William Darcy is impatient.

Luckily, it's a character trait that's long been perceived as a virtue rather than a flaw. His impatience focuses and drives him toward success. It helps him identify what he wants in the world and to go after it. He is never overt or obnoxious about it; no toe tapping or rude outbursts. Yes, sometimes he can be blunt, but it is not so different from his usual social awkwardness.

All in all his impatience is the sort of trait that's easily masked by a reserved personality and professional success. That and that fact that most obstacles in life can be tackled quickly when you're a smart, wealthy CEO.

Waiting for Lizzie Bennet to arrive in San Francisco; however, is not most things. Time cannot be sped up through money or power or sheer force of will. It's a void that must be suffered through ever so slowly.

His condo has never felt so big or so empty as it does now. As if every night walking through the front door is going back to life pre-Lizzie. Pre-kissing Lizzie. Pre-knowing what Lizzie's hair smells like. Pre-knowing what it feels like to be pulled from room to room by slender, firm fingers intertwined with his.

His kitchen table is too large, the TV too intrusive and his bed too uninviting. His affair with hospital corners ends abruptly and no amount of tugging or tucking makes his bed feel like the one he shared with Lizzie in their first week together.

So he stops going home. And so do his direct reports. Soon all of Pemeberley Digital is burning the midnight oil. As the semester rolls on and Lizzie spends more time trapped in the university library, days at the digital media empire become longer and productivity skyrockets.

That is until the nap pods are all double booked and there's not a coffee bean left in the building. After a few nights of this, Mrs. Reynold's shuts William's laptop on his typing fingers, drapes his jacket over his arm and herds him toward the executive elevator with advice to start building model cars, join the Audubon society, get a hobby.

And he does. Sort of.

Lizzie asks him to swing by her new apartment and pick up the keys from the landlord. She won't move in for another three weeks, but the place is open and the woman who owns it is leaving for a seniors-only cruise to the Bahamas.

So of course William tests the door to make sure the key work. There are some elements that don't quite meet his criteria for well-ordered. A floorboard is missing in the hallway. Wind whistles through the gap between the door and the entryhall floor. He makes an impromptu Home Depot trip that day. And yes, he spends 45 minutes searching for the energy efficient light bulbs that were recently installed at Pemeberely. And maybe he pays a random contractor $50 to follow him back to Lizzie's for an inspection after he overhears him list the dangers of black mold in San Francisco apartments built before 1940.

Then a few days later Lizzie rants about Comcast and the fact that it took two hours to set up her account with them over the phone. She's dreading setting up the wifi network already.

So William takes an early lunch and spends several hours with the archaic router and repeatedly calls the asinine people answering the 1-800 number. By the time the network is broadcasting (TheLizzieBennet), he realizes he went a little overboard on the passcode encryption. He considers changing it for a moment before pasting the 26 character code into his Google task list under "For Lizzie's arrival."

Lizzie's already on to him. She called one of the nights he was fixing a sticking window and, after a momentary waver, he told her he was still in his office (not chipping at twenty-year-old paint). His voice echoed up and around the high ceilings of the empty room, the upward lilt of his lie reverberated back into the phone.

A sigh filtered through the ear piece and Lizzie made him pinky promise not to build any of the IKEA furniture that had arrived earlier that day. William ends up spending the better half of the evening deconstructing a LAVIA book shelf, trying to recreate the Swedish packing system it had arrived in.

And it doesn't matter that it's not their place. That was settled early on when Lizzie half-jokingly told him that their relationship was too new to risk being derailed by the fact that she doesn't always match her socks. William laughed, thinking, "well, who fights about that?" followed by a not-so-small voice wondering, "who doesn't match their socks?"

He's not used to being the least logical person in a situation. It might be something to get used to. If the last month and a half is any indication, his logic routinely flies out the window when it comes to Lizzie Bennet.

So yes, this is Lizzie's place, but maybe that's why he's drawn here. He sees her in the location (adjacent to boisterous Golden Gate Park), in the open shape of the bay window, in the welcoming moonlight filtering through the bedroom at night. Even in the wide wooden floors that were strangely mandatory during the apartment hunt (something to do with Lydia).

It's ironic that his own apartment, so full of things and food and life, can feel like so much less than this literal shell of a place. But he knows it's because the space is filled with so much potential. Somehow the what if is so much more compelling than what is.

The endeavor is crazed, but effective. Time defies all previous laws of physics and speeds up. Lizzie turns in her thesis and William's Google reminder alerts him that there's just one week left before she'll be here, in this space.

Soon he is locking the door and racing to the airport, a final mental check list that has nothing to do with the apartment and everything to do with the real Lizzie Bennet. The one touching down in 45 minutes. The one he's been waiting for all this time.