A/N: Olivia was a little mean to Edison in the last chapter. I didn't even realize it until I reread the chapter after I posted it. She had been dreading their reunion forever so she was sort of on high-alert for any foolishness on his part. She also felt guilty about Fitz. She was on edge that he would somehow pick up on the cause of the change in her demeanor and was subsequently being a little paranoid. She didn't mean to be quite so snappy with him but she was desperate to not lose the new Olivia she discovered.

No one enjoyed Olivia having sex with Edison. I had a really hard time writing it because I'm only into Olitz sex, which is why it was so brief and vague. Still kind of turned my stomach but I digress. Honestly it was written to showcase the dynamic of their relationship before she enlisted. Everything happened on his terms because Edison can't cope with life any other way. Also, a guest review mentioned it was odd that her parents left them alone to have sex. It was mentioned in the story that in some respects her parents are more friends than authorities in her life. It was done because it was a special occasion of sorts. Also, she and Edison are engaged. They didn't just leave her alone with some random.

A few reviews are wondering how Fitz and Olivia will do things when they get together. The story is set in Jim Crow Georgia, but there was also quite a bit of focus shifted from domestic matters to the on-going war. Not to mention that there were fewer young, able-bodied men around to cause much of a stir because of the draft. There was still tension, and there will be discussions of race issues when Olitz is reunited and possibly a confrontation but they will be doing some public things together.

There won't be any Big Gerry in this story. There was no need to bring that kind of confusion into what's already a complicated story. I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but Fitz's parents are dead. There's only him and his sisters Celia and Tess, who aren't going to be major characters. They'll probably only be mentioned in passing.

Olivia will not get pregnant. There will be no "Who's the father?" drama in this story because that kind of situation to me is just cheap and easy storyline created to atone for a lack of necessary conflict in a story. She and Fitz used condoms, as did she and Edison. Honestly this just isn't the time for a baby. She and Fitz aren't even technically together and she and Edison have enough trouble without throwing a baby into the mix.

Edison's views are beyond chauvinistic. It turned my stomach as a feminist to even construct a character like him but art is suffering so I did what I had to do. He's also something of a narcissist. He can't relate to the world except in terms of himself.

Olivia's hair has changed. At first it was like it was in Ray, but now it's sort of like her hair in Django Unchained.

Now that I've rambled endlessly, let's get to it.

The jazz club hummed with action. There were women everywhere. Every time Teddy thought he spotted the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, he'd see another one who changed his mind. Fitz watched with an amused smirk as Teddy's head whipped back and forth, following woman after woman. Fitz sipped his Scotch, nudging Huck then nodding at Teddy as he seemed to hone in on a redhead near the bar. She wasn't much bigger than him and probably not any older.

"I'm gonna talk to her," Teddy announced, downing the rest of his beer to give him courage.

Fitz put a hand on his shoulder, keeping his young friend in his seat. "Not her."

"But she's perfect," Teddy insisted, practically salivating at the sight of the redhead's silk stocking-clad thighs. Fitz and Huck laughed at the naïve boy's infatuation.

"She's a prostitute, man," Huck explained, pointing out the money stuck in the elastic band of the woman's left thigh high.

"Oh. Shit." Teddy slumped in his chair and signaled for another beer.

Fitz leaned over and gave Teddy a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "When's your furlough?"

"In two weeks. I was thinking of going to Spain. They got beautiful girls there," he answered.

Fitz grinned. "Nah. I'm gonna do you one better. My little sister Celie just turned 18. Why don't you go to California and meet her?"

Teddy's eyes nearly bulged out of his head. "You mean it man? You'd really fix me up with your sister?"

"Well you're harmless as all hell, and she's been complaining about being lonely. Couldn't hurt. She and Tess'll treat you just like family. They might even put some meat on your bony ass."

"Do you think she'll like me? What's she like? What does she look like?" Teddy couldn't believe his luck.

"She'll like you. You remind me a lot of her to be honest. That's probably why I took to you. You're both real quiet and shy but smart as whips. She's a little taller than you, and she's got green eyes, and strawberry blonde hair, and freckles. She's gonna wanna go for long walks and take you to bookstores and out for ice cream and all that." Fitz smiled at the enchanted look on his friend's face.

The band took the stage and began to tune their instruments. Fitz watched curiously as the sax player picked up his instrument then put it back down and launched himself down the side stairs, running for the bathroom. From his speed and the pained look on his face, he wouldn't be back any time soon.

"Any sax players out there? Ours is trying to figure out which end his dinner is gonna come out of," the lead singer asked the mumbling crowd.

"I'll do it," Fitz volunteered. He hadn't played the sax in months and he was itching to do it. He turned to the table, pushing his half-finished Scotch to Teddy. "Drink up and ask one of these girls to dance, kid."

Teddy picked up the glass and smelled the liquor then put it down, making Huck laugh. Huck nodded at Fitz. "I've got him."

Fitz walked to the stage and took the sax player's stool. The lead singer, a tall, graying black man, nodded at him. Fitz took up the sax and cleaned the mouthpiece with his shirt. They played a few songs, getting the club's small dance floor packed with people. Fitz smiled at the sight of Teddy dancing energetically with a leggy brunette. After their set was over, a French reporter approached Fitz.

"Can I take your picture?" he asked in heavily accented English. "I'm doing a story on American soldiers mingling in French life."

"When will that picture be out?" he asked after the reporter snapped his picture.

"Tomorrow's paper," the reporter answered. He pulled out a notebook and pen. "What's your name?"

"Captain Fitzgerald Thomas Grant III, U.S. Army Ranger." He grinned proudly.

"How long you been here?"

"I've been in France for a month. Before that I was in Italy, and before that, Berlin."

"Any family back home? What about a girl?"

"I've got two sisters, Celia and Tess, in San Francisco." His eyes softened and his smile became wistful. "And my girl, Olivia, is in Macon, Georgia."

The reporter wrote down everything, nodding and making his shock of red hair flop, before scurrying out of the club to take everything to his editor's office.

XXXXX

The rain finally broke. Fitz snapped awake at the sudden silence. It had rained nonstop for a week in Paris and finally it seemed God was through drenching them. He sat up and stretched, glancing over at Teddy's cot. The young man was poring over For Whom the Bell Tolls. He looked up at the sound of Fitz's cot creaking.

"The sun's out," he said. He'd never seen so much rain. Wyoming had its rainy season, but nothing like that.

"How would you know? You haven't moved from that cot since I gave you that book," Fitz teased. Teddy had begun the book at dinner the night before and hadn't removed his nose from it since.

Teddy chuckled. "Heard from Olivia?"

Fitz took the letter from the nightstand and handed it to his little friend. He'd already written back to her. Teddy took the letter and read it. The paper smelled like honeysuckle and magnolias, like a woman. He liked her girly handwriting. It was pretty, like Fitz's sister Celia's. He had read her letters too. She was funny and seemed sweet. Or maybe he was just projecting because he was so eager to meet her. Fitz was good people, the best kind of people, and Teddy imagined Celia was the same and maybe even better because she was a girl. He finished the letter then looked at Fitz as he handed it back. "You never seen fireflies?"

"There's none in California," Fitz replied, accepting the letter from Teddy.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

"Do you love her?"

Fitz looked back at his young friend. He did love Olivia. He admitted, "Yeah I do."

"Did you tell her before you left? Or in any of your letters?" Teddy looked at him with those wide eyes of his. "I'm only asking cause, if a girl wrote to me like this, I'd send her pages and pages of 'I love you's' just so she'd never forget."

Fitz shook his head. "You're too young to get it, kid. This isn't a fairytale. Things can't just be spoken into existence. There's no point in saying it when she belongs to someone else. It would just make things harder."

Teddy picked the letter up off the little metal stool between their cots. "This is her belonging to someone else? Is that what you got from reading this? I'm only asking cause maybe I read it wrong."

"I'm just saying that she's having a hard time without thinking I'm pressuring her to choose me over him," Fitz explained.

Teddy shook his head. "Man you've got it all screwed up. This is her asking you to fight for her. She's asking you to choose her. She can't choose you if she doesn't know you're gonna choose her back. You've gotta tell her. Not just because you're feeling it, but because you don't have anything to lose. Except her. If he's at home, promising her the whole nine yards, and all you're giving her is maybe's contingent on a furlough you may not get, she's gonna go with him. Tell her before you shy your way out of the girl of your dreams."

Fitz blinked at his young friend. He hadn't even thought of it that way. "That's damn good advice kid."

Teddy smiled. "You think smart as I am that I could catch a woman of my own."

"Let's just hope Celie likes you. Then you can find something new to complain about."

XXXXX

*one day later*

Olivia smiled at Edison as he stood on her front porch. When she spotted his mother in the front seat of his black Ford pickup, her smile fell a bit. She and Trudy Davis had never exactly gotten along. They were coldly affection to each other for Edison's sake, but both greatly resented the other's presence. Trudy knew her son was a catch—more than that, really—and that he would have a woman in his life at some point, but she wished he'd chosen one more like herself, a woman who truly grasped his potential for greatness and would help him reach it. Olivia had her own lofty goals and, in Trudy's opinion, their relationship was a train headed in two different directions.

"Ready?" Edison asked, hoping she was. His mother hated to wait.

"Yeah," Olivia replied, pushing the screen door open and closing the wooden door behind her as she stepped onto the porch. It was pleasantly warm, the recent June heatwave broken for a bit. Edison stood before her and she blinked at him, expecting a kiss or hug, but he just smiled and reached for her hand. She rolled her eyes at the back of his head as they walked to his truck.

"Hi Trudy," she greeted pleasantly as she climbed into the truck. She wasn't thrilled about being squeezed between Edison and his mother. She wasn't thrilled about going to lunch with Trudy at all, but she couldn't think of a polite way to tell Edison that she didn't want to be around his mother. She was already having a hard enough time keeping him away. A day hadn't passed since her return that she didn't see him at least once. It seemed he had decided she would never be free of him again, as if his presence would make her never want to go back overseas. She felt like a trapped coyote contemplating chewing her arm off to get free.

"Hello Olivia," Trudy replied with an icy smile that Olivia returned.

The ride to the restaurant was mostly quiet except for Edison's idle chitchat with his mother. They had lunch at Trudy's favorite restaurant, The Blue Bayou, a tiny bistro in downtown Macon boasting the best peach cobbler below the Mason-Dixon.

"So Eddy tells me you're still dead set on a spring wedding," Trudy said after their food arrived.

Olivia grimaced at her steaming plate then looked up at the older woman's heavily made up face. "Spring is my favorite season."

"I know that dear, but Eddy and I were talking, and we just went on and on about how beautiful a fall wedding would be. Maybe October, when the leaves are changing, and the days are still just long enough to get a gorgeous sunset," Trudy suggested. She had her heart set on a fall wedding for her son.

"Well Eddy and I talked, and we agreed on a spring wedding," Olivia insisted, looking pointedly at Edison for some support. He remained mute, staring down at his plate as he shoveled food into his mouth. She frowned at him then looked back at his mother. Trudy cast a look at her son and he raised his eyes but didn't say anything. So went the rest of lunch: both women looking for Edison to show them which had his support and subsequently the upper hand in the situation. When Olivia realized, he wasn't going to side with either of them, her annoyance flared up to the point that she had to go to the bathroom to settle herself before she made a scene.

Trudy Davis stared at her son. "Are you sure she's the one you want Eddy? She's so stubborn. She'll never let you run your own house."

"She's strong-willed but in a good way, Mama," Edison insisted. He'd often found himself annoyed at Olivia's stubbornness but he didn't see it as a deal-breaker for them.

Trudy shook her head. "You two are going to be at odds for the rest of your lives. I think a gentler woman would do you a lot better. What if she decides to up and run off again? What are you going to do if she leaves you high and dry?"

"She won't. She's not going anywhere. I'm not letting her leave again Mama" Edison implored. Olivia would never leave him again if he had anything to say about it. Before Trudy could say anything else, Olivia reappeared. She seemed much calmer. She also smelled of the sweet spice of nicotine. Edison frowned at his fiancée.

"What?" she asked, wondering if he could smell the smoke on her. She had had a mint and spritzed herself with a little perfume but she sensed that he could still smell it.

"You were smoking," he replied.

"I had a cigarette. It's my first one in days." Olivia wasn't a chain smoker like most nurses. She only had a cigarette when she missed Fitz the most. Arguing with Trudy while Edison sat idly by made her miss him like crazy. She knew he would have defended her against anyone, even his own mother if necessary. He was just that kind of man.

"I wish you'd stop."

Olivia smirked at him. "I wish you'd stop."

Edison shook his head, casting a plaintive look at his mother. Trudy just smirked. Olivia watched the exchange with rage boiling in her stomach.

The ride to Olivia's house was much quieter than the ride to the restaurant had been. Trudy sat in the middle between the couple, wedging herself between them mid-fight physically and figuratively. She was almost certain that with a few more pointed exchanges, Olivia and her son would be no more and he could find the kind of girl she knew was right for him. He had scarcely stopped his truck before Olivia threw the door open and hopped out indignantly.

"Bye," she chirped, heading up the walkway to her front door.

"I'll come by later," Edison called.

"Okay." She stormed into the house and closed the door behind her.

"Bad lunch?" Eli asked from the couch where he was reading the newspaper.

"Ugh," was all Olivia could reply as she headed for the back porch to play the piano. Eli smirked at his firecracker daughter. They were still in the same places when Edison returned a while later after dropping off his mother at her house. Edison reached the mailbox just as the mailman did, accepting the Popes' mail before going into the house.

"Mail Eli," he announced, handing the mail to his soon-to-be father-in-law. Eli took the bundle of envelopes and flipped through them. He plucked one that wasn't addressed to him out of the stack and held it out to his daughter's fiancé. "Mail from Paris for Livvie. She's on the back porch."

Edison took the envelope and looked at the French return address, wondering who "F. Grant" was. He couldn't remember Olivia ever mentioning anyone whose name started with an F. He asked, Eli, "Who does Liv know in Paris?"

Eli shrugged. "Probably a nurse she worked with."

"Probably," Edison agreed before heading toward the back porch. He could already hear the piano drifting from the screened-in back porch as he walked through the kitchen. He smiled at the sight of Olivia playing intently. She stopped and looked up at the sound of the back door slapping shut. Edison gave her a smile. "Hi Liv."

"Hi Eddy," she replied tightly. She was still fuming from lunch. She'd hoped he would change his mind about coming over, but of course he hadn't. In his mind, he hadn't done anything wrong. In Edison's opinion, when women were fighting, you stayed out of it.

He walked over, holding out the envelope. "You got this from Paris." Olivia looked at the blue envelope in his hand, willing her own not to shake as she took it from him. He asked, "Who's it from?"

"A friend," Olivia replied vaguely. Not technically a lie. She and Fitz were friends. Edison waited for her to elaborate, or open the letter to read it, but she just set it atop the piano and went back to playing. Olivia kept her eyes on her sheet music as she listened to Edison sit in her mother's old rocking chair.

"My mother wants to know what day you want to go look at flowers," he said gently, hoping she just agreed.

"I don't need to go look. I want lilies." She didn't want to look at flowers for a wedding she wasn't sure was going to happen.

"I told her that. She's hoping you'll change your mind and choose something a little more fitting for a fall wedding."

Olivia's fingers stopped twinkling the keys. She turned to look at her fiancé's almost blank face. She hated the glazed look he got when he talked about his mother, like everything she said was faultless and therefore didn't require thought on his part, only parroting. "I'm hitting my limit with your mother, Eddy."

Edison dreaded the contention between his fiancée and his mother. They were both very headstrong women. It was a quality he adored in both of them, separately. "Liv she doesn't have a daughter. This is her one chance for a wedding. Maybe you could just let her have one thing."

"I could what?" Her voice was much louder than she'd intended. "I just got back from war and your mother is jumping down my throat about my wedding and you're telling me to let her have one thing? I should—" She took a deep breath, steadying her nerves. "I think you should leave before I decide to call the whole damn thing off."

"Call it off? Over a few suggestions?" Olivia blinked at his dumbfounded face. As usual, he had missed the whole point. He shook his head. "You know, before you left, you liked my mother's suggestions."

"Well I don't anymore." She stared at him almost coldly.

"You've changed. That place changed you." He just didn't get it.

"Yeah, war has a tendency to do that," she replied before going inside, the screen door slamming behind her. She stormed through the living room where Eli was going through the mail and stomped upstairs to her room, slamming the door behind her. Edison walked into the room a moment later and looked at Eli.

"Well you pissed her off," the older man observed.

"She's talking about calling the wedding off," Edison replied.

"Do you think she really will?" It wouldn't have surprised Eli if Olivia did. She was a different woman than she'd been before she went to Europe.

Edison shrugged. "I don't know. She's so different these days."

"She's been to war. It changes you." He had always thought Edison was a little too stiff for his lively child, that she could do better, but Olivia seemed to be happy enough with him so he let it be. It seemed "happy enough" wasn't going to cut it for Livvie anymore.

"Well I'm gonna go." Edison stuffed his hands in his pockets. "I'll come by tomorrow I guess."

"I would give it a day." Judging by the force with which Olivia had slammed her door, she wasn't going to want to see her fiancé for a while.

Edison left. He understood that war changed you but he didn't understand why it had changed Olivia so much. She never seemed to want to be around him, or listen to him, and she'd practically crawl out of her skin if he touched her. He hoped she got over whatever was bothering her. The last thing he wanted was to deal with a failed relationship.

XXXXX

In her bedroom, Olivia paced in circles, fuming. She could have hit someone, preferably Edison. She wouldn't have turned down taking a swing at his mother either. She knew a lot of her reactions were manifestations of guilt, but mostly he was just pissing her off. He was mute when he should have been on her side, and too vocal when he should have kept his damn mouth shut. He just wasn't working for her any more. She couldn't stand being around most of the time, especially if he was droning on about his day, and she wanted to crawl out of her skin every time he touched her. His hands were always so needy, pulling on her flesh and her clothes like a child who didn't want their mother to leave. It made her stomach roil with disgust. There was a time when she could shake off her annoyance with him because she knew he didn't mean any harm, but now she couldn't. It ate away at her insides until she snapped.

When she'd walked off her stress, she sat down with a huff and picked up Fitz's letter off the nightstand. She took a few deep breaths, only then noticing the difference of the letter's envelope. It was bigger than the others and he had included a parcel, a book she guessed from the weight.

A/N: Things between Edison and Olivia are deteriorating rather rapidly. And Fitz and Teddy are bonding. I love writing their relationship. Plus, Teddy might be getting himself a Grant girl if all goes well. What will Fitz's letter say? Did he take Teddy's advice to tell Olivia how he really feels? Will Olivia have the guts to say it back? Don't be shy! Tell me what you think! XOXO