from her position on
the diving board, “It was winter. Nobody was swimming including you because you
can’t swim. And I needed a place to skateboard.”
    “I came home from work and found her and her homies skateboarding in a dry pool! But you want to know the worst part?”
    “Claire, don’t do this, please!” Ollie shouted.
“Don’t air our dirty laundry in public!”
    Claire ignored Ollie and asked the crowd again, “You
want to know the worst part?”
    “Yes, we do!” a big polka-dotted blue dog yelled.
“We are totally invested in the story.”
    “The worst part was that she not only drained the
pool, but she siphoned all the water into the basement of my 1929 Arts and
Crafts bungalow, which I had lovingly restored to its original pristine
condition!”
    “No!” the shaggy dog yelled.
    “Yes! Can you believe it?” Claire said. “She
overflowed the basement and flooded the entire house.”
    “I was trying to
conserve water! I was going to put the water back!” Ollie yelled.
    “It completely
knocked my house off its foundation! It was ruined!” Claire continued.
    Ollie had had enough. It was one thing to berate her
privately, but to do it public? There was a part of her that knew Claire was
drunk and Bruced-up, but that didn’t mean it excused her from making a
spectacle of their relationship. It pissed her off. And that’s why she shouted,
“That’s not why you kicked me out and you know it!”
    Claire squinted at Ollie. “Oh, yeah?”
    “Yeah!” Ollie retorted. “That was an excuse. The
real reason you kicked me out of your house and your life was because you were
too… too… frigid!”
    The crowd collectively gasped.
    Ollie continued, “You hated me because I could have
fun. You’ve never had fun in your life! You couldn’t even have fun in
Disneyland! And that’s the happiest place on earth!”
    The crowd gasped again.
    “I hate Disneyland! The lines are too long! And just
when you think you’re at the front of the line, you find out it curves again
and you have two more hours to wait!” Claire exclaimed.
    “See, what did I tell you? You are the most unhappy,
bitchiest, most controlling person in the world!” Ollie said. “And to tell you
the truth, I flooded your house so you would kick me out and I wouldn’t have to
live with you any longer!”
    The crowd gasped yet again.
    Claire’s eyes were wide and unblinking. The stare
down between Ollie and Claire was broken by the Skunk shouting, “You are kind
of bitchy, Claire.”
    “Fuck you!” Claire said, directing all her pent-up
anger, anxiety and allergies at the Skunk. “What do you know? You just lift
your tail and spray stink all over everyone! Nobody likes you! Nobody!”
    “Take that back!” the Skunk yelled, pointing a paw
at Claire.
    Claire jumped off the chair. The crowd parted giving
Claire a three-foot