Disclaimers: The West Wing and all the familiar faces belong to the creative genius of Aaron Sorkin and to his gifted team of producers and writers. I've borrowed them for my own amusement and that of others just for fun and because I need a life outside of my job, for which this will have to suffice for the moment.
This is the fifth in the Roses series, which includes Afterglow, The Leash, and At the Pleasure of the President as well.
*****
Okay. I'm confused now. Thoroughly and utterly confused. Yesterday, the President of the United States offered my assistant a job. Not just any job, either. Oh, no. Jed Bartlet wants my Donna to be his personal secretary. He thinks she has what it takes to step into Mrs. Landingham's shoes.
I have no doubt that this is the case. On the very rare occasions that I had the opportunity to speak with Mrs. Landingham about such things, she told me that Donna was the very best of a very promising lot of the people who actually run the country – by which she most definitely did not mean people like me.
However…
Donna is and has been since she stepped into my life the single unique individual who holds me together in the office. I get index cards with notes about things that I don't know I need to know until magically the information is at my fingertips just when I realize I need to know. She watches the clock for me, arranges my meetings, and reminds me to eat lunch everyday. She makes me laugh and she knows when all I need is a commiserating smile or a brief hug. If she has one failing, it's that she doesn't, on principle, bring me coffee.
Not at the office, anyway – and herein lies the root of my present conundrum. If Donna takes the position of Personal Secretary to the President of the United States, she will no longer be my assistant. Thus, there will be no perceived impropriety at the fact that Donna does bring me coffee in bed every morning. That the coffee is not hot by the time I'm ready to consume it is neither here nor there, although I suppose tepid coffee is healthier than the cigarette that I'd be craving after Donna's wake up ritual were I a smoker.
I digress.
I want so much to shout from the rooftops that I love her with every fiber of my being. I can't under present circumstances – the MS scandal would be nothing in comparison. But if she were to leave my service at the office, I could. We have to talk about this – which must be why the President left us here in Corpus Christi until Tuesday morning with only 8 hours of meetings to attend to in the mean time.
*****
Donna's just now coming back into the bedroom we shared last night, and I can't tell if she's happy or upset by the news she obviously has to impart from her phone call. She smoothes the front of her sapphire gown with a knowing gleam, and I think that she's about to tell me after that tease that we have to be ready to meet our mini-motorcade in 10 minutes.
"That was CJ," she says, sliding down onto my lap and wrapping one deliciously long and well-muscled arm around my neck. "Morales needs to postpone the meeting until Monday lunch time. According to CJ, we're to enjoy the Sparkling City by the Sea on him until then."
I lay my head into Donna's shoulder, breathing in her scent and relishing the sudden freedom from obligation for a weekend – even if that sudden freedom sounds entirely too convenient to have been coincidence. "I'd rather enjoy it on you," I reply in my best bedroom voice, and am rewarded with a toe-curling kiss.
Hours later, as we stroll hand-in-hand along the beautiful sea wall ringing Corpus Christi Bay, Donna lets me into her thoughts about the President's offer.
"I can't believe he wants me," she says in an abrupt change of subject from the 20-minute discussion we'd been having about Selena, the Tejano music star who lived and died in Corpus Christi. "I mean, I'm not worthy to take over for Mrs. Landingham at all."
Donna's lack of self-esteem, once something that I barely noticed, had begun to bother me just before Cliff entered the picture. It has only been getting worse in the months since the lie and revelation of her diary, and even though nothing has or will come of those little problems, I haven't yet been able to begin the real work necessary to help this incredible woman discover her true worth. Part of me is afraid that if she does realize her worth, she'll understand that I am just as much of a gomer as every other man she's ever dated – but I love her enough to do it anyway. So I'm starting now.
I usher her over to one of the gazebos that line the sea wall – Miradores del Mar, I think Donna said they're called – and sit her down in so she's cradled in my arms and able to look at me as I talk. "Donnatella," I say in a low voice, praying that the love I have for her will come through in every syllable, "not only are you eminently qualified to step into Mrs. Landingham's role, you're the very person she would recommend to the president if she were here to do so." I don't think that's a stretch, but obviously Donna does, because her eyes – those eyes that are the deep blue of the early afternoon sun on the waters of the bay behind her – are clouded with disbelief. "It's true," I insist, willing her to believe. "Mrs. Landingham told me herself on at least three separate occasions that you are, in her words, 'a 300-watt bulb in a panorama of 100's.'"
That elicits a small smile; Donna obviously remembers as well as I do the day early on in the administration when the otherwise implacable Delores Landingham referred to the perpetrator of a major secretarial disaster – one that almost led to an international crisis with Canada – as "dimmer than a 10-watt Christmas light."
"She also told me that you," I pause to kiss the furrows on her forehead away, "are the very best of the brightest." I stop, debating with myself whether to tell Donna the rest of that particular discussion, but seeing that the disbelief is only slightly muted, I plunge on. "Mrs. Landingham also informed me that the only thing standing in your way of achieving great things in your own right is me."
It had hurt to hear that from the woman I appreciated as another mother figure. The day she said that to me, she had come to my apartment bearing cookies one afternoon while I recuperated from Rosslyn and not so ceremoniously shoed Donna out for a few hours of personal time. "Joshua Lyman," she had said, waggling her finger at me from her perch in the bedside chair, "you'd best understand how precious a gift that young woman is. She's willing to sacrifice herself for you – and I mean everything." I hadn't been ready to hear that at the time, but I have recently begun to understand. And to appreciate both Donna's willingness to sacrifice and Mrs. Landingham's perception.
Donna pulls herself upright but doesn't try to escape my embrace entirely. "No," she whispers, "no, that's not true! I – "
"Donnatella, hush," I say, moving my hand from her shoulder so I can still her lips with a gentle caress of my fingertips. "You can only do so much as the 'Deputy Deputy White House Chief of Staff," I continue, earning another brief smile for using her title for herself. "We haven't talked much about the future – next year or five years from now, whichever. But you have so much potential, so much to give and learn and do…"
Now she does leave my arms, and she stands up to wander aimlessly within the small open structure. I sense that silence is good now, so I just watch her as she paces, enjoying the way the wind off the bay plays with her long blond hair even as I worry about the frown on her face.
"What about you?" Donna finally asks, her words arriving at my ear on the breeze from where she stands facing the water rather than me. "I want you to reach your potential, too – to be the Senator from Connecticut or Vice President or even President someday. But we have to be a team to do that."
Until this moment, I had not realized that she aspires so highly for me. I am taken aback at this revelation, because it shows far more confidence in the two of us together than I have in myself and than she has in herself. Finding the right words takes a few minutes, which pass with the hubbub and bustle of spring breakers, the squawking of sea gulls, the lapping of waves against the rocky breakwaters, and the susurrus of the palm trees moving in the wind as accompaniment. As I begin to speak, I hear tears in my voice. "Donna, we will…" I swallow, breathe deeply, begin again after I go to her and wrap my arms around her from behind.. "Donna, we will always be a team."
She turns in my arms, lays her head on my shoulder, stands wordless and shaking with suppressed tears.
"I mean that, Donna. We don't have to work together as boss and assistant to be a team. We just have to be together."
The eyes that meet mine are brimming with tears. One spills over, and I wipe it away with my thumb. More come; I kiss each one away, tasting the salt on my lips as I soothe the woman I love with so much more than I ever thought I had to give. And now I know what I need to do.
"Donnatella Moss, will you marry me?"