Day 84

Writing exercise – about “She didn’t know what he wanted” with the reveal in the last line.

…

It always amused me that everyone in the office thought I was the fountain of all knowledge, the one person who knew all the answers to everyone’s dating problems and what they should do to win over a particular boy or girl.

I had my own aspirations, but no one seemed interested, and because of this, I had made up my mind not to help another person.

Except when it came to Daisy Withers, how could I not?

We started out a few ears back on very rocky ground. We both arrived full of hopes and dreams, and wanted to do the best to achieve our hopes and aspirations, and we were both very competitive.

That competitiveness brought us to a showdown when a particular role was up for grabs; we both went for it and ended up getting overlooked simply because of our actions.

That day, we forged a new alliance, where we would help each other rather than try to sabotage our best efforts, and in my case, I started seeing her in a different light. The problem was, she did not feel the same way about me, and simply saw me as a friend.

It was difficult to watch her dating other men and more difficult when those relationships crashed and burned, but I was always there to pick up the pieces.

It was an ago old story, and I had finally decided, when the previous Christmas, when she had finally agreed to come home with me, for no other reason other than to be somewhere else, she had found a new man, and I went home alone, finally realizing that it was never to be.

…

When Daisy didn’t return after that Christmas break, I discovered she had requested a transfer to the West Coast office for a few months. I figured that her new romance had moved up a notch, the man coming from San Francisco, and she wanted to be with him.

It gave me a chance to exorcise her from my mind and get back to my work. The enthusiasm level had been flagging a little, and being passed over for a promotion, I thought I had given me pause to wonder just exactly what it is I wanted.

Daisy wasn’t the distraction, so I couldn’t blame her. I think I had made another realization in those few months: that my heart was no longer in what I was doing. It was time for a change, a complete change, and I had all but decided to hand in my resignation and spend a year in Europe just looking at old stuff.

That resolve just hardened when I saw Herb MacKenzie coming up the passage towards my office. Only yesterday, I discovered the man who had taken the role I had wanted was a relation on one of the directors, his identity disguised by the fact he was using his mother’s maiden surname, a ploy to have the office believe it was not blatant nepotism.

It was. He was very inexperienced, and sadly, when his father came to see me and ask that
I helped him as much as I could. Until today. That was now off the table.

He knocked, came in, and sat down. He never waited to be asked and had that air of arrogance that ran through the father as well. We were minions and to be treated as such.

I sighed. “What’s today’s crisis?”

“None. I need a little advice, and I’m told you’re the expert.”

“Who in this office thinks I’m an expert?”

“Everyone. This place wouldn’t run without you.”

It’s odd that he was telling me that. Last I heard, last Friday in fact, over celebratory drinks in the board room, that he was the one the place couldn’t run without.

“I doubt that’s true, Herb.”

He shrugged. Maybe flattery wasn’t working today.

“One of the senior staffers is coming back from the West Coast office next week, and I was thinking of flying over to lay some groundwork.”

The moment he mentioned groundwork, I knew it was not work he was referring to. He was rich and entitled and had no trouble dating socialites. His photo in the papers told me as much.

And if I was to make a guess…

“She was here for a few years. Seems you two were always in the running for the same promotion. and I’m guessing a little more on the side.”

Why not tell him the truth? I was over her, and it wouldn’t matter. My resignation letter had been written for months; all I had to do was sign it.

“There wasn’t. We were not each other’s type. Competitors, not lovers. Sorry.”

“But you know what makes her tick.”

Enough to know she was not his type, but given all her previous choices, maybe it would work. After all, he was the boss’s son, and that might count for something.

I shrugged. “Why am I not with her if I did?”

That seemed to confuse him, but then it wasn’t hard to do that, either.

And as usual, when I tried to tell him what he didn’t want to hear, he ignored it. “Any words of wisdom, what she likes, or wants.”

I thought about it. I had over the years, tried to work out that exact answer and had never quite succeeded. Flowers, no; fine dining, no; a night in an expensive hotel, no; a week away at an exotic resort, no; going to see my home and family who could win over the most reticent of people, didn’t get the chance.

And then I realised, what did it matter. My window had closed, that ship had sailed, call it what you like. “You want to know what I think. She would want to know what you want, because most of the time most girls just don’t know what you want. And that would have to be very special. So, for what it’s worth, tell her it would mean everything to you if she would take the time to go home to where you live and meet your family. They will more than you ever could help her realise the sort of person you are and want to be. Girls like that stuff.”

If nothing else, that would turn her off so quickly she’d probably resign too.

“Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.” He leapt out of the chair. “Gotta go.”

…

By the time he reached the end of the corridor, I had retrieved the resignation letter, signed it, attached it to the email saved in drafts and sent it to his father.

I had never been more sure of anything in my life. The future of the company belonged in his hands. Resignation sent, I went to the stationery storeroom and got a moving box. I was halfway throwing the accoutriments of four years into it when I saw his father coming up the passage.

I looked at the timer on my watch.

Five minutes and twenty-three seconds.

He didn’t knock.

“Unaccepted. You can’t leave. I’ll double your salary. Tell me what you want, and you can have it. within reason, that is.”

I looked at him. Serious but afraid. I don’t think it could occur to him that someone like me might want to leave. Minions needed their jobs and would do anything to keep them. I believed that for a long time.

“Daisy’s coming back. She’s better at this than I am. And Herb will schmooze her. He has a way with women I could only dream about.”

The expression on his face told me a different story. Why was Daisy coming back if she was doing everything right? The word was she had been told that if she reorganised and revitalised the office, which had seen revenues and prestige begin to decline under the previous manager’s auspices, why would she leave?

A question I was no longer interested in.

I tossed the last forgettable item into the box.

His phone rang, and he looked at the screen and frowned. Another crisis. He looked up. “I have to take this. “Take a week’s vacation. Anywhere. Think about it. Tell the travel office you have my authority.”

A week’s vacation wasn’t going to change my mind. But it was wrong of me to give Herb what I believed was the secret to winning her heart.

I called her.

Disconnected. She had changed her phone number. Well, if that wasn’t a sign from the Gods!

…

A week’s vacation wasn’t in the stars. I picked up the box, took a last look at what it was I
thought I wanted, and walked out.

I rang home and told them I was coming in a few days and to dust off my old room; I’d be staying for a while. It was superfluous; Mom had my room ready for me to come back. She always knew, one day…

Ticket booked and apartment sorted, there was only one thing left to do; go to the bar I went every Friday night and tell anyone who cared I was going. For the last three months, it had been without Daisy, but that didn’t matter. I had to get used to her not being around.

At the fourth drink, the hands of the clock about to reach my home time, I heard rather than saw someone sitting in the seat next to me. Daisy’s seat.

“Do you come here often?”

Daisy.

“Too often. It’s a habit I’m breaking after tonight.”

“Any particular reason?”

“It’s not the same anymore.”

I looked sideways, and sucked in a breath, maybe two. I had forgotten how beautiful she looked. It just made the parting all that much harder.

“That’s because I’m not here. Pity I’m not staying.”

“That’s a shame. Why?”

“A friend of mine quit his job, quite out of left field actually, and, well, it won’t be the same.”

“That is a shame.”

The bartender came over, and she ordered what I was having and another drink for me. It was going to be the last, but the apartment could wait.

We didn’t speak again until the drinks came, and she had taken a few sips of hers. Perhaps she needed time to think about what she was going to say.

“Funny thing, life. Three days ago, I was sitting in a posh restaurant opposite this guy, Herb – I mean, who calls their kid Herb, or Herbert. Anyway, he’s prattling on like the try-hard he is, and all I’m thinking of is this guy I know back in New York. He used to listen to all my woes, gave me this annoyingly right advice, never telling me how he really feels, never chastising me, as he should have, for being the fool that I was.”

“That’s being a bit harsh on yourself. I’m sure he wouldn’t agree.”

“No. He wouldn’t. And that was what was annoying about him. I mean, he went out of his way to ask me if I wanted to home home with him, not because he had to, but because I had nowhere else to go and he didn’t want me to be alone.”

“Maybe he thought if he left you behind, you might do something foolish. Again.”

“I did do something foolish, again. And when that broke up as it inevitably does, I had a long think about it. I needed time away. Walter gave me a chance at running the West Coast office, but it was never going to work. That was always going to be Herb’s domain, and it didn’t take long to realise that his desire for us to be more than friends translated into, I would do the work and he would take the credit.”

“Just like his grades and university qualifications. They were too good to be true.”

“Wendy told me you’d left. Double the salary and a week’s vacation in the Maldives. When you took your box, I knew that was off the cards. That’s when she told me that Herb was coming over, and we guessed it was to see me.”

I think I would have paid money to see her deal with Herb.

“Anyway, there I am, sitting there with a seventy-five dollar plate of soup in front of me, and he tells me the plan. Yes, he had a plan. I seriously hope he doesn’t approach all the girls with this. He says something like, ‘it would mean everything to him if I would take the time to go home to where he lived and met his family. They could more than he ever could help her realise the sort of person he is and wants to be.’ I mean, you couldn’t make that stuff up – well, he certainly couldn’t, but I knew who did. Why didn’t you just tell me that?”

I shrugged. “You weren’t ready to hear that or wanted to hear it. I figured if you wanted to go, you would, but that if something better came along, then I’d finally get the message.”

“That I was taking you for granted. Staring into the bowl of soup, hearing those words, I finally got the message. Not from him, but from you. I doubt whether he’s ever had an original thought in his life. The thing is, I ate the food, made all the right noises, assiduously avoided being closer than a yard, thanked him for his kindness and said I would think about it. Then I went back to the office, signed the resignation letter and sent it to Wally, packed my backpack with everything I wanted, not that it amounted to much, and sat at the airport until the first plane flew to New York.”

“And now you’re here.”

“And now I’m here. When did you fall in love with me?”

Was this a conversation worth pursuing? Probably not, but again, I had nothing better to do.

“The first moment I saw you. I knew then I was going to have my heart broken, but I still did it anyway. You were always the impossible dream.”

“You were just impossible. I wanted to hate you, tried to hate you, pretended to hate you, and then just gave up. You were there, I liked you being there, and then, when you weren’t, I missed you. So, I tried to forget you, and it didn’t work. I started thinking about why you would ask the one person who drove you nuts to go home with you. It just didn’t occur to me that I might just discover why you were the person you are, and that I just might come to my senses and see what
I had always been looked for standing right in front of me. Maybe it just wasn’t about you, but inadvertently, you told me what it was you wanted. Nothing special. Just the girl that you fell madly in love with and just wished, even for a second, she would love him back. Well, here I am, here to tell you I love you back. And I have since the day I met you. It’s why nothing else works. it’s why I’m happiest when I’m with you. It’s why I’m never afraid to be me when I’m with you. And it’s why I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”

And then she let out a huge sigh of relief. “Now, we just have one problem…”

I pulled out an envelope from my coat pocket and handed it to her. I had bought her a ticket just in case she came.

She pulled out the piece of paper and read it. “You were that sure?”

“No. Like I said, you are, or were, the impossible dream.”

“And yet…”

“I read my horoscope this morning. It’s the first time ever. It said quite specifically that my impossible dream would come true.”

…

©  Charles Heath 2025