Author's Note: I will admit to being hopelessly in love with this movie, but I'm not sure I could ever do it justice with my writing. I got the urge to write this though and I couldn't help myself. It took me no time to right this first part, but the second chapter (companion piece I suppose) took a lot longer to figure out on paper. Anyway, I felt this site was particularly lacking in fanfics for The Proposal, though what's here is overall quite amazing. So here I am posting my small contribution to the pot. And if this is well received I may be inclined to write something else later.
Disclaimer: I do not in any way own The Proposal, any publicly recognizable characters, such as Andrew Paxton or Margret Tate, nor am I in any way affiliated with the owners/producers of the film. However, I would really love to have a Ryan Reynolds and/or and Sandra Bullock of my own (especially Ryan Reynolds) and Christmas is right around the corner, sorta. =]
Andrew Paxton was a young boy the first time he'd wished to escape his isolated Alaskan home and overbearing father. While the other boys his age were busy collecting and trading baseball cards, he was devouring book after book. A voracious reader since he'd learned to understand the written word, Andrew kept a collection of his favorites beside his bed. It changed as he grew older, moving from chapter books to short novels to Penguin classics.
By the time he was in his teens, his favorites consisted of things like Don Quixote, Huck Finn, Dubliners, and Waiting for Godot. The latter he felt particularly connected to. Two guys waiting by a road for a third to come meet them but never showing up. The quest that doesn't happen. It felt like his life. Stuck in one place, waiting in vain for the chance at something better.
His friends teased him for his summer reading plans. Every year he would make a list of books to read over the summer with one author for each letter of the alphabet. The guys he went to school with laughed, but Gert never did. Either way, it couldn't possibly be worse than his father's obvious contempt. Joe Paxton couldn't have been more transparent about his opinions on his son's chosen passion. But it was his method of mental escape. He was Icarus and books were his wings. He wanted those wings, metaphorical or physical, to escape and his didn't care how he got them.
The first time Andrew had read Twain's Huck Finn he was twelve and had gone out to the tool shed (more like a tool house) and got an ax far too large for him. He went to the stand of trees behind the house and attempted to cut one down. Chuck, a friend of his from school, had come over and stopped him before he had hurt himself. As he explained to Chuck, he was just trying to get a big enough log to make a canoe so he could escape. He just wanted to float down the river like Huck and Jim, except he had an ocean instead of a river and it wouldn't take him where he wanted to go.
Within a month, the loggers had cut down a tree for his family to cut up for firewood and it didn't take long for Andrew to make off with a good portion of it. Over that summer, and each following year, he had taken to carving out the inside of the canoe with an ax and a hatchet. Every full-blown argument would end in him taking out his frustrations on that canoe, trying desperately to escape, followed by a cool down with whichever of his alphabet reading list he was working on at the time.
Even while he was dating Gert, Andrew wanted to escape. That was why he'd asked her to elope to New York with him. When she'd said no, he simply packed his bags and left anyway. It was finally his chance to escape the suffocating disdain on his father and the overall suffocating feeling of Sitka. There was no way he was giving up his dream for a girl, especially not one that was going to encase his feet in cement and toss him back into the inescapable waters of his hometown and watch as he floundered and gasped for air. No, it was time for him to be going.
New York was everything he'd hoped it would be and nothing like Sitka. At first he worked a lot of part-time jobs as he tried to bolster enough of a resume in the city to get a job at a publishing company. When he finally did, it wasn't what he expected. He was answering phones and doing messenger runs to other floors and offices. It wasn't much, but it was a foot in the door and for the first time in his twenty-something years, he didn't want to escape. He had no desire to run away and he actually found himself putting down the dreaded "roots."
He started renting a small studio apartment that he was filling with his books and he'd even started dating again. Slowly but surely he was working his way up the ranks at the independent publishing company he was working for. It was a shock when the company went under and Andrew suddenly found himself with a stapler of his own, but no job.
It took almost no time for him to pick up a job at a bookstore and a weekend bartending gig to supplement his measly paycheck. Of course, he was only waiting for a better job to come along. This wasn't the side of New York he wanted to be a part of and the only part of his day he didn't want to escape from was the time he spent in the beautiful second hand bookstore he worked in, occasionally falling in love with another book.
When Andrew finally landed his position at Colden Books as Margret Tate's assistant, he thought it was his chance. Surely she would notice his potential and ability and promote him as soon as she found a replacement. But, that didn't happen. For three long years he waited for an escape from the hell of being her underling. It didn't come.
Although he complained with the rest of his coworkers and often agreed she was a terrorist, in all honesty, Andrew didn't want to escape Margret Tate. Sure she was bossy and told him what to do, but as his boss that was her job. She was crazy and a terrorist and she had no problem humiliating him. If he was being truthful with himself (which wasn't very often and hardly ever with anyone else), it was the midnight Tampax runs that got him.
They said, "I need someone. I need you. I depend on you." They said words Margret could never tell him. She trusted him and relied on him and obviously liked him if she kept him for three years. Though he sometimes ignored it, Andrew was intelligent enough to know she liked him if she wanted him as her assistant. She didn't want to lose him. And while the stagnant, and somewhat unappealing, position was far less than ideal, it was also somewhere he wanted to be. He didn't want to escape the totalitarian thumb of Margret Tate because he felt needed, wanted and silently appreciated. This was a marked improvement from Sitka, Alaska.
When Margret had forced him to marry her he felt suddenly suffocated again, like he had fallen into a freezing cold lake and couldn't get his head about water. As the weekend wore on, things got a little better and then his dad had to stick his opinions in where they didn't belong. It was the first time he'd wanted to escape that badly. Dragging out the old canoe and his good friends and ax and hatchet, Andrew set to his usual remedy. The barely repressed anger and frustration rolled off him in waves throughout the evening.
That is until Margret managed to show him that it wasn't so bad after all. They were laughing together and he realized that night and the following two days that she made him not want to escape. It was the most content he'd been in Sitka since he'd realized there was a whole world out there and his father wasn't in it. He was happy with Margret; she made him happy. She made him crazy, but also happy. Most importantly, he was himself with Margret and she didn't mind who that was, Maybe Margret was his escape.
Then he was running, running after her. For the first time in his life he was running to someone rather than from them. And he was glad that someone was Margret. He wouldn't need that canoe anymore. She would be his escape from the world.
He would be her roots and she would be his wings.
So there is the first half of this little piece. Please leave a review if you feel so inclined.