One Hundred Proposals

by Holly Martin

  ‘I was trying to do something nice…’

  ‘You were trying to get rid of me.’

  ‘No, that wasn’t it at all.’

  ‘I’ve served my purpose, haven’t I? I held you after your brother died, stood by you through the worst moments of your life, and now that’s behind you and you’re looking to the future – one that doesn’t involve me.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand…’

  He shifted me off his lap and walked to the exit. I stared after him for a moment then got up and ran after him, but I was too late. I saw the lift doors close between us and he was gone.

  *

  I had waited for ages in our hotel room, but Harry hadn’t come back. I had phoned and texted him but he hadn’t answered. In the end, hunger called me down to the restaurant.

  As I walked in, I saw Harry with Chloe. He looked absolutely devastated. Blood turned to ice in my veins. This wasn’t to do with the job. This was something far worse. The worst case scenarios ran through my mind. Something had happened to Badger. Or his sister or nephew? I ran towards him, ignoring that Chloe was holding his hand and trying to comfort him.

  ‘What is it, what’s happened?’

  Harry stared at me, but his eyes were cold. ‘Nothing for you to worry about.’ He downed the rest of his drink in one. ‘I’m going to bed, Chloe are you coming?’

  ‘In a moment,’ Chloe said, gesturing to her unfinished drink.

  Harry stood, towering over me. His eyes softened as he looked down at me. He reached out a hand towards my face then changed his mind and walked away.

  I slid into his empty chair opposite Chloe. ‘What’s happened?’

  She watched me carefully as she swirled her drink. All her enthusiasm and giddiness had now gone. ‘Do you know anything about his past?’

  ‘No. Do you?’

  She nodded.

  My heart sank. ‘He won’t tell me anything.’

  I rubbed the pain in my chest. I was gutted that he could share that part of his life with Chloe but not with me.

  ‘I thought something terrible had just happened.’

  Chloe sat staring at me. ‘You care about him?’

  ‘Yes, a great deal. He’s my best friend.’

  ‘You’re in love with him?’

  I was not ready for such a direct attack and had no words with which to defend myself. Literally no words at all.

  She rubbed her eyes and sighed. ‘What were you thinking when you got him this job?’

  I felt like a naughty child sat in front of the headmistress. ‘I wanted to do something nice for him. He talks about New York with such love, I thought… I wanted to make him happy.’

  ‘And he seems miserable at home, does he?’

  Harry, the Harry before all this aggro that I had foisted on him with my jealousy and terrible ideas, was a happy man – always walking round with a smile, always finding the humour in everything. I had never seen him sad or angry or stressed, he was the happiest person I knew. I thought back to what he said in Mexico, that life was perfect. Had I really ruined all that for him? I didn’t understand how this could be a bad thing and how what happened in his past could affect it.

  I stood up. ‘I have to talk to him.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to talk to you right now.’

  I looked at her. Was it her that was driving this wedge between us? Did she have designs on him herself?

  ‘Do you love him?’

  She stared at me for a moment. ‘No, I don’t love him like that, but I love him like a brother and I won’t see him hurt.’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt him either, but I need to talk to him. I made this mess, so I can clear it up.’

  She sighed. ‘I’ll get another drink in then. But if I go up to the room and find him in a worse state than he is now, you and I are going to have words.’

  I nodded and hurried back upstairs.

  To my surprise, Harry was waiting for me outside my room.

  ‘Harry… Look…’

  ‘I need my stuff.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re flying to Quebec tomorrow, I’m staying here for this interview. I need my stuff.’

  ‘Now hang on a minute…’ I realised I was shouting as an elderly couple walked past, the woman shaking her head with disapproval.

  I shoved the key card in the door and gestured for Harry to come in and then closed the door behind him.

  ‘I was going to change the flights, thought we could stay here a few more days and then go to Quebec together, but if this whole job thing is upsetting you that much then I’ll cancel it.’

  Harry shook his head and grabbed a few of his things and stuffed them into his suitcase.

  ‘Why are you being such an ass over this?’ I marvelled at my attempt to make things right. I was shouting at him and calling him an ass.

  He rounded on me. ‘Why am I being an ass? You’ve messed up my perfectly perfect little life with this bombshell.’

  ‘How is your life perfect? You cancelled your dream job in your favourite place in the whole world to be with a woman that doesn’t love you. You earn pittance in a job that completely wastes all your talent and experience, you move from one woman to the next, never letting yourself fall in love because you might get hurt.’

  He looked wounded. I was making it worse, a lot worse.

  I deliberately softened my voice. ‘Tell me why you’re so upset by this?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Tell me what happened when you were a child.’

  ‘No.’ He zipped up his suitcase.

  ‘You have to give me something here, something, anything to show that our friendship means as much to you as it does to me. You have been there for me every single day since Jack was diagnosed. Let me be there for you.’

  He shook his head stubbornly, not even tempted for one second to share his life with me.

  Pain lurched inside my heart. ‘Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? Chloe, Badger, even Jules knows what happened to you and I know nothing. I’m supposed to be your best friend, you said you trusted me completely but you won’t trust me with this. That hurts me so much.’

  He stared at me. ‘It’s in the past.’

  ‘Not if it’s stopping you moving on, not when you have such a reaction to me trying to do something nice for you.’

  ‘Let’s look at your reaction to me doing something nice for you. I’m doing all these perfect proposals, taking you around the world and yesterday you flip out over it. Somehow, I’ve upset you too. Want to tell me about that?’

  I stared at him and he stared back.

  I deftly changed the subject. ‘This woman you fell in love with, did she know about your past, did you tell her?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t affect her.’

  ‘It does, why can’t you see that? No woman is going to give themselves to you completely, give you their whole heart unless you can trust them with who you are. Your past is a huge part of that. What did she say to you when you told her you were in love with her?’

  For the first time his anger gave way to embarrassment. ‘I never told her.’

  I felt my mouth fall open, and my heart bled for him. I took a step towards him. ‘How do you know she didn’t feel the same way?’

  ‘She never said…’

  ‘Oh Harry, no woman is going to walk down the aisle with you and spend the rest of their life with you unless you tell them you love them. You can show them with nice gestures and your actions, I mean you’re full of them, you’re the kindest, most generous person I know, but the woman needs to hear the words.’

  ‘I’d tell her, if she told me first.’

  ‘When there’s absolutely no risk of you being rejected, when the woman has already made her feelings known?’ Something in his face said I had hit the nail right on the head. ‘It doesn’t work like that. I know this is the twenty-first century, women are equal partners in a relationship, but we still want to know that our men will fight for
us, be brave enough to declare their feelings. We want to know that the love our man feels for us is an all-consuming, shout-it-from-the-rooftops kind of love, not just an ‘I love you too’ kind.’

  He rubbed his hand over his hair, refusing to look at me as he stared at the ground.

  ‘You’re a beautiful person, inside and out. Why do you feel you have so little to offer someone? Why are you so scared of rejection?’

  His head whipped up and I knew this was totally the wrong thing to say. ‘I’m not scared of rejection. I’ve never let anyone get close enough to hurt me. Apart from you.’ I opened my mouth to protest but Harry wasn’t finished. ‘Maybe time apart will be a good thing. It will give you time to think about what you really want from me.’

  I swallowed the huge burning ball of pain in my throat. I couldn’t bear the thought of being away from him. I searched for the words, anything I could say to make this right, but I had nothing.

  He picked up his suitcase and walked out.

  *

  I sat on the plane, staring at New York City as it disappeared beneath the clouds. The lump in my throat was so big I could hardly breathe.

  I was alone. Though it wasn’t that that bothered me. Somewhere, underneath the grief, I was quite excited about seeing Canada on my own, discovering its delights and hidden secrets with fresh eyes rather than accompanying someone who had seen it all before. But losing Harry, being apart from Harry for the first time properly in over two years, was like a knife to the chest.

  Pathetic as it was, I missed him already.

  ‘Hi,’ said an American voice next to me. I tore my eyes from the tiny skyscrapers to look round at the tall dark haired lady that was standing over me. She had ice blue eyes that stared unblinking at my face.

  I cleared my throat of the lump that was lodged there. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Mind if I sit here?’ She gestured to the empty seat. ‘I have a snorer next to me, and he’s just snuggled up to my shoulder and started dribbling. It might only be an hour and a half flight to Quebec but in my mind that’s an hour and a half too many to put up with snoring and dribbling.’

  I smiled and nodded. She threw herself down next to me.

  ‘I’m Francine, by the way.’ She stuck out her hand and I groaned inwardly that I wouldn’t be allowed to wallow in my own self-pity for the next few hours, Francine was obviously a talker.

  ‘Suzie.’ I shook her hand, it was a surprisingly firm handshake.

  ‘Why the long face?’

  Wow. Cut to the chase straight away.

  ‘Did you break up with your boyfriend?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Know what that feels like. I‘m trying to give myself some space from my boyfriend for a few days. He’s driving me mad and it’s great to get away to give yourself a bit of perspective. Do I really want to be with this man for the rest of my life? If I miss him, then I guess the answer is yes. If I enjoy myself more alone than when I’m with him, then it’s time he packed his bags and left.’

  She shrugged so casually. She clearly didn’t need a man to complete her, whereas Harry was the other half of my heart.

  I stared at her, willing myself to be as strong as she was.

  This time away from Harry would be a good thing. It meant I could finally get over him. I couldn’t do that when I was with him every day and he was always doing lovely and sweet things for me.

  ‘What’s the problem with you and your man?’ I asked, keen to get some perspective.

  ‘He wants to marry me.’ She shrugged again.

  ‘And you don’t want to?’

  ‘Urgh, I don’t know. One man for the rest of my life. One! Waking up every day to see the same ugly face in bed with you, being screwed in the same mundane way. Having Mexican for dinner every Thursday, pizza every Friday, I can’t bear the thought.’

  I thought about this. What it would be like to spend twenty-four hours a day with Harry, to wake up with him, with his arms wrapped tightly round me as I had done several times since Jack had died, to work with him, to go out and socialise with him. There was absolutely nothing bad about this thought. I could do that every day, all day for the rest of my life. We had practically been married for the last few months anyway. Harry even had clothes and a toothbrush at my house, it was only in the last month or two before we had flown out here that he had started spending more time away from me and not sleeping in my house every night. The only thing our marriage lacked was the sex and intimacy. If we had that, would I eventually get bored of him? What if the only thing keeping me interested now was the lack of it, the need for it?

  You hear about this sort of thing all the time; couples that were madly in love slowly getting bored with each other, to the point where one of them or even both start plotting ways to kill the other one. A friend of mine, who had been one of those goofy doe-eyed brides, who even called her husband something sickening like Snookums, told me her husband constantly left his socks strewn about the place and it got to the point that she wanted to force feed him every single one of his socks until he choked to death. Snookums told me, after the divorce, that he had often fantasised about shoving her in the washing machine and switching the dial to fast spin and watching through the glass door as she span so fast her brain exploded. How could couples who were so in love end up like that? But the divorce rate was so high, especially in Britain. Maybe you were never meant to spend the rest of your life with just one person.

  I couldn’t believe that though. Not when my whole working, waking life was built around bringing couples together. Some people were destined to be together and when you found your soul mate, surely waking up every day to that person would be a joy not a chore.

  ‘Why don’t you talk to him? Tell him you want to spice things up a bit, have pizzas on Mondays some weeks instead of Fridays, try different sex positions, go out to new places, try new things.’

  The eternal optimist in me wanted to see everyone happy, even if I couldn’t find that happiness myself.

  She stared at me. ‘Oh, you’re one of those aren’t you?’

  ‘One of what?’

  ‘The happy, clappy, glass is always brimming over types. Bet you live in a rose-tinted world where everyone gets a happy ever after.’

  I took offence to this. I was about to protest when she interrupted me.

  ‘What happened between you and your boyfriend?’

  ‘He… doesn’t love me.’

  ‘You see – happy endings don’t happen, they cheat on you, you cheat on them, or at the very least you want to punch their stupid little faces in.’

  I looked out the window. New York was nowhere to be seen now. I had always believed that if Harry finally did fall in love with me, we would have the perfect happy ending, but maybe Francine was right. Maybe this was for the best.

  *

  SECRET BLOG.

  My dear would-be proposers and fellow romantics. I’m starting this secret blog because I want you all to know the real reason behind the One Hundred Proposals. You guys have been incredibly supportive of my quest to find the perfect proposal and many of you have physically helped out with the organisation and logistics of some of the more complicated ones, so I wanted to let you in on a little secret. What I say here is highly confidential and I would appreciate it if it can stay between us. It’s a big ask, with over five hundred thousand followers of this blog, I know I may be shooting myself in the foot here by declaring my secrets, but I didn’t want to string you guys along any further.

  When I started this venture, many of you believed it was a publicity stunt to promote our company and I’m not going to lie, our little business is thriving because of it. Some of you thought it was just me trying to do something nice for Suzie after her brother died and partly it was.

  But the main reason is… I love her. I love her with every single fibre of my being, she is the first thing I think of in the mornings and the last thing I think of at night. I love spending time with her, holding her,
making her laugh or when she makes me laugh. She is my favourite person in the world and I could spend every single waking and sleeping hour in her company and never tire of it.

  I think I’ve been in love with her since the first moment we met, although I didn’t want to admit it at the time.

  I’ve seen no sign from her that she has any feelings for me at all but I started this One Hundred Proposals thing because I wanted her to fall in love with me too. I’m hoping one of them will be big enough or meaningful enough that one day she will eventually say yes.

  Recently, cracks have started to show. With the Ice Skating Proposal the other day, I thought I was finally going to get the answer I wanted. But I didn’t.

  The next day she texts me saying we need to talk. I thought this was it, she was going to fall into my arms and tell me how much she loved me. I have never felt so excited or happy. How wrong could I be?

  She had secretly arranged for me to get a job in New York, thousands of miles away from the woman I love.

  My disappointment that the conversation wasn’t the one I wanted quickly turned to anger that she was pushing me away, three thousand five hundred miles away to be exact. The rejection that I have feared all my life had happened again, this time from the only person I’ve ever loved and trusted.

  We had a big heart to heart last night, well probably more of an argument, and in my stubborn pride, I’ve sent her to Quebec alone.

  I’ve woken up this morning realising what a terrible mistake this is but I was too late, she had already gone.

  I know now what I must do. I have to tell her I love her, I have to be honest and find it in me to tell her what’s in my heart. Even if that means I may lose her. This secret blog is the first step to this. If I can find the courage to share my feelings with you, then hopefully I can find the courage to tell her too.

  My friend Chloe thinks I need to give her some space to cool down and some time to miss me. Maybe being alone will be a good thing for her, it will help her independence but maybe, without me being there, she might find she has feelings for me too.