Hi everyone,

On the final day of the 30 Days of Ugly Betty Challenge over at B&B, I take us back to the Pilot episode for a peek inside what (could have) happened between Daniel's visit to Queens and Betty's return to the Mode conference room. One-shot.

I love feedback.—Anne

Disclaimer: I own nothing here.

B&B Challenge: 30 Days of Ugly Betty: Day 30

Try Me

Betty really didn't have to think about it.

It was a no-brainer, really. She needed the job. Rent was due in a couple of weeks and her dad's medication was running low. If she didn't want to peddle Herbalux or go back to scooping poop at the Queens Kitty Clinic, she'd better accept Daniel's apology and take him up on his offer.

"His offer?" her father said that evening at the dinner table as he scooped refried beans onto his plate. "More like his desperate plea."

"Yeah, but he's rich and is probably used to getting whatever he wants," Hilda put in. "He treated you like crap, mamita. Besides, you could make a lot of money selling—."

"Hilda, I am not going to sell Herbalux."

"What is this, déjà vu?" Justin asked around a mouthful of chicken mole. "Aunt Betty, you should go back. It's Mode magazine! Besides, I didn't hear what your boss said this afternoon, but Grandpa says he sounded serious."

"He did." Ignacio nodded. "He sounded sincere and, really, like he might be in over his head with this new job. Just think how much you could learn, mija, if you go help him figure it out."

"I don't know." Betty picked at her salad. "I don't see what I can learn from walking his friends' dogs or booking his tanning sessions. Or making sure his girlfriends—or whatever they're called—don't run into each other at his loft. But we do need the money."

"He tans?" Justin made a dubious face. "That doesn't even seem possible. I've seen him on Fashion TV . . ."

"Pretty pasty," Hilda agreed. "So, Betty—what did Walter want when he was here earlier?"

"I don't know, and I don't care." Betty stuffed lettuce in her mouth and glared at her sister. "He cheated on me—with Gina Gambarro!—and that is something I can't forgive."

"Well, I think you should forgive Daniel Meade," said Justin. "Aunt Betty, it's Mode! You have to think about the opportunities."

"He was a monster to her," Hilda argued. Then, to Betty: "You'd really go back and work for somebody like that? I mean, he's cute, but—"

"What has that got to do with anything?" Betty spiked a tomato with her fork. "I just want to get some experience out of it. Well, that and a paycheck."

Hilda shrugged and looked away. "It's your life."

Middle of the night, and Daniel was reclined on his bed in his SoHo loft, gazing at the pattern the city lights made on the wall across the room. Even the high-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets weren't helping him sleep tonight. Maybe he should put out a booty call. Suzanne. Amanda. Shivani. Even Tabitha. Yeah—maybe tonight, he could finally get lucky with Tabitha. He reached for his cell phone.

Nah, 1 a.m. was probably too late to call. Besides, while some good sex might distract him for a few minutes, he wasn't really in the mood. This damn job. Why had he even accepted it? Hell, he knew why. It was called money. And a not-so-subtle message from his father that if he didn't take it—and succeed—he'd be cast out of the family. So between that and this recent—and ludicrous—desire to please his dad, here he was. Just turned 32 and so stressed out that he couldn't even get excited about the prospect of a blow job.

And for what? Certain doom, that's what. Because after all these years of staking his claim as the family fuck-up, it's not like he had the tools to change. He had no idea how to run a fashion magazine. This was supposed to be Alex's job.

Alex. Better not to think about his brother. All it did was make him crazy. With regret. Bitterness. Memories of things best forgotten about. Things that made him almost unbearably sad. But something had compelled him to tell Betty about Alex today. It was like, maybe, if he acknowledged his dead brother and confessed his own stresses, Betty would see that he had problems, too, and that he wasn't such a horrible guy. And maybe she would come back and be his assistant.

Probably not much chance of that, though. Not after what he'd put her through this past week. He tossed himself over onto his stomach, groaning right out loud. That damn Philippe Michel. Obviously that photographer was still pissed off about things from a few years back—what was his girlfriend's name? Whatever. It didn't matter. Wilhelmina was probably behind this whole Fabia disaster anyway. She and that high-nosed assistant of hers.

Thinking about assistants brought his mind back to Betty. He flopped over again, his stomach twisting with the unhappy vision of Betty's flaming, ashamed face at the photo shoot yesterday. And the way she tore him a new one afterward. He grimaced, wishing he could shut out the memory of her accusing voice, rattled with tears: "God forbid you had to work with the ugly girl your dad forced you to hire!" He also wished he could say he hadn't meant to hurt her, because there was a huge part of him that could never be so cruel—the part he struggled to smash down so hard all the time. It was the same part that made him ache if he let himself think about his brother. Or his mother. The part that had boiled up numerous times this past week—when he stared out the loft window and saw Betty sitting across the street, small inside her ugly blue jacket. And when he chased her down outside the photo shoot. The part of him that spewed itself all over her living room this afternoon and had him confessing things he never had intended to share. It was this part of him that made him believe it was safer to not think too much about anybody other than Daniel Meade.

But the fact remained—he had purposely hurt Betty. So purposely that he'd even had to remind himself a couple times of his goal: to beat her down and make her quit. Well, look at that: He had succeeded at one thing on his new job, now hadn't he? Like she had said: Congratulations.

He sat up, scrubbing the back of his neck with his palm. He stared at the clock. Nine hours til his meeting with Fabia and Wilhelmina and his father. God, he wished he could use Betty's idea, but he just could not bring himself to walk into that meeting and show her photos and pitch her concept if she wasn't there to get the credit.

And now a really unwelcome vision entered his mind: In Betty's proposal, a picture of a girl on a bicycle, pushed along by her smiling mother. On the wall at the Meade Mansion, there was a similar photo of himself as a boy, riding a two-wheeler with a terrified look on his face, his dad standing behind him with his hands up, like he had just let go.

Even though Betty really didn't have to think about it, she did. At 1 in the morning.

More specifically, she thought about Daniel Meade.

Daniel Meade, so pale and wild-eyed when she ripped into him outside the photo shoot. Was it just her imagination or was he actually upset? She had seen absolutely no personality out of the man in the week she had worked for him, and now, it seemed, some bricks had tumbled loose. The guy who had stepped into her living room this afternoon, humble and apologetic, seemed like someone she might actually like.

What must it be like for him, taking over this big job? It hadn't even occurred to her that he might be struggling; her own unease had consumed her thoughts since she started work. The Mode offices were intimidating, with all the skinny and beautiful women, the good-looking men, the fashion, the politics. Betty felt like she had spent most of the week worrying about what to wear and who to trust and how to hide the fact that she was hungry.

Now, in the middle of the night, it struck her that Daniel might feel the same way: out of his league. Or even worse, out of his league and hunted. It was no secret that Wilhelmina Slater was furious he'd been given the job. Justin, being an avid Fashion TV fan, had filled her in on all that gossip. When Daniel said this afternoon that he had listened to all the wrong people, she wondered whether Wilhelmina had somehow sabotaged him. But surely Daniel had been exaggerating when he said he might not have a job in the morning if she didn't come back—he was the owner's son, after all.

So why should she help him? He had humiliated her, on purpose. But she couldn't shake the vision of him in her living room, pocketing his hands and begging her to come back. Promising her things would be different. Surely it wasn't just her Fabia supplement idea that brought him to Queens with his bagload of remorse. What did he see in her? With this question on her lips, she finally slipped off to sleep.

"So you're actually going back?" Hilda shook her head the next morning as she poured orange juice. "Why would you do that to yourself? This can't just be about the money, because it wasn't going to be that great."

Ignacio had gone to work, Justin to school, so it was just the two sisters sitting at the kitchen table with their cereal and juice.

"It's not," Betty said, yawning.

"Then what? Because you know you could go to just about any publishing company in Manhattan and apply for a job as an assistant. You've gotten straight A's your whole life, Betty."

"I know. It's just . . ." Betty dumped milk over her Corn Flakes. "I feel like he needs somebody."

"Well, yeah. Somebody else. He's tortured you enough."

"No. I mean, in his corner. After he left yesterday, when he told me that he lost a brother and that he's never quite measured up . . . you know what? I remembered that he stuck up for me at that photo shoot yesterday. He told them to stop taking pictures and stop laughing. And when I told him off outside, he seemed really stunned, like he really felt bad. I guess . . . I just don't think he's necessarily a bad guy."

Hilda rolled her eyes. "He sleeps around. He got a big fancy Manhattan job handed to him on a silver platter. His whole life is fashion magazines and high-falutin' restaurants and towncars and spa treatments and trust funds. He doesn't need anybody."

"I think he does. I think Papi was right. Daniel's in over his head and I could learn a lot by helping him figure out his fancy new job. It's in my own best interest to go back. I also think it's only right to give Daniel a second chance."

Silence. Hilda gazed at Betty, her eyes softening. "You're so good," she whispered, touching Betty's hand. Then she narrowed her eyes. "You sure you're not doing this just because he's cute?"

Now it was Betty's turn to roll her eyes.

Well, it was worth a try. That's about all Daniel could say at this point—8:45 in the morning, staring out the back window of his office at Mode. In just over an hour, a crowd of hostile coworkers would be gathering down the hall, waiting for the next satisfying episode of Daniel Makes an Ass Out of Himself. As he considered New York City's skyline and rubbed the back of his neck, it seemed all that remained was one decision:

Resign or wait for his father to fire him.

Daniel stared down at his lap, at the green-edged presentation folder with the photos inside. Pretty, dark-haired baby with a winsome smile. Girl standing on a chair, mother at her feet, pinning up a hem on a skirt. The two cuddling over mixing bowls; in another photo, putting on lipstick. It didn't take a genius—good thing, because Daniel was far from one of those—to figure out that this was Betty and her mother.

It also didn't take a genius to figure out that Betty wasn't coming back to work for him. Never mind that he had begged. Never mind that she needed the job. God. Was he really such a fuck-up that even a girl from Queens who had to help pay the rent wouldn't work for him?

"Good morning!"

He spun around in his chair, his heart soaring at the sound of her voice. "Betty!"

She caught her foot on the edge of the rug under his desk and recovered just in time to hand him a splashing cup of coffee. Good thing it had a lid or his pink shirt would be ruined. "Sorry," she said, thrusting a napkin at him. "Two sugars, with cream."

"Thank you." He couldn't help smiling. "You came back."

"I need a job," she said, shrugging. "And you need an assistant. Now what time's that Fabia meeting? I was hoping to make a PowerPoint of my idea for the supplement—if you still want to use it, that is."

"We've only got one hour."

"Okay. That's do-able."

A PowerPoint in an hour? How good was she?

"Don't worry—it's not that hard." Betty pushed her glasses up her nose and waggled a flash drive at him. "If you don't mind . . . plug this into your laptop and open up PowerPoint; I've got the research I printed out the other day."

Daniel took a sip of his coffee. The cream-to-sugar-to-coffee ratio was perfect. "Betty, wait," he said. "Really. You're back?"

She nodded.

"Thank you," he said, still hardly believing his luck.

"You're welcome."

"And just so you know. I meant what I said. Things will be different."

"I know." She gave him a weak smile, her lips stretched and awkward around her train-track braces. She flapped her hand toward his laptop. "Um . . . we better get to work."

"You really think I can sell this?" Daniel leaned sideways to maneuver the flash drive into his laptop.

Betty shrugged. "It's worth a try," she said. "What have we got to lose?"

It wasn't lost on him, her use of the term "we." With an unfamiliar wave of relief—so big that he actually had to blink and clear his throat—he stood up and came around his desk to sit in one of the weird orange chairs.

"Here," he said, pivoting his laptop. "Show me what you're doing with the PowerPoint."

She sank down in the chair beside his and pulled the laptop over. Explaining as she worked, she uploaded photos and placed text, creating segment after segment to run as a slide show for Fabia.

"These photos," Daniel said, as Betty moved the skirt-hemming image from one corner of the screen to the other. "They're of you?"

"Yeah. They're all I had on hand." She sounded apologetic.

"And your mother?"

"Yes."

She didn't elaborate; simply clicked and dragged, her eyes focused on the screen. But he cast her a sidelong look—at her heavy brows dropped in a wistful expression and her front teeth clamped down on her lower lip. And he knew, then, that he wasn't alone. Betty Suarez had lost someone, too, and she was struggling to measure up. To a memory, a promise, a dream—he wasn't sure. He was sorry for her loss, certainly, but more than that, he was grateful for her presence.

She glanced over and caught him looking at her, and her face opened in a broad smile. Like the one she had given him at his first, terrifying meeting, when all he'd seen was teeth. He felt his own face relax into a grin. Because for the first time in . . . well, he couldn't remember how long—what he saw was hope.

Maybe, just maybe, things were going to be okay.