One Hundred Proposals (8 page)

‘He says to say hi to you,’ I said.

‘He mentions me?’ Harry smiled proudly.

‘Yeah he says Chelsea sucks.’

The smile fell from his face at the slur on his beloved football team. ‘I’ll give him Chelsea sucks. He’s only saying that because he’s dead and he knows I can’t argue back.’

‘He loved to wind you up.’

Harry smiled, fondly. ‘What else does he say?’

‘Here.’ I leaned into him so he could read the letter too.

And one more thing I want you to do for me, my dying wish
–
and you can’t refuse a man his dying wish. Tell Harry you love him, that you’ve always loved him and always will be in love with him.

I gasped with horror and snatched the letter back from Harry.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘How far did you get?’

‘The bit about the toe nails, let me read the rest.’

‘NO! No way. It’s private.’

I leapt up out of his reach.

‘We don’t have secrets from each other, we tell each other everything.’ Harry stood up, his eyes dark with mischief. ‘Don’t make me take it from you.’

‘It’s nothing, just… it’s private.’

Harry leapt forward and I turned to run but he caught me around my waist, pulling me back against him. He snatched the letter from my hand and held it up high so I couldn’t reach.

‘Harry, no.’ I leapt up to get it but failed.

‘Now let’s see what little sordid secret you’re keeping from me.’

He started skim reading out loud. ‘Aw, he wants you to be Bella’s godmother, that’s sweet. And he says he loves you, that’s nice, he says hi to me, Chelsea sucks…’

‘HARRY, PLEASE!’ I screamed with such desperation that Harry stopped reading and looked at me.

‘You really don’t want me to read this do you?’

I shook my head frantically. My cheeks were burning and I could feel tears of humiliation pricking my eyes. ‘Please don’t read it, I’m begging you.’

He released me and handed me back the letter without another word. I grabbed it, nearly sagging with relief.

‘Is it something horrible?’

I moved away from him, sitting on the other side of the room, and tried to calm down my heart.

‘No, something that Jack only wanted me to know. Something private for him.’ I couldn’t look at him in case he saw the lies.

I straightened out the crumpled letter on my lap and carried on reading.

Tell Harry you love him, that you’ve always loved him and always will be in love with him. I bet you all the money in the world that he says it right back. There has been no one for you since he came into your life and if he doesn’t feel the same way at least you’ll know, at least you’ll stop wondering and maybe, finally you can move on. Regardless of his feelings, he will always be your best friend, nothing will change that. Tell him now or I will haunt you every night, slamming doors and turning on taps and I’ll invite all my ghostly friends round to haunt you too. Tell him Suze, what have you got to lose?

Love you always

Jack

(Mario Kart World Champion)

I stared at the treacherous words. If he knew Harry would be sitting with me, why would he write that, knowing full well that Harry could read it too? And how the hell did he know? No one knew about my inappropriate crush on my best friend. I had never told anyone, least of all my indiscreet blabbermouth big brother.

I looked up at Harry, who was obviously hurt that I didn’t want to share the letter with him.

‘It’s nothing.’ I repeated.

He wasn’t convinced.

I stood up, folding the letter carefully into my pocket. I walked over to him and hugged him.

‘Thank you for coming over, everything seems easier when you’re with me.’

He reluctantly hugged me back. ‘Except anything that’s private.’

I made up my mind there and then. ‘I’ll tell you one day, I promise. I’m just not ready yet.’

This seemed to mollify him as his hug tightened. ‘Do you want me to stay for a while?’

I nodded.

‘Do you want to play Mario Kart?’

I smiled. ‘How did you guess?’

‘I’ll set it up, go and get some beers,’ he said as he crouched down by the TV.

I went into the kitchen and leaned against the fridge as I re-read the letter again. I heard the Wii spring to life in the other room.

I would tell him – if that’s what Jack wanted, then I would do it. But it was going to take a hell of a lot more than cheap Bulgarian beer to find the courage to do that. I tucked the letter back into my pocket and walked back into the lounge.

Harry passed me a remote and I swapped it for a beer.

‘I’m not going to go easy on you,’ Harry said.

‘I wouldn’t expect you to.’

‘This one’s for Jack.’

‘He’ll like that, especially if you win.’

‘I’m not going to lose.’

I took a swig of beer as I looked at my best friend. ‘We’ll see.’

*

I woke the next morning feeling like my head had exploded. It had been a long night, carrying on to the very early hours of the morning. We had drunk, played multiple games of Mario Kart and then other games that required skill and balance that neither Harry nor I could achieve after several bottles of beer. At some point I had fallen on the sofa, too tired and too drunk to move. I wasn’t really aware of anything after that.

There was a heavy weight on me and I couldn’t move at all. I opened one eye and saw Harry lying on top of me, snoring loudly. I closed my eye against the early morning sunshine that penetrated the room painfully. The feel of his snores vibrating through me was nice, like a cat purring. Harry didn’t snore so it was obviously an adverse effect of the drink. I smiled to myself. Waking up with the man I loved wasn’t a bad start to Valentine’s Day.

I lay with my eyes closed for a moment, wondering if I could go back to sleep. Suddenly my eyes snapped open as I realised where Harry’s hand was. Why hadn’t I noticed it before? I looked down and sure enough his hand was gripping my left breast like his life depended on it. God, even in sleep he was a breast man.

Seeing his hand around my breast like that did things to me, a twist of desire lancing straight through my stomach. Though he would be mortified if he woke and found his hand there. Carefully, I tried to prise one of his fingers from my breast, but he was gripping it quite hard and he was so strong even the muscles in his fingers were not something I could fight against. I tried to push my hand between his hand and my breast but to no avail. As I lay there trying to decide my next course of action, Harry stirred and woke up. He looked down at me and smiled sheepishly, still currently unaware of where his hand was. This could go either of two ways. He could realise where his hand was, realise he liked it there and plant the other hand on my other breast, then it could lead to the places of my deepest, darkest fantasies. Unfortunately for me, it went the other way.

Harry looked down, saw where his hand was and leapt off me with a definite ‘Urgh’. Revulsion hadn’t been high on my list of possible reactions. He glared at me.

‘Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t put my breast in your hand. You were still standing and playing on the Wii when I passed out last night. What you did after is your business.’

‘Sorry, I would never – ’

I stood up. ‘I know you would never. Never, ever, ever – right? Not in a million years.’

I flounced out the room straight into the bathroom, locked the door, quickly undressed and stepped straight into the shower.

When I came out it was quite obvious that we were never going to speak of it ever again.

‘Two hundred and three followers, Suze, that’s huge,’ Harry shouted from the office. I walked in. He didn’t look up from his screen and I could see his cheeks blush as I looked at him. ‘And some magazine called Silver Linings is going to call me on Monday with regards to featuring our blog as some sort of column.’

‘Whoa, that is huge.’

‘I know.’ He grinned up at me, obviously relieved we weren’t going to talk about ‘breastgate’. ‘Look, I better go, I’m supposed to be seeing Samantha today. I’ll see you Monday.’

Two days off from being proposed to. There was a brief oasis in the desert. And after the massive proposal the day before, he’d earned a few days off.

*

Waterfalls, emerald green rainforests, turquoise seas, koalas, kangaroos, crocodiles and white sandy beaches all assaulted me from my computer screen. Australia was a beautiful country and I wanted to devour every single part of it.

Even though it was the weekend, I was still answering emails or doing research for the.PerfectProposal.com. I’m not sure when it had become my life, Before Jack or After Jack, but it had become something of an addiction now. Every spare minute I had was spent researching new locations, new proposals. I loved it. It made me so happy to think of couples getting engaged in these places and that in some small way we were helping them to start their life together.

One of my clients was taking his girlfriend to Australia this summer and wanted some ideas for romantic places to propose. Maybe I had taken a little bit more interest in researching Australian locations because I’d always wanted to go.

My friend, Peri, had emigrated there two years before to marry some beach bronzed Adonis called Brad. Her emails and Skype calls ever since had been filled with details of beach barbeques, surfing, sunshine, scuba diving, water skiing and the incredible beauty of the Australian east coast.

I was living in her tiny flat, on permanent loan from her and the only way I could afford such a central affluent location. But despite my house sitting duties, Peri tried to convince me to move out there with her every time we spoke.

When she was first set to move there, she desperately tried to convince me to go with her. With my parents over in New Zealand, and most of my friends scattered to the four corners of the world, there didn’t seem a lot to hang around for. I’d always wanted to live abroad, somewhere hot or maybe a big city. Then Harry had come into my life and all thought of leaving Britain had quickly vanished.

But I wanted to visit. I was desperate to experience some of this sunshine bliss for myself and had set about saving for it. My savings account, renamed ‘Aussie Dreams’, currently had a huge total of two hundred and forty six pounds in it. I had a long way to go.

My computer pinged to indicate I had a message just as I was looking at pictures of the beach paradise at Tangalooma.

I closed down my web browser and opened up my email. I frowned with confusion as I read the notification. Harry’s Proposer’s Blog had been updated. The followers of our blog had all registered so they would be notified of when the next blog went live. For some reason, Harry had included me on this notification as well. But what new updates would Harry have now? He hadn’t proposed to me today. He was supposed to be with Sexy Samantha. I clicked on it and my confusion deepened.

Proposer’s Blog

Day 4: The Self-Humiliation Proposal. Location: Trafalgar Square. Date: Valentine’s Day. Time 1pm.

My dear would-be proposers, nothing says ‘I love you’ like some toe curling humiliation. If you are prepared to go to any length necessary to declare your love for your woman, no matter how embarrassing or degrading, then that surely can’t be a bad thing.

Join me, if you can, for my special Valentine’s Day proposal. I’ll be near one of the four lions. I’ll be the one dressed in black and white.

I stared at the words. I looked at the clock. It had just gone twelve. I stared at the words again. Then quickly grabbed my bag and coat and ran out the door.

*

Trafalgar Square was packed, as it was at all times of the year, despite the cold weather. Pigeons fluttered about, scrabbling for any kind of leftover food that the tourists may have discarded.

Four big bronze lions stood proud in the middle of the square as I cast my eyes frantically around for Harry. He’d said he was going to be wearing black and white, did he mean a tux? My heart leapt at the thought of Harry looking delicious in a sexy tux.

There was quite a crowd around one of them so I headed in that direction.

I saw Badger first, his bright ginger hair welcoming me in like a beacon. He greeted me with one of his huge bear hugs.

‘Hey, Badger, how much did Harry pay you to be involved in this one?’ I could see people giggling and laughing at something on the other side of the lion that I couldn’t see.

‘Are you kidding, I wouldn’t miss this for all the tea in China.’ He nodded his head behind him and I followed his gaze.

As the crowd parted slightly, I saw Harry dressed in a very tight cow print onesie that was clearly several sizes too small for him.

My eyes temporarily dropped to the significant bulge, shown dramatically because of the tightness of the onesie. I dragged my eyes away from it to look at Harry as he approached me, holding a single yellow rose.

He looked ridiculous.

‘Hi,’ he said, passing me the rose.

‘Hi.’ There were no other words in my head.

He bent his head and whispered in my ear so only I could hear him. ‘I wanted you to know that I loved Jack almost as much as you did. So this one’s for him.’

I smiled with love for him.

‘And you have to have a special licence to perform anything here so I don’t think we’re going to have long before the police descend. If it all kicks off, just run.’

He stepped away. Police? What on earth was he going to do that would bring the police down on us?

‘What? Harry, wait…’

He let out an ear piercing whistle. Music started from the other side of the lion and the immediate crowd fell silent.

The music was classical, possibly Tchaikovsky.

‘You wanted the ballet and a bag of chips.’ Harry said as Badger plonked a bag of slightly cold chips in my hands. ‘Well, there are the chips and here is the ballet.’ He raised his voice. ‘Ladies and Gentleman, may I present to you the National Ballet’s version of Cow Lake.’

Laughter erupted as the crowd parted. From behind the lion danced twelve big burly lads holding hands and kicking their legs about in some very bad attempt at ballet. I burst out laughing. I instantly recognised them as being from Harry’s rugby team. They were all wearing cow print onesies and pink tutus over the top. Harry joined on at the end, seamlessly, as they danced inelegantly from side to side, kicking their legs out, kicking each other, stamping on each other’s toes. This clearly had not been practised and it made the crowd laugh even more every time they hurt each other. I was laughing so hard that my face was aching. The music gained in speed and they broke off in pairs, lifting each other off the ground as their partners kicked their legs in the air. It was a mess but the crowd were lapping it up.