by Ashton Johns
So, there I was, trying to compose a letter for her. I figured that was the best way to approach her to start with. I also figured it was the best way to keep my balls intact. Not that I didn’t think I deserved to lose them—I did, and I would’ve been happy to give her a shot at them if it meant she forgave me. But if I knew Daisy, and I thought I did, she would be embarrassed and heartbroken, and she would need time to digest everything before making a decision. At least she might read a letter. Yeah, she might well burn it or rip it up as soon as she realized it was from me, but it was worth a try. And, if a letter didn’t work then I’d have to risk my balls.
On what seemed like my millionth attempt, I was satisfied.
Hi Daisy,
I LOVE YOU.
Pretty out there, hey, and not really how I wanted to tell you, but I need you to know the truth of my heart. I also wanted you to see those words before you destroy this letter because I’m pretty sure that you will.
I have so much to tell you about what’s happened since I left the show, but all that can wait until I see you, and God I can’t wait to see you. Thinking about seeing you again was all that kept me going for those last few weeks, so please agree to that.
I know I appeared to treat you badly. Shit, I did treat you badly, but there was a reason. Apart from I love you, there’s something else that I wanted to tell you face to face, but I’m not sure I’ll have the chance to. In case I don’t I need you to know I did what I did because of Meredith. No big surprise I’m sure.
She filmed us making love and was threatening to leak it to the media if I didn’t kick you out and I stayed until the end. If it was just me, well, I wouldn’t have given a shit, but I couldn’t let her do that to you. You are too special, too sweet and too pure to be touted to the highest bidder. I only saw a snippet of what she’d filmed, but there was no doubt it was us – you and me – making love on that bed. That was the best night of my life, and I would not have it tainted by her and her poison. I hope you can see, I had to do as she asked, and I had no choice but to do it the way I did.
I felt like my heart was breaking but I knew if I’d looked at you, I would have crumbled. I would have come running after you and dragged you into my arms, but I couldn’t risk that tape getting out. The day you left was one of the hardest of my life. I loved you—do love you—so damn much and knowing I’d hurt you caused me more pain than you’ll ever realize. You didn’t deserve any of it and I’d been wrong and selfish to insist you go into that mansion with me. The problem is, Dais’, if I had my time again, I’d still ask you. You were the one thing that kept me sane in there. The only brightness in a sea of lies and deceit. My reason for getting out of bed each day. The one thing I would change though, is standing up to Meredith. You are the most precious thing in my life, and she made me hurt you. I was a coward to let her get away with it because if nothing else I owe you my life.
The show may have provided me with some future security but it’s nothing to what you did for me, even before then. You saw me for the human being that I was, not the dirty, smelly homeless guy who fucked his life up. Every day that you settled that beautiful sunshine smile on me, I came back to life a little more and gained a little more pride. You see, Daisy, you took my heart but gave me so much more in return.
While I wish I’d done things differently, you should also know that I was trying to protect Clint too. Meredith pinned the video on him, doctoring up some footage of him delivering my backpack to my room to make it look as though he’d planted the camera. So, you see, if I had walked, not only would you have been crucified but him, too. He’s a good man and he didn’t deserve that.
As for Clint, well he and I are good now, but I can’t say he liked me too much before I was able to tell him the truth. What happened when he dropped you home killed him, and he made sure I knew what a douchebag he thought I was. I don’t blame him for one minute, but I hope you know that in all of this you are the one person I could never intentionally hurt. I know I’ve already said it, but I am so sorry, baby. If I ever get the opportunity, I’ll also apologize to your dad for him having to go through the pain of seeing his daughter so broken. I swear that I will never make you feel that sad ever again. I will do everything in my power to make you feel happy, secure and loved. I want to make a life with you, love you, have a family with you, because I know that you are my ‘it’, my forever, if you’ll just forgive me and understand why I did what I did.
I also need you to know that nothing happened between me and any of the other girls. I believe Honey has an interview coming out in the National Enquirer about our ‘nights of passion’. I swear down on Brody’s life and my mother’s grave, there were no nights of passion. The first night that I picked her, the night you left, I locked myself in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out until morning. She wasn’t happy, particularly as she had to pee in a vase that was on my dresser. Whenever I picked her after that, because Meredith insisted I did, the tub was my bed. As for Jess and me, well I admit we did kiss that first time, but it was like kissing my sister and we agreed we just weren’t compatible. Thing was, even that early on I couldn’t get my mind off you. I told her how I felt about you and she was happy just to have the publicity for her acting career. Any other girl I picked while you were gone, well, they also knew straight from the off nothing was happening. Not sure they were very happy about it, but I didn’t care, all I cared about, all I could think about was getting back to you and explaining everything.
Please believe me when I tell you that everything that I said to you during our night, everything I did was real, baby, I swear. I love you so very much because, not only are you beautiful, sexy, and sweet and have more smarts than anyone I know, you’re also the kindest and most loyal person I’ve ever met. My mom would have loved you, just as much as I do – I just know it.
Someone has told me that I should look on the show as a positive, and at first, I found that hard to do. But now, I realize what they mean. That show gave me you, and even if you don’t forgive me and never want to set eyes on me again, at least I met you.
I was on the path I was meant to be on, and on that path, I had you for one perfect night in time.
Love with all my heart, always,
Kade (oh, and Brody sends his love, too)
xxx
Forty-Seven
Daisy Ingles
The plane journey home from London wasn’t the best. There I go again, trying to kid myself. It was awful. I watched that little plane graphic on the in-seat TV screen eat up the miles on the map and felt sicker the closer we got. I’d been able to hide in Europe. All of my troubles seemed so far away and unreal, like it had all been someone else’s life, but now that avoidance tactic was coming to an end and it was all rearing its ugly head again.
I never expected to go on my parent’s trip, but they insisted. After arriving home in such a mess, it was clear I needed to be honest with them. I started with how I still volunteered at the shelter and only started working at the network to save up money to help pay for Mom’s ongoing medication. When I finished with all the gory details of how Kade had betrayed me less than twenty-four hours after giving him my body, heart and soul, they were as distraught as I was.
If I think back to that conversation, we were all in tears, but I’d never seen my dad so angry. I could lie and say the blame lay at Meredith’s door, or even Kade’s, but he was angry with me. I’d kept all of this from them. I’d put myself through the whole thing to buy them a life-enriching trip because he no longer could. Watching my pop walk out of our tiny apartment for his own sanity was as hard as watching Kade deceive me. While my pop calmed down, Mom consoled me and tried to soothe some of the heartache I’d been feeling.
Pop was in a much better mindset when he returned, but his one stipulation about the money from my time at the mansion was that we used some to take a family trip. Not the full three-month tour of Europe that they’d always dreamed of but enough time away for us all to forget our cra
p for a while. He insisted that because I’d gone through so much pain to make life easier for them, the least I could do was share a vacation with them. I didn’t feel like going. I felt like crawling under a rock and never talking to another human again, but after thinking it over, I knew time and distance were the only things that were going to help me.
The following morning, with a vow to never switch the TV on again, I helped Pop to arrange the trip, staying focused on the positives. I’d been through hell, but not as much hell as my mom and pop. I’d been let down, humiliated and had my heart shredded, but I’d done what I’d set out to do—make life a little easier for my parents.
It was easy to avoid the aftermath of the show as we were boarding a plane when the episodes were being aired on a delayed schedule. I tried to be insignificant on the show and I sincerely hoped I was just as insignificant when I got home. Everyone would be focusing on Kade and his final pick. They’d be following them around and hounding them for the next six months, trying to see if it was working out and Kade the millionaire had really found his true love.
As I floated round the Louvre in Paris, St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome I was completely enchanted with the history and experience. When we moved onto Venice and the three of us took a gondola ride on the Grand Canal, the realization of how deep my feelings were for Kade started to fight through. I was in one of the most romantic places in the world, and I was sitting in a traditional Venetian boat with my mom and pop. We passed couples in love, who were being serenaded and were so bewitched with each other that the scenery and architecture didn’t even register with them.
My parents did their best to distract me, and it was when we were in Spain that it all hit me like a freight train. Pop and I had walked up the thousands of steps to the top of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Mom was too tired and stayed at the bottom to people watch and have a cool drink, and because the queues were so big, our progress was slow. We’d been inside for hours, trudging up and down the stone steps, and we were tired, so I designated the rest of the day a beach day. Sitting on a towel on the sandy city beach of Port Vell, I realized I was wearing one of the bathing suits that Lydia had chosen for me. It was red and sexy but reminded me of the day when Honey had written on Kade in lipstick. As I was trying to push the memory to the back of my mind, a guy ran past me with a dog at his heels and he looked like Kade. The fluttering of my heart worried me. It confirmed I wasn’t over him and that no matter how much time and distance I put between us I would probably always be in love with him.
I just had to figure out how to move on and live with that. Kade was with someone else now, and I couldn’t afford for that experience to jade my love life forever. Kade may have hurt me but I wasn’t prepared for it to turn me into a lonely spinster. I knew I was always gun shy when it came to matters of the heart, and if nothing else, my heart’s mangling in the mansion had taught me to be more cautious in the future. I needed to move on and accept life didn’t always turn out the way you wanted it to.
We finished our tour of Europe in the UK—a few nights in London and it was there where I came across my first real information on I Wanna Get Laid by Kade. I caught the tail end of E! News Weekly and saw a report confirming that Meredith had indeed got the award she had been coveting. Her success in the mansion with Kade and the twist in the tale of him being homeless had captured a level of praise that even she wasn’t expecting. That vicious creature was being hailed as some reality TV queen. I saw the moment she strutted down the aisle, accepting false praise from the industry vultures, barely remembering there was a team of people also responsible. Carson and Lydia stood behind her during her acceptance speech, as she swung an award round, just so everyone could see it again and again, and thanked everyone apart from Kade and the girls who had been duped into her manic plan.
What a fudging cow.
As I dragged my frustrated butt off the bed in my hotel room to poke in rage at the TV’s power button, I saw the footage switch to their roving reporter outside the theatre. She was all glammed up but pouting in disappointment that the two main stars, Jess and Kade, weren’t in attendance. She finished her live broadcast by saying that there were unconfirmed rumors that Kade and his selected female finalist were exploring the possibility of how to get to know each other better under the media spotlight. She then surmised, with a wink and heavy look of insinuation, that they were probably enjoying each other’s company somewhere right then.
Ugh! I needed to sort myself out sooner rather than later.
When we landed back on home soil, I did everything possible to see it as a new beginning, forcing a positive mental attitude, forcing my brain to focus on overriding any thoughts of anything remotely Kade-like. My parents had had the most wonderful time, and seeing them appreciate life, each other and fall in love all over again against the backdrop of a fountain in Rome made my suffering worth it.
The taxi dropped us off at my apartment in the early hours of the morning. Doris, my elderly neighbor, had been in to open a few windows and leave fresh bread and milk, so the only thing we needed to do was fall through the door and collapse into bed. As I shoved through the door with a smile, I was welcomed by a mountain of mail. There was so much that it was impossible to fully open the door and fit through with my luggage.
“Would you look at all that?” my mom said, surprised.
I had to agree with her. I’d never had that much mail. It looked like two years’ worth had been dumped at once.
We put the jug on for fresh coffee and I slumped in a chair, taking in the familiar homely surroundings and scent. Mom and Pop had gone to freshen up, so I opened one of the many letters. It was from a TV network, asking me to appear on their daily talk show. Um… not a chance in hell! That piece of paper was quickly dumped on the floor. The next letter was from a magazine asking for an exclusive; that joined the other one heading for the trash. I opened another two in a similar vein, and the next one was almost like fan mail, which felt uncomfortable.
When I reached the next envelope, I opened it expecting to scan read it and trash it, but the words ‘Hi Daisy, I love You,’ hit me. In an effort to try to decide whether it was a crank letter or not, I flipped the pages over, seeing Kade and Brody’s names at the end. They stopped my heart the same way it had when I first realized I was in love with him.
I couldn’t read that now.
My hands were shaking so much I wasn’t sure I could read it ever.
Chucking the letter on the pile with the others like it had burned my hands, I ran for my bedroom and shut the door. As if the barrier of a door could make it all go away, I decided to stay there and hide, possibly forever.
Forever lasted for about three hours. Blame sleeplessness blame the long plane journey or even jet lag, but the fact of the matter was, I wanted to know what the fudge was in that letter. I wanted to dissect every word and grasp the underlying meaning so I could torture myself some more.
In the darkness of the night, I pulled my big girl panties up and tiptoed to the piece of paper that was going to send me spiraling back into heartbreak. Without flipping on a light to alert the world to my apparent obsession with dismal emotions, I reached my lounge. Sitting in the chair, I braced myself to confront it only to peer over the side and find the pile gone. Leaning my hand over the arm of the chair and flapping it around like a duck’s webbed foot trying to gain traction in the water, I felt nothing. In despair, I knelt on the floor and crawled around and around looking for the pile of mail. On my fourth circuit of the room on my hands and knees, the room was suddenly flooded with light.
“Mom, what the heck?” I complained, shielding my sensitive eyes.
“Oh Lord above. Robert! Go back to bed. It’s just Daisy.”
My pop appeared then. “I told you to wait for me. What if it had been someone breaking in?”
“Nonsense,” she shushed him. “What’s going on Daisy? Why are you crawling round the floor at this ungodly hour?”
“I was, uh�
� um… looking for my mail. I think there was a work letter in there I needed.”
“Oh dear, I’m sorry, love. I dumped that lot in the trash chute before I went to bed. Now, who’s for a cup of cocoa?”
Cocoa… Cocoa? I couldn’t drink fudging cocoa. I felt sick. She may as well have dumped my heart in the chute with that letter. Now I’d never know what he meant to say to me.
Forty-Eight
Daisy Ingles
“You okay, sweetheart?” my mom asked me.
The three of us were sitting at the little table in my kitchen enjoying a multicultural breakfast. Mom had gone all out. Pop was quite happily enjoying eggs sunny side up with some almost burned and crispy bacon like the British, mom was enjoying a croque monsieur, a lovely French toasted cheese and ham sandwich she’d tripped across in France, and I was wrestling with a coffee. Just a solitary, uneventful and much needed coffee, like a typical American.
