"Need! Oxygen!" Aria managed to pant, before Kip swept his tongue into her mouth.

"You've had five years to breathe," Kip countered in disbelief.

"Men," Aria mock-groused, "always expecting you to breathe on their schedule."

"Well," Kip flirtatiously tickled her ribcage, "If you did everything on my schedule, we would have been married by now."

"Aria rested her head on his shoulder. "Well, if you had made jokes like that five years ago, I would have married then, so I could murder you and collect the insurance money."

They were lounging in the Redbud Tree; he was lying on his back; she was sprawled across him, making a wreath of Redbud blossoms to adorn her raven hair. They had both begun to regard this tree as their place on that infamous rainy day.

Aria hadn't known, until that afternoon in the gazebo (which had resulted in several splinters in various places from getting a bit too frisky on the bench), that Kip had returned to the tree everyday to search for her, just like she had done in the hopes of finding him.

Aria also hadn't known about Lonnie Matthews. Kip had begun spending time with Lonnie to make Aria jealous, then to forget that Aria could have married someone else (a.k.a. Carl), and then, he began to value Lonnie's friendship. Every Wednesday, they would go to the Knock 'Em Down Bowling Alley. On the weekends, she kicked his ass at paintball. He taught her to play pool; she taught him to appreciate opera.

They especially enjoyed bitching and moaning about the special people in their lives, the ones who had ripped out their hearts, thrown them on the ground, and done the Mexican Hat Dance on them. Incidentally, Lonnie had fallen for Mr. Bruno, when he claimed to be head-over-heels for Aria, because she thought his berets were "kind of kinky."

The more time they spent together, the more Lonnie became like a Marcus to Kip, which was why Kip had been so devastated over Lonnie's accident. If she had landed differently, she could have broken her neck. Kip had been forced to sit through enough ER Marathons with Lonnie to know that a broken neck isn't at the top of anyone's Wish List.

Kip's true feelings for Lonnie had remained a mystery to Aria since her days at Umbridge Court, and even the admission that Kip only thought of Lonnie as a best friend couldn't completely erase those memories of Kip and Lonnie throwing themselves at each other among the bushes that day that Clarence Howard finally proposed to Heather Matthews.

Aria was certain that Kip loved her. She could feel it every touch of his hands and his lips and every soothing caress of his voice, but a lifetime of being informed that she was nothing more than a blemish on mankind; well… those wounds would take a considerable amount of time to truly heal.

With all the misunderstandings of the past behind them, Aria and Kip looked to the future, which included breaking the news of their couple-dom to the well-intentioned loved ones who had made their lives hell for so many years.

Mr. Waldon Edwards and Elianna were confronted by a blushing Aria and a defiant Kip in the middle of their weekly ritual of browsing through an ocean of magazines, in order to critique the latest fashions.

Mr. Waldon Edwards listened to the announcement that his middle child was steadily dating a member of the FBI with admirable calm, and only one gasp of horror. He was comforted immensely by the knowledge that Kip was to be the Guest of Honor at the White House in a month's time, and the entire family would receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington D.C. to attend the event.

Elianna seductively inched her leather micro-mini upward on her thighs, bending over the magazines to offer Kip a peek at her cleavage. Kip shuddered involuntarily; steam poured from Aria's ears; Mr. Waldon Edwards remained blissfully ignorant. Satisfied that she had made an impression, Elianna returned to criticizing the models in the GAP ad. Elianna had been royally pissed that Kip would attach himself to a waste-of-valuable-space like Aria, when he could have been with her, but, if he didn't realize what he was missing, he certainly wasn't worthy of what she was offering.

Marita was indignant that Kip hadn't come to her about Aria in the first place; she had an infinite amount of ideas about how he should have asked her to be his girlfriend. Carl boasted that he had always known that Kip and Aria were destined to be, and all that Mr. Bruno and Aria stuff was his way of harassing his wife. Special Hart and his wife sent a letter expressing their sincere congratulations, continuing that they believed Aria and Kip were the "perfect couple." Kip beamed. Aria had never been considered as "perfect" for anyone but Marcus. Heather and Clarence and Mr. and Mrs. Matthews and Lonnie and Mr. Bruno offered their warmest best wishes, which Aria, following Elianna's exhibition of skankiness, was only too thrilled to accept. Mrs. Ester Rosenburg would never respect Kip's choice of employment (as she still believed that an expert in criminal behavior will only end up a criminal in the long run), but she was eventually convinced that Kip adored her beloved Aria, as no one else did. This love endeared him to her forever.

As for Rex Evans and Mrs. Cross, the sordid events of their elopement was soon splashed all over the tabloids. Something about him making out with a moose, while she stole his wallet, and attempted to escape in their rental car, which turned out to be not so much rented as stolen… from the daughter of the President of Claremont University.

It seemed that what Marcus Emilio Reese had said to comfort her so long ago on that Christmas Eve at Umbridge Court (the first and ONLY time she had ever kissed him) had come to pass after all. He had promised her that everything would work itself out in time, and it had, beyond her wildest dreams.

Not only was she engaged to Special Agent Kip Winters, but Marcus was engaged to Sophia Smitz, and he had even managed to hold down a job for longer than two weeks. Kip pulled some stings… okay, an entire orchestra of strings, to convince his boss that Marcus would make an excellent member of the FBI. Baffled as hell by Kip's choice of FBI Member Material, following a rather disastrous interview when Marcus accidentally flung his whoopee cushion at the interviewers toupee, Kip's boss had agreed that Marcus would make a fine addition to the Federal Bureau of Investigation… as Kip's new partner.

Rather than make crude comments about Aria bellowing his name in bed (Marcus recognized that he and Kip weren't at that phase in their blossoming friendship when jokes like that were acceptable), Marcus graciously accepted the position as Special Agent Reese, and rushed to 7G to propose to Sophia Smitz, who had been upgraded from wheelchair to crutches a mere two days before.

Kip respected Marcus's maturity about their minor misunderstanding (Kip pummeling Marcus within an inch of his life) so much that he offered to pay all of the debts that had fallen onto Sophia's shoulders after Christopher's death. With her burden to the government taken care of, and the impressive cash flow from Marcus's position of Kip's Sidekick, Sophia was able to scrape together enough money to make the final payments on the home Christopher had attempted to purchase with his retirement fund. All the wounds inflicted by Rex Evans were on the road to impending recovery.

A week after news of their engagement had been broken to all who needed to be notified, Aria huffed and puffed her way into her home on Westhaven Circle, hair horrendously mussed from her double-shift at the Claremont University Campus Starbucks. Kip and Marcus had not only invaded the Sitting Room, where she had hoped to collapse in her father's recliner, but they seemed to be in the midst of rather tawdry activities.

Whispering conspiratorially, Kip handed Marcus a wad of bills. Aria arched an eyebrow disapprovingly. Marcus responded with a coy wink and roguish grin. Kip sheepishly mumbled that he was simply paying Marcus for supporting THE CAUSE for the last five years, THE CAUSE being a never-ending campaign to reunite his two best friends. Aria was too exhausted to swat Kip's hand as he gently reached for her, pulling her into his lap. They cuddled, as Marcus grunted his disgust.

Aria couldn't imagine feeling more loved and protected than she did at that moment, in the arms of the love of her life and beside her best friend in the entire world. It may have taken Kip five years to convince her to marry him, but it didn't take him five seconds to convince her that with him was exactly where she intended to stay from now on.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: First of all, it must be noted that the rubber duckies on my pajama pants have addled my brain so much that this author's note will probably be incredibly pointless. Next, the most massive props ever to everyone out there who has written or attempted to write a modernized fic. What I have learned is that… you should read the entire book before you start. I made the mistake of writing as I read, and by doing that, you miss countless opportunities to hint about characters that will become important later on in the story. What I wound up doing was writing the fic so that it turned out to be a cut-and-paste version of the story with a few cars thrown in. Then I tried to make the language a little more modern, but it's hard to oppress the vocabulary, so my paragraphs tend to be lengthy. Then, I added more modern stuff like clothing and TV shows. Finally, I changed the majority of the characters' storylines. I basically wrote this story three times. Again, to everyone who's done this before or will write one of these stories after me, YOU ALL ROCK. Finally, I feel like there are differences between my story and the book that should be cleared up. Everyone was a Navy man. General Creed was an Admiral, and his wife was always talking about her adventures at sea with her husband. Rex Evans was Aria's cousin and Mr. Waldon Edward's heir. Clarence Howard was Heather Matthew's cousin, and he was a priest, who was supposed to inherit the local church. Sophia was an old friend of Aria's, but she was three years older, and she and Aria were brought together by a former nanny of Aria's, who happened to live in Bath, and Aria visited her at some point. The Mrs. Cross and Rex Evans lovey-dovey bit and the end was kind of ambiguous in the book, but I assumed they got together. Also, there was no catfight between them. No one in the book had a job; they were all just rich because their families had been rich for generations, or something equally boring. In the book, Kip admits that he used Lonnie Matthews to make Aria jealous. I didn't want to explore that too much in the story (because having Aria go from liking Rex Evans, who was a user of women, to being with Kip in the end, who was also using women, seemed like bullshit to me), so I tossed it at the very end, which works, since Jane Austen is always tossing important stuff into the last ten pages. Most importantly, at the end of the book, Kip wrote a letter telling Aria that he had always loved her and he was using Lonnie to make her jealous and he was pissed that she let other people tear them apart, but he was willing to give her a second chance if she would take him back. He stealthily puts the letter in her hand. She reads it. They smile each other. That's the love scene. BLAH! Anyway, I suppose that pretty much covers anything that might still be confusing between the book and my story. Thanks for reading. Please review.