“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Well,” she asked. “Did you get it?”

She knew the answer before he spoke. “Of course you didn’t. How could you? Dressed like that!”

“Like what? What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?” he said as he looked down at his feet.

“Cheap. That’s what’s wrong with the way you dress. Cheap and nasty,” she said.

“But this is how I always dress,” he answered. “It’s not cheap. This suit cost nearly a hundred pounds.”

“Like I said … cheap. Tesco’s finest. Off the peg. You’re never going to impress anyone like that,” she said. “These people know that kind of thing.”

She turned away and walked toward the window. She was angry. Angry with him. Angry with herself for letting him be like that. She had told him that the job was important. She hadn’t told him why it was so important. Why that extra £4,000.00 a year raise was important. Then there was the annual bonus … and the car. God how important would a car be now.

“It was just a job,” he said. “I’m not sure I really wanted it in the first place.”

“You wanted…” she said. “Not sure that ‘you’ wanted it.” She turned, “Have not even considered what I wanted? What I needed. What ‘we’ needed.”

She walked back to the coffee table and picked up her wine glass.

“Do you know who got it?” she said.

“Daniel,” he replied. “Daniel Lofthouse ….”

“I know who ‘Daniel’ is,” she snapped. “I know his wife. She’ll not let me forget this. It’ll be all over the golf club by the morning.”

“Like I said. It’s only a job. Daniel was always going to be favourite to get it. I didn’t stand a chance really.” He swilled the whisky round in his glass, then drank it down in one.

“God,” she cried, “you simply don’t get it do you? Daniel got the job because of who he is. What he is. How he acts. What he says. What he does. He got the job, because he is Daniel.”

She walked right up to him and looked him straight in the eye.

“Why can’t you be more like him?” she screamed at him.

He turned, and walked to the door. “Because …… because …… I’m not Daniel. I’m me.”