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 thought I had exorcised TWW for the time being with Roses, but it seems that I was mistaken.
*****
There were roses on my desk on Valentine's Day, and Josh sent them.
I'm still amazed, a week later, that this was the case. It was not something I saw coming.
Apparently, neither did Josh.
It was very funny.
I arrived just a little early on Valentine's Day, figuring that I'd have to suffer through Josh proclaiming at every opportunity how dutiful and doting a boyfriend he was to that woman. You know, Amy.
Much to my surprise – and pleasure, I must admit – there were roses sitting on my desk when I arrived. Before I looked at the card, I had already dismissed Josh as the sender, as well as Sam, Leo, and especially Toby. I did figure that the sender had to be a White House staffer, if only because there's no way that the Secret Service would let flowers sent by an unknown party inside the walls of the building, even if the one security-cleared florist in the entire country delivered them.
There were some likely suspects, I thought. Fred in Communications and Lenny in the Security Office had both asked me out recently, and while I had turned them both down, it wasn't a permanent denial. More of a deferment because of the hearings about the MS and the whole Cliff thing.
So imagine my surprise when I opened the card and read the words, "Donna, I love you. Josh."
Not, of course, in his penmanship, because he would have called a florist rather than going into one. Or, someone could have been playing an evil trick on me.
I ruled that out within seconds, however, when I caught Josh studying me with a look I haven't seen on his face since that awful night last May when Mrs. Landingham died and we clung to each other in his office, just sitting in silence and being together. It was the closest we had ever come to kissing while sober. Until Valentine's Day night, but I get ahead of myself.
So Josh was watching me with undisguised love and admiration. And, I realized a moment later, a great deal of jealousy and confusion.
It dawned on me then that he didn't remember sending me the roses. In fact, his intention may actually have been to send them to that Amy chick.
Now that would have been funny. Deadly, but funny. I could see the headlines: "Deputy Chief of Staff Murdered by Outraged Feminista Over Mistaken Roses."
But in what had to be a drunken stupor, he sent me the roses, so in his subconscious mind, I am "da woman." I decided to milk it for all its worth. So I tucked the card inside my bra as soon as I had a private moment and made a decision. Never mind the Cliff crap and the lying crap. I was going to be the most pre-lying, pre-Cliff, pre-MS Donna I could possibly be.
Banter. Had to get back into the groove of banter.
First attempt: Josh said, "Donna, where's my coffee?" He hadn't asked that question since before Thanksgiving, so obviously he was in the mood to banter, too.
"In the coffeepot."
"I'd like some in my cup."
"You have two perfectly good legs and two hands that can make that happen for you."
"That's a new one."
"I'm feeling creative today."
"Oh. Okay." He walked away, but called to me from down the hallway. "You'll get my coffee tomorrow, right?"
"Not a chance." (I did, actually, but that part comes later.)
Not bad for the first attempt, I reasoned.
The second attempt came when he called for me later in the morning. "Donna!"
I walked into his office as seductively as I could, trying hard not to smile. "You bellowed, oh supercilious one?"
He raised an eyebrow and smiled at me, eyes twinkling. "I need the file about the thing."
I gave him my trademark sigh. "It's on your desk. I showed you twenty minutes ago."
"But you didn't tell me who the roses are from twenty minutes ago." He was putty in my hands after that, and my banter was back in full force.
"No, I didn't. And I'm not telling you now, either. Do you need me for something serious or may I go back to being the world's best Deputy Deputy Chief of Staff?"
"Back to?" His banter was back, too. And I was weak in the knees leaving his office, because we were on track and cruising.
Everyone wanted to know who sent the roses, of course. The suitor was christened The Rose King and speculation ranged far and wide. Sam even had the gall to suggest that Cliff had sent them just to mess with all our minds. Ginger quickly stomped on that idea. I wouldn't tell, of course, and I discouraged prying eyes by informing the crew at the water cooler of the actual location of the card. They told the crew at the coffeepot, who in turn told the crew at the photocopier.
Someone told Josh, though, because I caught him staring at my chest with a queer look on his face. That was when I told him I was leaving at 7. I only decided that I needed to leave at 7 about 30 seconds before I asked him, because lightning struck with the idea to do what I needed to leave at 7 for about 32 seconds before I asked – when I caught him staring at my chest. I didn't expect him to say yes.
The rest of the day was actually rather anti-climatic, at least at the supernaturally quiet office and just after I left. I found exactly what I wanted within 20 minutes at Union Station, then spent only 10 minutes in the grocery store across the park from Josh's building. Dinner was easy to prepare: preheat the oven, open the marinated roast, put it in a pan, add the pre-chopped and pre-sliced vegetables, put the pan in the oven, and cook for an hour. At 7:50, I was changing into what I picked up at Union Station to the orgasmic rhythm of a jazz group whose CD I'd gotten free with my sapphire evening ensemble.
When Josh called to say that his meeting was over, I could hear the pleading in his tone. He wanted me to go out with him. Little did he know that I wanted him to come home to me. I convinced him to come home by telling him that I'd call him later.
The wait was almost as hard as the wait at the hospital the night Josh got shot. Almost. This time it wasn't life and death – well, not literally. I couldn't sit still, so I wandered into the kitchen to check on the roast and thus missed his entrance. I heard him, though, so I waited until I heard the bedroom door close before I went back out to sit on the couch, holding the card in one hand and a wine glass in the other. Both were sweaty and shaking, but I willed myself to still the quiver as I sipped the white wine.
The look on Josh's face when he came out of his bedroom showed me his heart in no uncertain terms, but I still had to ask. "Did you mean it?"
I could not even now tell you how long we stayed out of time before the answer finally came: "Yes."
The kiss that followed was not like any other kiss I've ever had. Just thinking about it a week later still gives me the shivers from my toes to the roots of my hair. My hair would shiver, too, if it had nerve endings.
Somehow, we ate dinner, but I have no memory of that. What I remember, other than the kiss, is every hesitant touch I laid along his body, every questioning trace of his fingers across my skin as we finally showed each other the depths of our feelings. I remember the breathless repetition of my name coming from his roaming lips, and his hushed moan of fulfillment that shook me to the core of my being with pleasure. And the contentment on Josh's face as I lay in his arms afterward, a look I had never seen before, even when he was drugged into unconsciousness on morphine after Rosslyn.
The next morning, I woke up before Josh did. It was a glorious feeling, to want to be in the arms of the man beside me in bed. I might have stayed all day, except that I knew what this man had on his schedule that day. So I eased myself out of his arms and padded my way to the kitchen, not at all ashamed to be naked in his apartment. I made coffee.
I took Joshua Lyman a cup of coffee.
Let me be very clear. I took Joshua Lyman, love of my life, coffee at his house while he was in bed. I have not taken (recently), nor do I ever plan to take (any more), coffee to Joshua Lyman, Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House.
There is another reason for that distinction. Under present circumstances, if I were to take Joshua Lyman, Deputy Chief of Staff, a cup of coffee, I could not do what I did when I took Joshua Lyman, love of my life, a cup of coffee.
Actually, I think it might be illegal to do at the White House what I did in his bedroom when I took him a cup of coffee. Well, maybe not in the Residence.
Suffice to say the coffee was cold but we were hot by the time Joshua Lyman was really ready to drink his coffee.
His exact words were, "If I smoked, I'd need a cigarette right about now."
It reduced me to giggles.
When we were ready to leave, something passed between us and we were no longer lovers, but boss and assistant, except for one last lingering kiss and a promise to be together again that night.
I went to mass and said a prayer almost as fervent as the one I said when we knew Josh was going to live after he got shot. Then I went to work and went back to being Joshua Lyman's all-knowing assistant.
We have been together every night since. He lets me go just before his last meeting starts, and I go to my place and change, pick up clothes for the next day, and get dinner – if we haven't already eaten – so that when he walks in the door, we have as close to a normal domestic life as possible.
CJ knows. Josh thinks Toby knows because he's pretty sure that CJ was with Toby on Valentine's Day when he called her to give her the heads up about us. Thus far, neither has hinted at this knowledge, and Josh has convinced everyone that The Rose King is someone other than him whom he grudgingly admits isn't a gomer.
That, he says when anyone comments, accounts for the return of the Josh/Donna banter. He reasons thusly: I'm happy, and he's happy that I'm happy. He just conveniently leaves out the real reason we're both so happy:
There were roses on my desk on Valentine's Day, and Josh sent them.