Where she likes to sit

She likes to go there sometimes, to close her eyes and remember that chilly night, the nearness of him, the way he had almost put his arm around her. She listens to the fountain, and it sounds to her like him, like the kind of heroic love that saves you from your own mistakes; almost like a knight in shining armor, were she given to such clichés.

She never takes enough layers of clothing because that would be betraying the memory, she wants the cold to bite her like it did back then, she wants it to be exactly as it was, when she thought things could not be any more difficult or complicated, back then, in what she now knows to be the good old days, haunted as they were by the ghost of what so nearly was, of what she so often hoped for.

Oh, if she'd only known.

She sits, curled up against the cold, chin resting on her knees, arms wrapped around her legs, she sits and she thinks about him and she wonders again if she made the wrong decision. On the list of pros and cons it had all seemed so right, but Christmas and New Year and their non-anniversary had come and gone, and of course Valentine's Day but she'd made a point of not noticing that, and he hadn't called and she was tired of missing him, tired of her whole body aching for him, tired of fighting against herself for feeling those things.

You'll know, she'd told herself, if you leave, you'll know. And if you know, then you can move on. Get on with life. Bury the ghost of non-anniversaries past.

Except, of course, that you can't bury a ghost, can you.

She sighs from deep within and the tears come, unbidden and unwelcome. On those rare occasions when she's honest with herself she knows that this is why she loves this fountain, this fountain which weeps on her behalf, incessantly, with all the energy she wishes she could summon. But tonight the fountain isn't enough; her heart is heavier than usual. No reason, no anniversary, no trigger that she can easily identify. Some days are just like this: they are the days when before she drifts off to fitful, restless sleep she wraps herself in his Harvard sweater, the sweater that smells more of her than him now but if she really concentrates and imagines herself to be back in his office she can still remember: coffee and that aftershave she loves, the one she sometimes, on the bad days, sneaks into the drugstore and squirts just once, to stop herself forgetting.

As if she ever could. Or would. Or wanted to.

She opens her eyes to wipe them and just beyond the weeping fountain there's a blur that looks like him, but all blurs do, she knows that by now, knows that from all those moments like this when she's held her breath and reminded herself that it can't be him. Only this time the shape walks like him and it's wearing the coat he once wrapped around her and then he's close enough that even through the tears and the darkness there's no denying it.

"It's freezing out here," he says, and he takes his coat off, her hero all over again. Drapes it round her shoulders before sitting down next to her.

"What are you doing here?" she says eventually.

"I like this place," he says, and there is tenderness and love and kindness and concern in his eyes, she knows that from his tone of voice, but she can't bring herself to look at him. "I come here to think."

"What about?" She hears herself say, as though she had not lost the right to ask. He doesn't answer. He doesn't answer, and they listen to the fountain, and the tears come again, how she wishes she weren't so powerless to stop them. She forces herself to look at him and she falls in love with his coffee-colored eyes all over again and despite the coat she shivers. "What about, Josh?"

"You," he says, looking straight at her, his eyes holding hers. "You."

And he gently wipes her tears away and he holds her, warm and tight and tender and strong, as she'd longed for him to hold her back then, as she longs for him to hold her always.

Thanks to Sarah Salway at www.sarahsalway.blogspot.com for the "where I like to sit" prompt.

Impact winter: risking everything

"If you don't risk anything, you risk more." - Erica Jung

She knows the theory; who doesn't. But it's not as if leaving this job is risking anything.

It's risking everything.

Risking her identity. Who is she without this? This is where she rebuilt her life; her foundation. Take the foundation away, and what are you left with?

Exactly.

Risking her self-confidence. She can do this blindfolded and standing on her head and in all the other clichéd ways. Hell, she can even do it on no sleep and unlike the blindfold and the headstand she has actually tried that so she'd know. Any other job: the headaches that come with change and learning something new, the tears of frustration in locked bathroom cubicles when she's not instantly capable of excellence. Been years since she tried it, but she doesn't remember it being much fun.

And then there's risking him. She's risking them, this thing they have, whatever it is, this thing she loves and hates and smiles about before she cries herself to sleep, this thing she keeps coming back to and hopes one day to define, but only if there's a happy ending: there's risk in that too. Risk in everything.

She's risking hurting him, and she wishes more than anything that she didn't have to, but she sees no other way out. No exit. Hell is other people.

He is not hell, of course he's not. He, with his arrogance and his insensitivity, his inability to take initiative in resolving this mess, is not hell, no way. He, with his dimples and his fluffy hair and his passion for justice and his longing to see this nation be all it can be, he, will his vulnerability and his soft heart, is not heaven, she would never say that, because she's too sophisticated and grown up now for that teenage talk, that cheesiness. But.

She's risking losing everything, but she has to risk him, or she loses herself, or loses her love for him, are the two synonymous these days, she can't remember not loving him, she can't remember not dreaming about him, she can 't remember why she didn't do this sooner, this risking everything, because with every day it's become more impossible and she should have done it years ago, shoud've said she couldn't work for him because she loved him and she was sorry but he was going to have to choose, assistant or girlfriend, but she hadn't risked it, not yet, because what if?

But she was risking it now, because she just couldn't not anymore, risking everything to have a chance of gaining him, who was her reason for living, her reason for surviving, her reason for keeping going despite the nightmares that smelled of burning rubber and hospitals and the frustration of not having him kiss her.

She was risking it now, risking her everything, to gain him, her more than everything.

Thanks to creativewritingprompts.com for the, erm, creative writing prompt.

20 Hours in LA: the journey home

Out of the corner of her eye she watches him. Watches him doze. She knows he’s not sleeping; he breathes differently when he’s asleep. Not that she sees him asleep that often, not as often as she should, not as often as she –

Anyway.

She doesn’t know, now, if she did the right thing. She was sure at the time, but then it made no sense to her that anyone would ever say no to Josh, even with a million other options, even in a tricky situation. She’d never contemplated the possibility of Joey sending him back to her looking wounded and sad and rejected and defeated and so in need of a hug that she’d given in, against her better judgement, held him and not said any of the things that came to mind because none of them seemed like the appropriate thing to say to your boss in that kind of situation, even with the lingering tipsiness and sleep deprivation.

And now he is dozing, and reliving it, she knows, and there is nothing she can do to stop his mind whirring. She knows full well it never stops anyway, like the engine of this airplane that they don’t hear anymore, that they’ll only hear when it is switched off back in DC. Like, she supposes, the background hum of her deep, deep love for him that has been ever-present for so long that she only notices it on those rare occasions when she wakes up and her first thought isn’t of him. (Of course, if the first thing she heard in the morning wasn’t his voice on the telephone, there might be some chance of that happening more.)

“I’m sorry, Josh,” she whispers, squeezing his hand imperceptibly. Sorry for what, she couldn’t tell him, doesn’t know it herself. Sorry for encouraging him to be proactive in relationships? Not exactly. Sorry it didn’t work out with Joey? Not completely. She knows she should want him to be happy, and she does, she really does, but. You know.

That must be it, then: she’s sorry to see him so hurt.

Sorry, so sorry, that she can’t do more to take the pain away.

He squeezes her hand back, gently; doesn’t seem to want to let it go.

“Mmmm,” he says, and she knows he wants her to think he is asleep. She knows that when his head lulls forward and find itself on her shoulder, he wants her to think it just sort of happened all by itself – that he tumbled sideways into her.

She wants to whisper to him to go to sleep; she wants to put her arm around him; she wants to ruffle his beautiful hair. She wants to –

But anyway.

For now she goes on playing the game: the boss-and-assistant-game, the best-friends game. The game where he won’t admit his need for her, for her closeness, where she will send him into the arms of other women to protect her own heart and both of their jobs, all the time praying that he will not quite find happiness there, not the kind of happiness that she knows is in store for the two of them, just for the taking, if only.

Where?

Three non-anniversaries had come and gone, unremarkable save for the carefully chosen flowers that would appear on her desk and the coffee - cream and three sugars - on his, with the note that said “The flowers are beautiful; thanks for taking me back.” (If anyone knew how to use semi-colons properly, it was Donna.) That’s what he hoped the note said, anyway. “Don’t forget your briefing memo for senior staff” was a distinct possibility too, what with the distinctive penmanship thing.

Three non-anniversaries since she’d last left him standing like this, bewildered, uncharacteristically speechless, and catching himself wondering, "what did you mean when you said -", praying she wouldn’t play him at his own game. It was just something I said...

She’d done it again.

“So,” she’d said, leaning on his doorframe, which somehow never looked complete unless she adorned it with her radiant beauty. Wo, he’d tell himself, when he caught a ridiculous thought like that flying through his brain. Enough with the adjectives already. What are you, writing a teenage romance novel?

“I’ve had this letter.”

This couldn’t be good; these crusades never ended well, at least not for him. “Uh-oh.”

“There’s this guy – “ she glanced down at the page. “He wants to propose to his girlfriend outside the Oval Office on a White House tour.”

Was it unspooling time again? That had come round quick. “Is this the start of a joke? Because I’ve got quite a lot of work...”

“No. It’s a real – thing.” She said, fixing him with her blue eyes. Those blue eyes ... Focus, he told himself, she’s still speaking.

“So is it okay to give permission?”

“Why does he want to propose in the White House anyway?” He was really trying here. Was she noticing how - well, how not him - he was being?

“They met during the...” His heart somersaulted when he realised she was looking down at her shoes, unable to hold eye contact for the final word - “campaign” . Had she practised this a million times, practised saying it looking straight at him so it wouldn’t seem like a big deal, like she wasn’t hinting?

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he said, absent-mindedly, because his mind was absent; it had raced ahead. He wished it wouldn’t do that, but it did, more often than he’d like anyone to know, and further than he’d ever admit, except maybe to her on their wedding night... Damn it. He’d done it again. “Is that what you would want?”

“Well,” she said, more steadily now, “it would depend on who was asking.”

“If it was one of your Republican friends?”

“Well, then, definitely not. It would feel like some kind of betrayal.”

“Of me?”

Who was he kidding. Like he had any rights like that over her. All these years and not one date. The yearly flowers didn’t really count. Did they?

She shook her head, smiled kindly as you might at a first grader who had just put all of his effort into working out that two plus two equalled five. “Of my ideals, Josh. And the idea of marriage as partnership...”

“A beach in Hawaii would work well, though,” she continued, her eyes sparkling like the diamond ring he’d seen at Tiffany in Chevy Chase and so often imagined on her finger.

“But if it was – someone who –“ He swallowed hard. He didn’t know where he was going with this, but he wanted to prolong this moment, prolong the pretence of the alternative universe in which he could sweep her up in his arms and kiss her till neither of them could breathe... Anyway. Knew too that she had the power to smash this dream with just a couple of words or a scathing look. “You know, someone you had a White House history with?”

“Josh,” she said softly, and this time her head was held high, her eyes plunged in his. “If it was you, it wouldn’t matter where you asked me.”

And then she was gone, back to her desk, with her golden hair and her ocean blue eyes and her smile – that smile - and there he was, speechless, bewildered and (what the heck) in love.

Thanks to @politiKitz, aka Katie in Kansas, for pointing me to the story of Franco Ripple and Ashley Ligas, which was the inspiration for this ficlet, as reported by politico.com - http://www.politico.com/click/stories/1001/obamaholics_engaged_at_w_h_gates.html.

On the plane to Hawaii...

The kiss was deep, hungry, passionate, as all their kisses were, as they were bound to be after all those years of buried yearning.

“Marry me,” said Josh, pausing for breath somewhere over an ocean.

“Okay.”

In her response he recognised the Donna he’d fallen for so long ago, the Donna whose beautiful smile and half-amused eyes had suggested such tenderness and a hint of pleasure when he’d suggested putting her on a stamp, the Donna who humoured him because sometimes – always - that was easiest.

“Okay?” He smiled back, perplexed and amused himself. This was her response?

“Josh,” she said, suddenly serious, and that slightly scolding tone he recognised too.

“Of course I’ll marry you. Tomorrow on a beach in Hawaii, if you like.”

He leant in; she pulled away.

“Of course I’ll marry you if you ask me again. But I want you to have a chance to really think about it. It’s all happened so fast... “

“Nine years is what you call fast?”

“You’re not really going to try to suggest I was the one taking my time, are you?”

"No," he said, appropiately repentant, he hoped.

“Josh.” Not repentant enough, apparently. She’d pulled away again. “I want you to think about it long and hard first.”

“You think it’s not crossed my mind in the last nine years?”

“Has it?”

“Of course. Hell, we were practically married anyway.”

“Except for the good part.” She was grinning like a schoolgirl; couldn’t help it. Words like good and nice were hardly up to the task.

“Yeah. And that is, to be fair, a very important part.”

“Keep talking.”

“Donna...”

“Or, you know, not talking. The other thing is good too.”

Then he was the one who pulled away, just slightly, whispered into her ear. “I’ll get you an amazing ring, I promise... and we can have lots of curly-haired, dimpled children. I know how you love the dimples.”

“Okay,” she said again, wondering if she hadn't tripped over something and stumbled into some kind of freaky alternative universe where all her daydreams actually did come true.

“Okay, you’ll marry me?”

“You think it hasn’t cross my mind in the last nine years?”

This time neither of them pulled away.

The Wedding (Ellie Bartlet's - nobody get excited!!)

There’s a seat free next to me. Now, how about that for a coincidence? I don’t know who saved the seat. Was it me? Oh. I think it was me. It’s the champagne. We’ll blame the champagne.

I really saved a seat for Josh? Like we’re a couple or something? Like sitting next to him at a wedding is the most natural thing in the world? Which of course it is. It is, isn’t it? Me and him. Him and me.

Okay, we’ll definitely blame the champagne. Get a g r i p, girl.

Still, it’s very fortunate that there is a free seat next to me. It’s fortunate too that he sees it, that he slides in next to me, just in time to watch the entrance of the bride.

I squeeze his hand. I want him to know, I’m here Josh, I love you, I don’t know what’s going on with this electoral math, I don’t know what it means for you personally on a professional level (do you have another level?), but I’m here. Drink some champagne with me. Let’s forget about the election, just for one night. That’s a song, isn’t it – we could be heroes, forever and ever, we could be heroes, just for one day... Well, that part is kind of a bit about the election. So let’s not use that song.

He squeezes my hand back. He’s registered. Registered that I’m here for him. Registered, let us hope, that I am an attractive woman in need of entertainment.

But no. No, that’s not what this is about. (I mean, maybe it is a little bit. Maybe it was the boredom that drove me to sampling perhaps a little too much of that delicious champagne. Did I mention the champagne?) But I’m not going to make demands on him right now. I’m going to be here for him, because he needs me.

I’m always going to be here for him. He knows that, right? That’s what the hand squeezing really means. I’m here for you now because I’ll always be here for you.

But after this election is over, there had better be some entertainment.

He’s still holding my hand.

He’s not looking at me, though. It’s as if he can’t allow himself to admit to feeling what he’s feeling, he can’t deal with it right now (will he deal with it ever?). But right now he doesn’t have the energy to fight this.

Doesn’t have the energy to fight his need of me.

Too much champagne. Definitely too much champagne.

But I’m damned if I’m letting go of this hand. I’ll never let go, says Rose in Titanic... I’m the king of the world, they say together earlier. That’s how we’ll feel together when we win, right? Him and me at the helm of a ship with hopefully a happier fate than that one... You’re the king of my world, Josh...

He’s looking at me now, though. Looking at me in the same tone that he would use to say “Donna?” when he thought I was about to unspool. I didn’t say any of that out loud, did I? Please tell me I didn’t. There’ll be plenty of time for that later. I mean, a lot later. Like after the election. Maybe. I’m hoping. A girl can always hope. Is it hot in here? Why is the room spinning?

Why are we standing up? Oh, the vows. Josh is holding me up. Josh is holding me up! I should be holding him up. I’m meant to be looking after him. That’s what the hand squeezing was about. The hand holding. That is what it was about, isn’t it? Oh, I’m so confused.

But he’s holding me up and his eyes are locked on me again and above the humming in my ears I can hear “in sickness and in health...” and then he’s whispering in my ear “and even when you’re drunk...”. What? I’m not drunk. What are you implying?

Wait up, though. Are you saying that you want to add that to our wedding vows?

No. I don’t think that’s what he’s saying.

Is that what he’s saying?

He has such beautiful eyes. Usually I’m too distracted by his dimples. But he has beautiful eyes. I want to dive into them. I want to -

We’re sitting down again. We missed our moment. That was our moment right there. Why is CJ looking at me funny? Maybe I should take my head off his shoulder. But it fits so nicely there...

“Donna.” This time he is actually speaking, incredibly softly, and it’s not just in my head. At least I don’t think so. I should mind a lot more that he’s ruining my hair by running his hand through it. I really should. (It took me so long to put it up just right.) I don’t though. Not one bit.

“It’s not like I’m not enjoying this. But...” I love the way his whispering tickles my ear.

“But what?” I’m doing the big wide innocent eyes thing. I do that well.

“People will... talk.”

Serioulsy –that whole Bambi thing. I’m brilliant. “About what?”

“You know... Us,” He can't quite meet my gaze for that one syllable.

“So let ‘em.”

“Yeah.” Is it submission? Is he humoring me? In any case I love the way that he at least tries make eye contact when he says it.

It’s worked. My secwet plan to fight electowal math. He’s not thinking about that now. He’s thinking about me and what people might be thinking about him and me. I can tell, because a smile twitches on his lips from time to time as the service continues.

“If I promise to dance with you,” he whispers, still holding me up, as the wedding party files out, “do you promise to drink a lot of water very quickly?”

“For you, Josh, anything.”

Oh no. I really, really did say that out loud. Oh ground swallow me up. N o w. Please?

He raises an eyebrow. “Anything?”

I squeeze his hand in return. If only he knew.

Wakeful in Washington...

I’m slowly and blissfully sinking into much-needed, well-deserved sleep, with Josh’s arms around my waist, as became our custom years ago. The nearness of him never gets old, not even now that we’ve been together longer than we were, well, not.

“Daddy.”

Her first word ever. And since then, ever her first word.

“Daddy.”

Maybe her devotion to him is something she picked up from me, in which case there definitely shouldn’t be that slight pinching feeling around my heart when she always calls for him first. But...

She’s louder, more insistent this time. “Daddy. I can’t sleep.”

Josh untangles himself from me, running his hand down my arm to underline his reluctance at leaving me. That doesn’t get old either. Even in half-asleep states such as this one, I know awide grin is creeping across my face. I smile a lot these days. There’s worry, of course, arguments sometimes, there are sleepless nights not always for the right reasons, and there’s more time apart than I would choose, but there is a lot of smiling.

“Hey, Pumpkin.”

He scoops her up in his arms, and she wraps her arms around him, blonde curls not so much framing her bleary-eyed face as messily crowding around it, as if in her toddlerhood she had missed the edges when coloring herself in.

“You tried naming the States like I taught you?” He’s carrying her to her bedroom, putting her back in bed I guess, sliding her hair behind her ear as he loves to do with both of us.

I can imagine her earnest nodding, her wide blue eyes looking up at the only man who matters to her. (Long may that last.) “But I forgot Wisconsin and I had to look it up on that list you made for me.”

She forgot Wisconsin? How can she forget the place she spends every other Christmas and countless other holidays? I bet she didn’t forget Connecticut.

“So then I did it again and I even remembered all the M states and the New States and even Ohio and stuff, ‘cause that’s where Aunt CJ comes from even though I always forget, and Washington that’s a state even though Washington DC isn’t...”

This little girl will go far.

Or maybe not so far from here. The White House is in her blood. Her father would have the head of any boss who had her there till 1 am, no matter how charming. I shudder to think what he would do to one who bought her flowers and sabotaged her dates. He will have to be kept firmly under control. Still, I have a good few years to think of a workable strategy.

“So then I did them all and I still wasn’t asleep.”

“Did you try listing the Presidents?”

“Yeah. But it only works when we do it together.”

His dimples will be telling her that he loves being the centre of her world. So easily sweet-talked by his darling daughter. There’s a reason we called her Abigail – “father’s joy”. When he held her for the first time, he was transfixed. Imagine that – Josh Lyman, speechless. I recognised the tenderness and the wonder I saw in his eyes in a hospital on a much less happy day, years ago, miles away, when he couldn’t say “I love you”. This time he could, and he did, to both of us.

“How did we make something so beautiful?” He still often asks me that. I smile and remind him it was actually me who did most of the work.

“So I guess it’s kind of fair that she looks so much like you,” he’ll usually conclude, but every time I’m sure I detect just the slightest hint of envy in his tone.

“Not that I mind,” he’ll add, and kiss me. So it’s a conversation I really don’t mind having over and over. Another thing that never gets old. Unlike our daughter, sadly.... I want to keep her at seven forever. She’s her mother’s joy too. I hope that will not change with age.

I imagine he’s lying on her bed next to her now, as he often does, transfixed again by her loveliness and her bright mind as though discovering her for the first time, taking her little hand in his, counting off on her fingers, as they go through their routine. “George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson...”

Safely wrapped up in her daddy, Abi’s voice is drifting to the happy place of sweet dreams and turning to a whisper. She does make it to the end, though. “Uncle Jed, Uncle Matt, Uncle Sam, and you.”

Even when she’s only half-awake, she’s a pretty stubborn and determined little girl (guess it’s what you could call a dominant gene) and there is no point arguing with her.

But Josh, probably kneeling now and leaning over to brush the hair from her forehead and kiss her goodnight, does always add, “Someone’s gotta be the guy those guys count on. That’s my role.” This may be his way of letting her down gently, but I think perhaps it’s a little subtle for a seven-year-old. Still, at least she won’t be able to claim in later life he didn’t warn her.

“Good night, Princess.”

“Good night, daddy.”

He walks away, probably backwards – yes, definitely backwards, I hear a muffled “ouch” as he bumped into the wall behind him – so he can steal as much of a glance of her as possible. I wonder, did he ever do that with me?

“Daddy?” Her sleepy voice calls him back.

“You’re my favorite President.”

Out, I assume, come the dimples as his smile, his whole self, expand with pride. This isn't part of the routine. This is straight from the heart.

“Hey.” He climbs back into bed, strokes my leg with his foot, treasuring the closeness that never gets old to him either.

“Hey,” I say, as tenderly as I can because there’s something I want to clear up and I don’t want it to sound like a rebuke when I do. “You’re not going to become President just because your daughter asked you to, are you?” I’m hoping my voice doesn’t betray my increased heart rate. This question has actually been wandering around my subconscious for quite a long time now, and not only my subconscious: Helen and I have a lunch planned. You know, just... in case. I want to be ready. You never know, do you?

“There are worse reasons,” he whispers softly in my ear, then nuzzles into my neck, kissing me gently.

I love it when he does this. He knows it, too. “Josh.”

"Mmmm?"

“You’ll always be my favorite President, too.”

That discussion can wait. Come to think of it, so can sleep.