TOUCH ME AGAIN

A Sequel to "Lofty Dreams"

Author's Note: For those who haven't read it, "Lofty Dreams" is a modern story based on P&P canon, in which Darcy and Elizabeth are high school students. The "Lofty Dreams" series also includes two vignettes, "Saturday, Sunday," and "The Picnic," which retell part of Lofty Dreams from Darcy's POV. All three stories are complete and posted on this site.

At the end of "Lofty Dreams," Liz and Will are about to start their freshman year in college—hardly at a point in life in which they will get married and live happily ever after. Thus, many of my early readers asked me, "What happens next?" From that question, this sequel was born. The story switches back and forth between Will and Liz's points of view.

Angst warning/spoiler: My Liz and Will were very young when they fell in love, and still had a lot to learn about life. This story involves them breaking up and seeing other people. It also includes some bittersweet family angst. However, Will and Liz do come back together for a happy ending.

Also, thank you to Unina, who served as my beta for this story.

Chapter 1: Will

"The plan has changed," Dee Bennet announced, while sorting through a stack of mail on her table. "Can you drop Kyron off at my parents' place instead of here? He's going to spend the night with them."

"Not a problem," Will Darcy answered. "Do you have a date?"

"Yeah, with old Peanut Head." Kyron, Dee's eight-year-old son, suddenly appeared in the room.

"Young man, you're not in this conversation. And is your room finished?"

Kyron flashed his mother a dimpled grin. "Um…"

"Um, nothing. I told you that if your room wasn't clean, you wouldn't get to go out with Uncle Will. Now get cracking."

"Peanut head?" Will said with a chuckle after Kyron retreated.

Dee shook her head and rolled her eyes.

"Is this a new boyfriend?"

She held up her hands and shrugged. "We'll see. This is our third date."

Will grinned. "So who is this guy? When are we going to meet him?"

"He's a financial analyst named Kevin, and I met one morning when I stopped at Starbucks for coffee. And I don't know if you'll ever meet him, not after the way you and Chuck gave the last guy I went out with the third degree."

Will laughed. "That's our job, Dee. See what you missed out on by not growing up with brothers?"

She rolled her eyes again. "Now I know why Jenny won't move back home! She wouldn't have a love life if she did!"

Kryon ran back in the room and jumped in front of them. "I'm done!"

"All right, let me go check," Dee said. She started walking toward his bedroom, and then stopped and turned back to Will. "Hey, you know that Liz is coming back in a few weeks, don't you?"

"Janelle told me," he replied quietly. This news of Dee's sister's return continued to create mixed feelings in him, from excitement to wariness.

Kyron's room was in fact clean, so he and Will set off for an afternoon of fun. Because Kyron's father wasn't a part of his life, Will tried to spend time with him at least once a month. That day, they went to the movies together and then blew a couple of hours and dozens of quarters in the movie theater arcade. Afterward, they stopped at a family restaurant for an early dinner.

Kyron was excited that his mother was signing him up for a neighborhood football league in the fall. "But I still want to join your track team next year when I get big enough!"

Will smiled. "There'll definitely be a place for you. But I want to make sure you know that you won't get any special treatment on my team. I'll treat you just like everyone else."

Kyron opened his mouth in a look of feigned shock. "You mean I won't get any nepotism?"

"No, you won't! Where did you learn that word?"

The boy shrugged, and Will shook his head, laughing. The kid was sometimes too smart for his own good.

"So tell me about Kevin." Will tried to use their time together to talk about the important things going on in Kyron's life.

The smile faded from the youngster's face. He looked down at his cheeseburger. "I don't know why she keeps going out with stupid people like Peanut Head. Why can't she just stay home with me?"

"You're not going to be with your mother forever. You're going to grow up. Do you want her to be all alone?"

Kyron looked up at him, his earnest look a reminder to Will that despite his sharp brain, he was still very much a little boy. "No, but why can't you marry her? Then she wouldn't be alone and you'd be my father."

"I can't marry your mother. I'm your uncle."

"No, you're not. We had to make a picture of our family tree in school, and you didn't fit in anywhere."

"I'm your uncle's cousin. That's close enough."

"But you don't have our genes, right? That means you can still marry her."

Will grinned, marveling again at Kryon, having just completed second grade, knowing something about genetics. He grasped the boy's hands in his own. "Kyron, remember how I told you I'd always be honest with you?"

The boy nodded.

"Your mother is like a sister to me. I love her a lot, and I love you. I'll always be here for both of you. But I don't want you to get your hopes up and think I'm going to marry her. Your mother and I aren't going to get married. We don't love each other in that way."

Kyron twisted his mouth around for a minute, as if he was ruminating on what Will told him. "Are you going to marry Diane instead?"

Will smiled a little. "We just started seeing each other, Kyron. Your mind is jumping from dating to marriage too quickly."

Later that evening, as Will was getting dressed for his date with Diane, he wondered how Kyron always managed to turn conversations meant to help the boy into discussions that challenged the man. Not that it should have surprised him. His relationship with Kyron was one of constant irony, since even before his birth. The little boy in utero had created one of the biggest conflicts in his relationship with Dee's sister.

"Liz," he whispered her name… the woman he'd loved from the ages of eighteen to almost twenty. No, he knew better than that now. She was the woman he had never stopped loving.

Liz's mom and dad had been teen parents, and had done everything in their power to steer their three daughters toward education and away from early sex. Liz and her older sister Janelle had lived up to their expectations, but Dee was the rebellious one. By age seventeen, she was pregnant, and the father of the child didn't stick around very long.

In one way, Liz's response to Dee's pregnancy and the consequences to their dating relationship were Will's doing. After observing her interactions with Dee on several occasions, he'd called her on it. He was very close to his younger sister Jenny, and couldn't imagine talking to her in the insulting way Liz sometimes talked to Dee. "It must be hard enough to come after you and Janelle and to always be compared to you two," he said. "Do you have to make her feel so bad on top of it?"

Liz was very contrite and vowed to change. Given that Dee knew how much she had disappointed her parents, Liz wanted her sister to know she had her unconditional support. But that meant a lot less time for Will, something that at nineteen he had a hard time accepting.

Ironic, indeed. Liz had been her sister's birthing partner, and here he was, eight years later, no longer with Liz but acting as a surrogate father for the boy. And today, Kyron had done it again—brought something up that made his world shaky. Marriage had been on his mind a lot, ever since he'd learned that Liz was coming back to Meryton.

The last time he'd seen her was six years earlier, at a wedding—the nuptials of Dee and Liz's sister Janelle to Will's cousin Chuck. He attended the wedding with his then girlfriend Imani, a beautiful young woman he'd met after breaking up with Liz. They were both recent college graduates heading to law schools in Washington, DC: Imani at Howard, and Will at George Washington U. After almost two years together, they had started talking about the possibility of marriage one day.

At the end of the summer, Will was supposed to travel to North Carolina to visit Imani and her family. First, however, Imani would fly back to Meryton to attend the wedding with him. Serving as the best man while Liz was the maid of honor would put him in contact with Liz to a greater degree than he had been in years. Being with his ex and his current girlfriend in the same room didn't worry him, however. Six years ago, he had been so sure he was over Liz.

He couldn't have been more wrong.