49. Aaron
49
AARON
I wrote Daisy love notes for days, sent her flowers and chocolate, dared to go down to the coffee cart, where she would make a big show of throwing away my gifts then deliberately give me the wrong order and I wouldn’t complain. I’d just go back up to my office and drink black tea.
Betty claimed she saw her dig the éclairs I’d bought out of the trash.
“That’s progress, sugar.”
When one guy tried to ask her out, I waited calmly outside of his apartment and explained that I’d have him locked up in a little box for the next twenty years if he so much as looked at her again.
Daisy didn’t yell at me when I walked her home from the university or rode the subway with her a few seats away, all while she pretended not to notice me.
I had to be near her, though.
I needed her to know how much I loved her.
Failure wasn’t an option. She was mine. Daisy and I were meant to be.
She believed it. I just had to make her see.
“Moving on to phase three,” Betty announced, dumping her purse out on my desk.
I picked up a miniature bottle of vodka.
The senior citizen slapped it out of my hand.
“You’ve already fucked this up once. I need you stone-cold sober, boyo. Now, here are the rings I think Daisy would like.”
“The stones aren’t as big as the ones on the ring I’d previously given her.”
“It’s all about how you use it.”
I selected one with a center diamond flanked by two smaller ones set in gold with a subtle pattern. The matching wedding ring had small diamonds inset on the band.
“I think she’ll like that one.”
“I bought all the others in case she hates it.”
“Do you think she’ll hate it?” I asked in concern.
“The ring’s not what I’m worried about,” Betty said dryly.
“Should I give her more flowers?”
“It’s time to shit or get off the pot.” Betty slapped me on the back. “There are only so many flowers a woman wants in her apartment. Man up and go get your girl.”
Daisy was as perfect as a summer day on the beach. Sun streamed in from the multistory glass windows in the lobby, making her glow.
“Do you want your regular?” Daisy’s voice was syrupy sweet when she saw me. “One unicorn Frappuccino with extra rainbow cotton candy on top.”
“You can’t possibly be serving those here, Coleman.”
She slammed a cup filled with fairy vomit on the counter, sloshing some on my suit.
“Oh, look, it’s pretending to be human.”
“Daisy.”
Her face softened.
I knelt.
She peered over the counter then came around, curious.
I turned to face her. We were drawing a crowd.
“I remember one summer, Daisy. I saw you lying out on your beach towel, your legs kicking sand as you read your book. You were strawberry ice cream and fireworks and warm summer evenings. You were so effortless, so perfect, so human. I remember thinking how much I wanted to lie there next to you, tell you how in love I was with you. But you were so perfect. I didn’t want to ruin you. I ruin people’s lives, and I ruined yours, and I’m sorry.”
I needed her to understand.
“I should have stayed away from you. I know I hurt you. I know I broke your heart. But I want you. I need you in my life. I miss you. I feel so empty without you. You’re my one true love. Every time I see you it’s like I’m seeing the sun for the first time all over again. I just want to stare at you, burn the image of you onto the backs of my eyes, so that I never forget you, go blind from your beauty, with you being the last image I ever see.”
She wrapped her arms around herself.
“I just realized that the happiest time of my entire life was when I was married to you, Daisy. I chose wrong. I should have chosen you. I regretted it immediately. I always loved you. You said you loved me, that I was your one true love, that we were meant to be. I know I’m a monster, Daisy, but I want to be yours.”
I opened the box.
“Please, Daisy, please forgive me and come home. Be my wife. Let me love you like you’re meant to be. I’m choosing you, Daisy.”
I opened the box.
Daisy gazed down at me.
Please, please, please , I begged silently, looking up at her.
Slowly, Daisy started clapping.
Several confused onlookers joined in.
“You know, Aaron…” Her laugh was hollow. “I remember that day on the beach. I spent hours agonizing over which swimsuit wouldn’t make my ass look like a dump truck but would still make you interested. You consumed my entire life. And yeah, I take some ownership for that. I’m the spoiled princess who thinks she can tame the beast. The reality?” She put her hands on her hips. “You’re a manipulative lying bastard. This whole production—the carefully calculated notes, the flowers, and yes, I looked up all their secret meanings, the presents, the chocolate. This ring, which you chose because you think that I’d appreciate the Great Gatsby reference—all of this is such a calculated, self-serving promotion.”
“I want to make you happy,” I begged.
“No, you don’t.” She cut me off. “You don’t care if I’m happy. You’re just a suit pretending to be a real boy. I’m not a person to you. I’m just a game for you to win.”
“That is not how I think of you, Coleman. I told you—”
“See, that’s the thing. You want me to listen to what you say and not what you do. Here’s what you did: you fucked me over. You used me to save your company money then threw me away. But then you realized that the socially acceptable girl who will look pretty on your arm, one who doesn’t have the nickname Dump Truck Daisy, probably has more self-respect than to let you chain her up in your basement and cum in her ass!” Her voice rose to a screech.
I winced. “That’s not it at—”
“You realized,” she was shouting now, “as you were making a spreadsheet of your options that you were lacking in the sex column and I would be the perfect hedge.”
“You’re making up a delusional scenario in your head,” I yelled. “Coleman, I love you, and I’m trying to ask you to marry me.”
“Yes, Aaron.” Her voice was laced with venom. “Contrary to popular belief, I know what it means if a man kneels down in front of you with a ring in a box. I’m not a fucking idiot.”
“Then say you’ll marry me.”
I didn’t have time to dodge before Daisy hurled the oversized cup of unicorn Frappuccino right at my nose. I grunted, clutching it as pain exploded and a sticky rainbow-colored latte cascaded over me while the onlookers gasped and videotaped the proposal from hell.
“Dear reader, let the record state,” Daisy announced to the gawkers in the lobby, “she did not marry the bastard.”
She glared down. “Get up, Aaron. You’re holding up my line.”
The smells of melted cotton candy and flavored syrup followed me back up to the Van de Berg executive level.
My shoes squelched as I stormed into the conference room.
“Why are you wearing a rainbow shirt?” A tall blond man turned up the corner of his mouth in a sneer. Greg Svensson, owner, CEO, and resident asshole of Svensson Investment.
Fucking finance firms. They and their bullshit were why I was covered in this crap.
“I’m raising your rates,” I snarled at him.
“Fuck you.” Greg stood up to curse me out. “Wolf, what the fuck?”
“Goddamn it, Aaron.” Wolf slammed his hand on his notebook.
“You’re going to get a new insurance contract next quarter,” I barked at Greg. “Sign it or get fucked.”
Betty sucked in a breath when I stormed back to my office.
“Guess I better cancel that romantic dinner for two.” She peered at me over her glasses. “I’ve got a new suit for you in the closet, but you might want to go home and shower first. Or I have a steamer. Might get some of… What is that all over your hair?”
Ignoring her, I answered a call on the burner phone from the Zhukov syndicate.
The boss had seen the video of Daisy’s rejection and was kindly offering to make it go away and why didn’t I help him with some potentially better insurance rates.
I went to my closet, dragged out the box with all the dirt on the Zhukov syndicate I had collected over the years, and slammed it on Betty’s desk.
“Burn those fuckers.”
She saluted.
I sat down in my chair, which Betty had draped in paper towels. Sat there and fumed while blood leaked out of my nose and the sugary drink dried on my shirt and the shadows outside grew long.
Fuck Daisy Coleman. I poured my heart out to her, yet it meant nothing. I didn’t know whether I was more angry at her, or myself, or my father. Maybe his parents or his parents’ parents. Who the fuck fucks up so bad as a parent that their son turns into a serial kidnapper?
No wonder my life was so fucked. It was my father’s fault.
And mine.
The anger drained from me, leaving the hollow of grief.
My nose hurt.
I was starving.
I needed a drink.
“Dude,” Spencer drawled from the doorway.
I looked up as my brothers piled into my office.
Connor flicked on the light switch.
“Yikes,” Graham said when they saw me. “Turn it back off.”
“You need to just throw this suit away.” Finn poked at the candy-hard coating on the wool.
“Wolf said you’d completely lost it.” Grayson shooed Connor away from me. “He sent everyone home. Wanted us to come do bomb disposal.”
“I tried to get her back,” I said helplessly to Grayson as Spencer poured vodka all over my bruised nose and in my mouth. “But I failed. I tried and I failed.”
“We’ll pay some not-so-great guys to date her,” Spencer suggested. “Like, really awful ones. Then she’ll see that you weren’t so bad.”
“You’re going to have to scrape the bottom of the barrel,” Graham quipped.
I threw my phone, caked in sticky unicorn vomit, at him. The device missed and went into the glass wall, shattering it with spiderweb cracks.
“Dude…”
“I’m telling Wolf it’s your fault,” I snapped at Graham.
“Sure, because Wolf’s going to believe that.”
“It’s a good plan. She’ll come crawling back to you once she sees how bad it is out there,” Finn assured me.
“Just stay available,” Spencer instructed, wadding up paper towels. “We can make it seem like fate when you keep accidentally running into each other.”
“Don’t you have to be charming for that to work?” Graham joked. “You don’t want her to see him and then remember all over why she hates him.”
“She’s always hated me,” I said sadly. “She’s never going to forgive me. I fucked up. She didn’t want me.”
“I heard Greg Svensson wants your head, so that’s something,” Grayson said. He grabbed one of the paper towels that had been glued to my shirt and wiped at my face.
“Fuck him.”
Grayson carefully placed a bandage over my nose.
Spencer tipped the vodka bottle into my mouth.
“Don’t give him too much of that,” Grayson chided. “We have the big handover meeting tomorrow.”
Graham flipped through my notes. “I don’t think he’s prepared at all, boss.”