Prologue
‘Ok, you can
open your eyes now,’ Harry said.
I blinked in
the gloom of the cave. Moonlight tumbled through the opening above us,
reflecting off the waterfall as it cascaded into the pool below. We had been in
Australia for just a few days but I knew it would never cease to amaze me. Dancing
in the pockets of the cave walls were hundreds of fireflies, sparkling like
fairy lights.
Nothing could
have prepared me for what happened next.
The fireflies
started to gather together and slowly a shape was formed. I frowned in
confusion and then within seconds the words, ‘Suzie, Marry Me,’ stood proud
against the cave walls, written by the fireflies.
I whirled
round to face Harry in shock. ‘How did you do that?’ I looked back at the
fireflies, not wanting to miss anything. Would they perhaps move to form the
lyrics of my favourite song? Were they super trained fireflies and in a minute
they’d all whip out their mini cheerleader pom-poms and start some kind of
dance where they would balance precariously on each other’s backs?
‘It’s some
kind of fruit juice, they love it.’
I fumbled in
my bag for my camera. ‘We have to get a picture for the website.’
I fired off a
couple of shots and I could see a few other tourists had entered the cave and
were clearly waiting for my answer. They’d be waiting for a long time.
‘So what do
you think?’ Harry said. ‘Is this the perfect proposal?’
‘It’s
definitely one of your best, very romantic.’ I focused my attention on the
photos I was taking. They were going to look fantastic with the waterfall in
soft focus in the background and the fireflies in sharp detail set against the
inky blue light of the moon.
‘But still not
the perfect proposal?’
‘Not for me,
but someone else would love it.’ I watched the faces of the other tourists fall
at my callous response. ‘We’re not together, we just work with each other.’ One
couple looked at me dubiously, so I pressed on. ‘Our company creates the
perfect proposal, this kind of thing is our bread and butter.’
I resisted the
sudden urge to rush over to them and start handing out business cards. As if
reading my mind, Harry slung an arm round my shoulder, restraining me with his
hand.
I looked up at
him innocently but he didn’t seem convinced.
The tourists
moved further down the cave, leaving us alone.
‘You always do
that,’ Harry said.
‘What, promote
our business? I know, I can’t help it. I’m just so proud of what we’ve achieved
that I want to tell anyone that listens and anyone that doesn’t.’
‘No, not that.
You always say our company, our business. It’s yours, you started
it. I’m just the tech guy.’
It was just me
to start with. I created the.PerfectProposal.com over two years ago when my
boyfriend at the time proposed drunkenly to me over a greasy kebab. It struck
me that maybe the menfolk of this world might need a little helping hand to
create a proposal their girlfriends would remember forever. Although the greasy
kebab is not one I’m likely to forget.
Harry was my
web designer. When the business first started he would come by my office, the back
bedroom in my home, every day to help update the website with my new ideas,
photos and special offers. In the end it made sense to make him a permanent
feature. Our website looked fantastic and as an online company this was
integral to our success.
But Harry
wasn’t just the geeky IT guy, far from it. He was the biggest man I had ever
seen in my life, with large thighs and big feet. He had stubbly, dark hair and
chocolate eyes. But he also had a vivid imagination – where I was organising
the logistics for a champagne helicopter trip, he would be the one that would
come up with something completely unique like using fireflies.
‘And you
always put yourself down. We’re equal partners now, you helped to make the
company a success too,’ I said.
He shrugged, never
keen to accept that he played such an important part in it. He gestured to the
fireflies that were starting to break formation now. ‘Is it too sickly?’
I let my
camera hang round my neck and leaned into him, I loved the way I fitted against
him. ‘I love it, I really do, it’s… magical. But there’s still something
missing.’
Was there
really such a thing as a perfect proposal? Three months ago, just before
Valentine’s Day, Harry had made it his mission to provide me with one. But deep
down I knew what I wanted and I doubted Harry would be able to deliver it. I
should have told him that when he first started this wild goose chase. It would
have saved me a lot of heartache.
Chapter
One
Three
Months Before
I put the
phone down on another excited client and sighed. It was February 11th
and we’d had a surge of customers all desperately wanting to propose on top of
the Eiffel Tower on Valentine’s Day. I felt like screaming. It was only by
careful planning that I’d arranged that my customers weren’t going to be there
at the same time. That’s just what a girl wants to feel special, to see other
girls being proposed to at the same place and time that she was. Was there no
originality anymore? Harry was brilliant at coming up with unique proposals,
but no matter how many times I had tried to sell Harry’s ideas to them, they
wanted the traditional and that was that.
‘Another
Eiffel Tower?’ asked Harry as he absentmindedly uploaded photos to our rolling
gallery.
‘He wants a
dozen red roses delivered to the observation deck at eight.’ I rubbed my head
in defeat. ‘What about something different, going to the ballet or proposing
over a bag of chips at the end of Brighton Pier?’
He swivelled
in his chair. ‘What would be your perfect proposal?’
I looked at
him and had a sudden flash of him holding me in his arms and asking me to marry
him.
‘I don’t know,
the perfect guy would definitely be a bonus.’
‘Ok so you
have your perfect guy and it’s not greasy kebab boy –’
‘Let’s be
clear, it was the kebab that was greasy not the man.’
He waved away
the details. ‘So Orlando Bloom or some other non-greasy hunk is asking you to
marry him, how would he do it?’
I took a sip
of tea whilst I pondered this. If one of my customers phoned up at a loss for
inspiration I had a hundred ideas. But for me, my mind was blank.
‘I have an
idea.’ Harry’s eyes were suddenly bright with excitement. He whirled round on
his chair and started tapping away furiously on his computer. I peered over his
shoulder at our website.
Proposer’s Blog
How Do You Propose to a Proposer?
Over the next hundred days I intend to find
out. I will find one hundred ways to propose to our Chief Proposer Suzie
McKenzie, and post the results here for your enjoyment. One thing’s for sure,
not one of my proposals will be on top of the Eiffel Tower with a dozen red
roses.
‘You can’t put
that, we’ve had fifteen customers who want to propose like that over the last
week,’ I said, ignoring the sudden thundering of my heart that Harry was going
to propose to me.
‘Then maybe
they’ll have a rethink.’ Harry was already uploading a picture of a diamond
ring onto the blog.
‘Or ask for
their money back.’
But Harry was
still writing.
Day 1: The Traditional Proposal. Location: Our office.
He stood up
and got down on one knee – yanking the snake ring off his thumb, he held it
aloft to my shocked face.
‘Suzie
McKenzie, you are my best friend and I cannot imagine finding anyone I would
rather spend the rest of my life with. Marry me.’
The world
stopped. My mouth was dry. How unfair was it that the one thing I wanted most
in the world was happening right in front of me and it was as real as a pair of
breasts on Sunset Boulevard.
I wanted to
snatch the ring off him, stuff it on my finger and march him down to the
nearest registry office. But I didn’t.
I cleared my
throat of the huge lump. ‘Too clichéd, wrong location, wrong ring.’
He grinned as
he appraised his ring and stood up, clearly not fussed by this rejection. He
started typing.
Crashed and Burned. Apparently a snake ring with
evil red eyes and the beige walls of our cramped office isn’t good enough for
her. I’ll try again tomorrow.
Surely not. A
hundred days of this torment? I didn’t think I could bear it.
He looked at
his watch. ‘Oh, I’ve got to go, hot date with Sexy Samantha again tonight.’
Samantha was
his first girlfriend in nearly a year. When I first met him he seemed to go
through a different girl each week, so I wasn’t sure why he’d gone through the
sudden dry patch. But Samantha was definitely the type to tempt him out of it.
I’d had the
pleasure of meeting Sexy Samantha the night before. Suspicious of Harry’s
relationship with his best friend, she’d barrelled into my home and demanded
that Harry introduce me. I came downstairs in leggings and an oversized black hoodie
– I knew I was hardly dressed to impress. And impress her I didn’t. The look of
relief when Samantha saw me was palpable. She, on the other hand, was a vision
of heavenly loveliness. She was almost as tall as Harry, with long blonde hair
and curves everywhere. My eyes were immediately drawn to a big pair of breasts,
squeezed between an overly tight top. Harry was definitely a breast man. All of
his girlfriends were very well-endowed in the breast department. Some of the
breasts, I suspected, weren’t even real – though Harry didn’t seem to mind. I
was more in the straight up, straight down department, definitely no curves and
not really any breasts to speak of.
I watched
Harry log off his computer with haste and obvious excitement about what Sexy
Samantha had in store for him that night.
‘I have a hot
date too,’ I blurted out, watching for any flicker of jealousy. Of course there
was none.
‘That’s great
Suze.’ He looked genuinely pleased. ‘You haven’t seen anyone since Jack…’ He
trailed off. My life was defined into two segments. Before Jack and After Jack.
I wondered if Jules felt the same. He grabbed his jacket, averting his eyes
from me, perhaps knowing that he had said something he shouldn’t. ‘It’s about
time you got back on the horse again. We can swap notes tomorrow.’
‘Or not.’ I
couldn’t bear thinking about that conversation. The literal ins and outs of
Harry’s date would be something I really didn’t want to hear. I’d changed the
subject twice that morning already when he started giving me explicit details
that would be right at home on the pages of an erotic fiction novel. Sexy Samantha was far kinkier than those baby
blue eyes might suggest. Besides, what did I have to contribute to that
conversation? My hot date consisted of a tub of Ben and Jerry’s and a night in
with the beautiful Brad Pitt. I logged off my own computer, keen to show him I
also had something exciting to run off to.
‘Where did you
meet him?’
I racked my
brain as I fluffed out my hair in the reflection of a photo showing me and
Harry covered in snow and grinning ear to ear after sledging at the indoor Snow
Zone. Before Jack.
‘Skiing,’ I
said, then wished I hadn’t.
He stopped in
his hasty exit. ‘Skiing? When have you been skiing?’
‘I go every
Sunday, skiing lessons, he’s my ski instructor.’ I was making it worse.
‘You hate
skiing.’
I had said
that hadn’t I. Because this photo was taken when we had our first and last
skiing lesson a year before. I had spent forty minutes falling on my bum – as
kids as young as five glided effortlessly past me – and the last twenty minutes
of the lesson, after Harry had been upgraded to the adult slopes, trying to get
up and rolling around on the floor with my skis in the air, looking like an
oversized beetle stranded on its back. Harry had felt sorry for me that I had
failed so spectacularly and had taken me sledging instead. Much more up my
street. There was no skill at all involved in sliding down a slope in a red
plastic sledge.
‘I like it
now. I’m very proficient. Obviously just needed the right instructor.’
‘Well that’s
great, maybe we can go together sometime.’
I fixed a
smile onto my face. ‘Maybe.’
‘What’s his
name?’
I cast around
for a suitable name and a suitable adjective to describe him, something
comparable to Sexy Samantha. I had nothing, no names in my head at all. The
only name in my head was Harry and that would be too weird. He was staring at
me, waiting for me to come up with a name, the silence stretched on. I had to
say something.
‘Tim.’ I
almost shouted out with relief. ‘Tiny Tim.’
Great. Just
great.
Harry’s face
fell. ‘Tiny Tim?’
‘Yes.’
‘As in…’ he
waggled his little finger at me.
‘No, no, of
course not, he’s very big in that department. Big all over in fact. Huge. It’s
kind of an ironic name.’
‘Big like me?’
‘Well I have
no idea how big you are in that department.’ My eyes cast down to the sizeable
bulge in his jeans and I felt my cheeks burn as he clearly saw me checking him
out.
‘I meant in
height,’ Harry said. I’m sure I saw his mouth twitch as he supressed a smile.
‘Oh yes, he’s
very tall.’
‘Good. That’s
good. I have a friend who’s a ski instructor at the Snow Zone, he might know
your Tim. What’s his surname?’
‘Timmings.’
I was a
terrible liar.
‘Tim
Timmings?’
‘That’s
right.’
A horn tooted
outside and Harry peeled back the net curtain to wave at Sexy Samantha as she
leaned on the bonnet of her sexy red convertible. I didn’t think I’d ever be so
relieved to see her again.
‘Well have
fun.’ Harry threw me a cursory wave as he thundered down the stairs. A second
later I heard the front door slam.
I peered out
the window, hoping not to be noticed as Harry swept Sexy Samantha into his arms
and swung her round as if he hadn’t seen her in months. As he deposited her on
the floor she waved up at me and I was forced to wave politely back.
With a wheel
spin and the stereo blaring out something young and hip, the red convertible
roared up the road, taking my heart with it.
I’d been in
love with Harry for two long, painful years and we were further away today from
getting together than we had been when we first met. We were now firmly in the
friend zone and there was never any coming back from that.
Two years was
way too long for unrequited love. It was time I moved on with someone else. I
would just fall out of love with him, simple as that.
I sighed as I
walked into my bedroom and got changed into my cow print onesie. I flicked
through some songs on my iPod until I found something suitably rousing and as
Gloria Gaynor started belting out ‘I am
what I am’, I turned up the volume, leapt up onto the bed and danced and
wiggled my bum in time with the lyrics. I was highly skilled in the playing of
air drums and as Gloria reached a crescendo so did my frenetic drum playing. As
the instrumental kicked in I leapt off the bed, doing the splits mid-air. I pulled
a muscle in my groin and as I flicked my hair theatrically out of my face I saw
Harry’s eyes widen in horror as I landed on top of him, one leg somehow hooked
over his shoulder as my other foot kicked him square in his crotch.
He screamed in
pain. I screamed with embarrassment as he staggered back and landed hard on his
bum, my leg still wrapped round his neck.
Gloria was
still singing loudly in the background as we stared at each other. Finally I
managed to speak.
‘What are you
doing here?’
‘Currently,
wondering if I’ll ever be able to have sex again. Can you please get off my lap?’
I quickly
climbed off him, kneeing him in the face as I tried to stand up. He slowly
staggered to his feet, doubled over in obvious pain.
‘I forgot my
wallet,’ he said, by way of explanation.
I swallowed. ‘You
saw me dance?’
He lifted his
head and this time there was no mistaking the grin. ‘From the very beginning to
the dramatic finale.’
I groaned.
‘I better go,
Samantha will be wondering where I am. Nice onesie by the way. Does Tiny Tim
have one too? A horse or a pig perhaps?’
I stared down
at myself, at the pink udders hanging limply from my stomach, and wanted the
ground to swallow me up. ‘He’s not coming round till later.’
‘Of course
not. And I imagine he thinks you look quite cute in it.’
Cute? Puppies
were cute. Is that how he thought of me, as a cute little puppy?
He moved to
the top of the stairs and I followed him.
‘Do you think
I look cute in it?’
He turned and
walked back up a few stairs, kneeling on the stair below me so we were eye to
eye. ‘Yes.’
My heart
dropped. I was so far in the friend zone I was now categorised as cute. He’d be
patting me on the back next and telling me he saw me like a sister.
‘Sexy cute?’
‘No.’
My heart sank
into my feet.
‘I bet
Samantha would look sexy in it?’
‘I doubt it. I
don’t think it’s possible for anyone to look sexy in it.’
I felt
slightly better at this.
‘And don’t
underestimate the value of cute, it’s a great quality to have.’ He leaned
forward and kissed me on the nose. ‘And don’t stay up too late, I have a big
day planned for you tomorrow.’
He ran down
the stairs and was gone a second later.
I touched my
nose, still feeling the softness of his lips. He thought I was cute. I smiled
as I fell in love with him all over again.
To see chapter
2 check on some other lovely blogs tomorrow or pre –order your copy of One Hundred Proposals
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