Decisions

NOTE: Written for my English class. Meant to put it up ages ago. A modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

Disclaimer: I'm not old enough to be Jane Austen, nor am I as eloquent as she.

Liz Bennett hated Will Darcy. Actually, it was more that she hated the idea of him, and he wasn't very pleasant to her, speaking in clipped tones and hardly acknowledging her existence, and so she felt no reason to change her opinion of him. It wasn't fair, she decided the day she met him, for one person to be so intelligent and attractive, and perfectly nice. To everyone, that is, except her. He was also the heir to a fairly sizable fortune, which rumour had it that he would be legally able to take control of as soon as he reached a certain age. Unfortunately, rumour did not know which age, exactly, this was. Rumour was like that.

So Liz looked forward to graduation and was happy to be out of Will Darcy's company for about a week, until she walked into her first day at her new job and discovered that it was also the first day of her new coworker, Will Darcy. How he had ended up in the same little town she had was open for debate, but neither appeared to happy with the arrangement, and split the work between themselves with as little conversation, or, indeed, contact, as possible.

They continued with that arrangement for a year or so, and then their boss canceled their scheduled promotions until the two learned to work together. It was soon after that (about five hours) that Will showed up, soaking wet because of the rain, on a fuming Liz's doorstep. Despite her misgivings toward the man, Liz was not so heartless to leave him out in the rain, and so invited him in for what might possibly turn out to be the most awkward situation in her entire life. Not, of course, that she knew that.

"Hi," he said articulately.

"Hi," she replied, wondering what on earth he wanted. "What are you doing here?"

"Well," he said, appearing to steel himself for something, "I had a question for you."

"You came all the way to my house to ask me a question?"

"It's not really a phone question."

"Okay..." said Liz. "So shoot."

"Um," said Will, and then bent down on one knee and offered her a little box. "Willyoumarryme?" he asked all in one breath, trying to get it all out before he lost his nerve.

"What?"

"Will you marry me?" he asked again, more slowly this time.

"Do you have amnesia or something?" asked Liz suspiciously.

"No."

"Are you sure? Because as far as I knew, we weren't even friends."

"No," said Will, "that's why I was asking you instead of someone else." He stood up, and Liz suddenly felt much smaller. This was probably because he was about a foot taller than she was.

"Pardon me if that doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

"Look," he said. "I need money, and I can't inherit until I'm married, and I swear we could get divorced as soon as the inheritance comes through, and you could walk away with half of it."

This was starting to make slightly more sense. But Liz was, understandably, still confused. "And you're asking me why...?"

"Because you won't read anything into it. You don't like me, so you won't want or expect me to stay married to you when this is over."

That was true. And although Liz was rather hard-pressed for money herself, marriage wasn't exactly a conventional way of going about getting more. "Uh-huh."

"So...?" asked Will.

"So...what?" Liz replied, wondering what he wanted now.

"So will you do it?"

"Oh," said Liz. "I...yeah. I'll do it," she said, and instantly regretted it, but she could hardly go back now.

"Great," said Will, and he handed her the ring box, kissed her on the cheek, and left before she could change her mind. She considered telling him that the bus that headed in his direction of town wasn't due for another half hour and it was still raining relentlessly, but then she decided that it served him right.

Living with the man you were married to and worked with was quite a bit different from living with a roommate in college, Liz decided. This was no surprise, but it was rather disconcerting to be spending virtually all of your time with one person, who you hardly liked in the first place. What was even more disconcerting, however, was that this was starting to change.

It started, she thought, with the cooking. Will liked to cook. Liz liked to cook. Both refused to give up kitchen duty, so they cooked together. Every night, so they ended up with a plethora of leftovers that they didn't eat and instead handed out at work. And in cooking, communication was deemed slightly more important than petty dislike, since if they didn't talk the food would be ruined. So they started talking to each other. First it was just stuff like, "Where's the butter?" and "I need two cups of milk here," but then it turned into discussions. First about food, then about work, and when they ran out of "safe" topics, they started talking about themselves.

Liz learned that Will had pretty much grown up in foster homes after his parents died when he was five, and that he had a younger sister, who was, for whatever reason, named George. Liz assumed this was short for Georgia. Will and George were close, which was obvious from the way he talked about her, and when Liz looked back on it, that made a lot of sense considering that they were probably the only constant things they had had left in their lives. She also learned inconsequential stuff like his favourite colours, foods, music, et cetera, but that was slightly less important.

Will learned that Liz came from a rather large, not poor, but it seemed that way because of five children, family, and that even though she had to pay her own way through college, she wouldn't trade that for anything. Maybe she wasn't as close to all of her sisters as she could have been, and maybe sometimes they didn't always think things through or make the best of choices (her youngest sister was a teenage mother), but they were still family and she loved them.

Things proceeded in this manner for several months, and then the accountants in charge of Will's inheritance came through. The two suddenly found themselves with more money than they knew what to do with (well, that wasn't entirely true, after all, they both had loans for college left to pay off, but it was a large amount of money), and they found their situation slightly more awkward than it had been before. Actually, that's a lie. It was a lot more awkward, especially since neither of them was brave enough to bring up the subject of divorce, because that would probably mean admitting that they liked their current arrangement, and then possibly facing rejection from the other.

So they talked a little less, and then one night after Will fell asleep while they were watching a movie, Liz decided that she had had enough of dancing around the subject, so she packed up most of her things and left, renting a room at a local hotel and not showing up a work the next day. Or the day after that, or the day after that, and you get the idea.

At first, Will was worried, thinking that something had happened to her, but people saw her around town and eventually he figured out what had actually happened. This occurred at about five o'clock a week after she left, and he turned up outside her room about twenty minutes after that.

"Hi," she said, surprised and unable to stop a small smile from spreading across her face at seeing him.

"Hey," he replied. "Can we talk?"

She motioned him inside, looking slightly worried. "Sure," she said.

Will took a seat in a chair on the balcony. She sat down opposite him.

"So," he said. "Why'd you leave?" Maybe if she rejected him quickly he'd get over it faster.

"I...I didn't want to screw it up," she started. "What we had, you know? I thought if we were living together and going through a divorce it'd be tough."

"Oh," he said, hoping she would just tell him to go away before he said something stupid that would make the situation more awkward.

"And...I didn't want to face you while doing that." She paused for a second, and then nodded as though deciding something. She drew her knees up to her chest. "I thought that if you watched me sign those papers, I might start to cry, and then that would be really embarrassing and I'd have to leave and then I thought that it would just be easier to leave now, before I embarrassed myself like that, and ―" She stopped to wipe the tears that were falling now out of her eyes.

"Do you..." said Will, "do you want to get a divorce?" he asked.

She looked away. "No," she whispered.

He stood up and grinned. "Good," he said, offering her his hand. "Then let's go home."

fin