In our brand new series — Love Island Singapore — Mothership brings you on an exploration of different aspects of love as it is expressed and felt by folks on our sunny island.

You will find authentic anecdotes of love and relationships, as told to our writers by Singaporeans.

This month, in the third story of our series, we bring you a story of collateral damage.

It was going to be a long night for Benny.

The night before, the middle-aged Grab driver had started a shift late in the afternoon, hoping that he could get enough rides to knock-off at the relatively early time of 1am.

Instead, he drove around, largely fruitlessly, until 3am in the morning before deciding to throw in the towel.

Now, it was Friday evening, and hopefully that meant there would be more people out and about, using ride-hailing apps to get to their dinners or after-work drinks.

Regardless, Benny knew he would likely be pulling another long shift to make up for yesterday’s lacklustre takings.

He’d just turned the corner in a very upper middle class East Coast neighbourhood, and soon found himself waiting outside a semi-detached house.

These rich people don’t care about the charges for making the driver wait, he thought to himself.

“Good for me I guess,” Benny muttered under his breath as he adjusted his fingerless bicycle-cum-driving gloves.

At that moment, a young couple — maybe somewhere in their mid-twenties — came bounding out of the house.

“Sorry for the wait,” said the man.

“Holland Grove ah?”

“Yep.”

Off they went.

He’d moved a few hundred metres away from the pick-up point when Benny noticed a weird tension in the air.

More often than not, passengers who came in pairs fell into one of two categories: either they were chatters who continued whatever conversation had been interrupted while boarding the car, or they were scrollers — both looking at their phones most of the time, peeling their eyes off their respective screens only to show their companion something funny.

This couple was neither.

Benny could see from his glances at the review mirror that they sat in a rather awkward silence, both staring out the windows on either side of the back seat.

Benny turned the volume of his radio up slightly; whatever bad vibes were stewing in the back seat of his rented Honda Vezel would be buffered by the sounds of classic hits from the early 2000s.

“I just want you to know, I won’t be drinking tonight,” the man's voice broke the icy silence.

Without looking, Benny could sense the eyes of the woman roll into the back of her head.

“You’re always like this when we meet my friends,” she huffed.

“It’s not your friends, I’m just more into healthy stuff now,” countered the man, in a tone that even Benny found annoyingly patronising.

Oh, thought Benny to himself, this pair fell into the rarely-encountered third category of passengers — arguers.

Stopped at a traffic light, the driver fiddled awkwardly with his gear stick as the pair continued to slide barbed exchanges that were heavy with insinuation.

The dispute seemed to be heating up.

As the Vezel accelerated and raced down the highway, the couple’s volume and tone hurtled towards a full blown quarrel.

By the time the car was back on regular roads, Benny had gleaned that, among other things, the woman was upset because the man had "conveniently" lost his appetite for alcoholic beverages when just a week prior — at a gathering with his friends, she added pointedly — he was guzzling them like a teen who had just turned 18.

The man, on the other hand, seemed incensed that he couldn’t make these kinds of decisions for himself.

Both grievances might have seemed reasonable in isolation, but when foisted upon each other, gave way to bullheadedness, with neither party willing to see the coherence in the other’s logic.

Perhaps they could’ve come to some kind of compromise, if not for the quickly shifting lines of attack.

Before Benny could navigate the short distance between one traffic junction and the next, the man had moved on from talking about his newfound healthy habits, and emphatically declared that the last few times they’d hung out with this particular group of friends, the night had ended in rather unfavourable conditions, leading to an uncomfortable aftermath.

The aftermath was not pretty.

“You know how it always goes, they’ll just keep making me drink. They never take no for an answer and then my whole weekend is wrecked because I’ll feel hungover,” he said, gesturing forcefully with his hands.

That must be an exaggeration, Benny thought. Hungover for the whole weekend?

He signalled left, and shifted lanes.

“Just know your limit and stop there,” replied the woman, matching the man’s tone.

“Yeah I know my limit,” the man retorted with finality. “And tonight, the limit is zero drinks.”

A silence fell over the Vezel again. Except it was so abrupt it almost felt like the couple had vanished entirely.

Even the radio seemed to be muted by the sudden pause in the debate.

Benny glanced up at his rear-view mirror — just to make sure the man and the woman hadn’t thrown themselves from the fast moving vehicle — and inadvertently caught the gaze of the man.

If a split second of eye contact could communicate anything, this moment of optical coincidence said, “I’m sorry, bro.”

From the man: “I’m sorry to put you in this awkward position, bro.”

From Benny: “I’m sorry I have to be in this awkward position, bro.”

Averting his gaze, Benny hunted for something else to look at and settled on his fuel gauge, making a mental note to visit the petrol station right after dropping the embattled couple.

In the meantime, Benny pondered if he preferred the deafening silence or the squawking of the squabble.

“Just over here is fine,” the man finally said as the Vezel rolled down Holland Grove.

It wasn’t until he heard the thud of the car’s doors shutting firmly that Benny felt a palpable relief.

He threw his head back and adjusted his fingerless gloves before marking the ride as complete on his app.

It was going to be a long night for Benny.

This was the third story in our series Love Island Singapore. Read the first story — on the feeling of relief while navigating the initial stages of online dating — here.

Our second story features 12 moments Singaporeans said "thanks, but no thanks". It can be read here.

If you have a story about the annoying things your partner does that you have to put up with, write in to us at [email protected] with the subject line “Love Island Singapore”.

Top image made from a photo by Chris Slupski via Unsplash