One Hundred Proposals (22 page)

Just before twelve, I positioned myself facing Central Park and wondered what it was I was going to see. I had bought a small pair of binoculars from one of the touristy shops on the way so I wasn’t going to use lots of quarters and hog one of the public binoculars on the observation deck.

I waited and waited and saw nothing. I scanned the park, the sky, the streets below and still saw nothing. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes passed, still nothing.

It was bad enough that Harry wasn’t going to be here, but for him to have forgotten altogether was unforgiveable.

Next to me a man got down on one knee with one red rose and asked his girlfriend to marry him, she squealed with joy and threw herself into his arms. At least someone was getting proposed to today.

Then suddenly I saw it. In the big black skyscraper near the park, a big M appeared in one of the windows. An A appeared in the window below it. Below that was an R. Slowly, slowly, each letter of the words ‘Marry Me’ was revealed across seven floors, eight if you included the empty floor between Marry and Me.

It was huge, and even without the binoculars it was easy to see. I smiled as I quickly fired off a few shots with the camera. Harry’s originality was hard to top. The newly engaged woman next to me saw it too and threw the rose back at her boyfriend.

‘Why didn’t you do something like that, you give me a stinking rose whilst someone else gets a proposal spread across an entire skyscraper? Cheapskate,’ she squawked in a shrill American accent.

The boyfriend floundered and I smoothly stepped in. ‘Sorry Miss, I’m from The Perfect Proposal dot com,’ I handed her my business card. ‘Your boyfriend arranged this for you, unfortunately our proposal was a little late so your boyfriend did your proposal first. You have my apologies but the logistics of this sort of thing is quite hard to organise.’

The girl turned to her boyfriend. ‘You did this for me?’

The boyfriend looked at me then nodded, clearly wondering how much this was going to cost him.

She threw herself into his arms again and kissed him all over. He mouthed thank you to me over her shoulder.

‘Congratulations,’ I said, though I doubted the girl even heard me.

I turned away, smiling, and that’s when I saw him. Jack.

Chapter Twelve

I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe, I could only gaze at the man that was clearly my brother. I stared at him. Every bone in my body was screaming at me, telling me this wasn’t Jack, that it couldn’t possibly be as I slowly stepped towards him. I had watched him die, I had held his hand as he took his last breath, I had been to his funeral – yet here he was, standing just three metres away from me, with his arm wrapped round another woman.

Had he faked his death purely to be with this woman? How could he leave Jules and Bella? But suddenly it didn’t matter. I could be angry with him later, now I just wanted to touch him, to hold him and smell him once more.

I took another step towards him and he spotted me staring at him. There was no recognition whatsoever, not even a glimmer in his eyes. This should have been enough to stop me, to doubt this insanity, but my hand was already outstretched to touch him.

‘You all right love?’ he said to me. He was English, though he was more northern than Jack.

I felt tears brimming my eyes. It wasn’t him. I knew it wasn’t but my hand was still outstretched to touch his heart, a tiny glimmer of hope.

‘Gareth, who is this?’

The man shrugged, looking a bit scared now by my endless staring.

Suddenly, a hand grabbed my outstretched one and pulled me away into Harry’s hard chest, enveloping me into a protective hug.

‘It’s not him, baby.’

‘I know,’ I said, as my tears soaked his shirt, a huge wave of disappointment washing over me.

He pulled me down onto a bench next to him, clamping his arm round my shoulder. I was still crying but now Harry was here, my tears were quickly fading.

‘I’m such an idiot,’ I muttered, wiping my eyes. ‘I just wanted it to be him so badly, I started to believe it was.’

I looked over at the man now, he was still eyeing us warily. With the fresh perspective, I could clearly see it wasn’t Jack. He was thinner in the face, at least an inch taller and lacked the tiny mole on his cheek that had often earned him the highly original nickname of Moley from his friends.

‘Are you kidding?’ said Harry. ‘The man is Jack’s doppelganger, they could be twins. I had to stop myself from leaping into his arms and giving him a big hug too.’

I laughed weakly. ‘I wish you had, then I wouldn’t have looked such a weirdo.’

‘For you baby, anything.’

Harry stood up and grabbed the poor man into a big hug, nuzzling into his neck like a cat. The man was clearly stunned and I laughed.

Harry released the man with a friendly pat around the cheek and came back to sit next to me, scooping me onto his lap as he sat down. I leaned into him as he stroked my back.

I looked up at him and touched his cheek. ‘Where would I be without you?’

He smiled and kissed me sweetly on the nose.

We sat staring at each other for a few seconds, the sudden tension from the day before returning.

‘What did you want to talk to me about?’

‘Oh. I have a surprise for you. I may have gotten you a job.’

He stared at me, his eyes unblinking. ‘I have a job.’

‘This is better, it’s working for one of the big computer firms here, ‘Euphoria’. You’ll be able to put some of your amazing skills to better use than just working on web design all day. And you get to move here, you love it here, you wanted to move here before, I know you did. Now you can…’

I trailed off at the expression on his face. He was furious.

‘If I wanted a job here I would have got a job here. You had no right to interfere in my life like that.’

How had I got this wrong? I thought that’s what he wanted. He hadn’t stopped talking about New York for days before we came.

‘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.’