Chapter 22

~ Six months later ~

Will stared at a list of napkin colors, frowning in some confusion.

"Hey, Liz?"

She looked up from a binder full of pictures of wedding cakes. "Yeah?"

"What on earth is ecru?"

"What?"

"Ecru. It's one of the colors listed here."

Their wedding planner heard him, hurried to pull out a sample. "This is ecru."

"Oh." Will glanced quizzically at Elizabeth. "When did we stop calling that beige?"

She giggled, holding out her binder for him to look at. "What do you think of this one?"

"I think it's failing to obey some very basic laws of gravity, for one thing. Blimey, that's impressive."

Elizabeth smacked him lightly with the ecru napkin, laughing. "I meant do you like it?"

"Yeah. Do you?"

She considered the picture for a moment. "Yeah."

"How big is it?"

"Um... very."

"How many people are actually coming to this wedding?"

"I'm not sure." Elizabeth frowned, trying to remember her guest list. "Not all that many. Certainly not enough to eat all this." She grinned. "But look at it this way... the less they eat, the more we get to take home and eat ourselves."

"Very true. All right, I'm sold."

"We might not need to cook for weeks."

Will laughed. "I'm starting to think you're trying to fatten me up or something."

"Are you kidding? The way you work, you'll have it burned off in an hour. Maybe less. You could eat the entire contents of a doughnut shop and not gain a pound."

Will grinned somewhat smugly. "I'm just special like that."

Elizabeth shook her head. "Lucky."

"I could start a blacksmithing school and have that as the basis for my advertising campaign: Become a blacksmith! You'll never have to worry about dieting again!"

"I swear, Elizabeth, you are even worse at dress shopping than your fiancé is at ring shopping." Ana sat with her feet up on a chair, skimming through a bridal magazine.

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "You went ring shopping with Will?"

"Unfortunately. It took all day. Five stores. And now there's you, trying on eighteen thousand dresses..."

Elizabeth smirked. "I'd apologize, but I'm really not sorry. This is fun."

Ana rolled her eyes. "Ugh. Well, I'm glad you're having fun."

"What do you think of this one?"

"It's nice. Better than the last one, anyway."

"Should I try it?"

Ana gaze an exasperated sigh. "Do you want to try it?"

"I don't know…"

"Liz…"

"I don't know! I like all of them, but I haven't found one I love yet."

"All right, I'll tell you what we're going to do," Ana said, tossing her magazine aside and standing up. "You are going to sit down in this chair. I am going to show you dresses, say, three at a time. You will pick one favorite from each group. We will do this until you've narrowed the field to a final three. Then you will try on those three and choose your favorite."

"That sounds complicated."

"Well, the alternative is that you continue with what you've been doing and try on every dress they have. And believe me, my nerves can't take that. Now sit down."

With a resigned shrug, Elizabeth sank into Ana's recently vacated chair, while Ana herself disappeared into a display of dresses. She emerged a few minutes later with three options.

"All right… which one?"

An hour and a half later, the twenty-seven 'first round' dress, as Ana had dubbed them, had been whittled down to nine 'semi-finalists,' from which Elizabeth had at last selected a final group of three contenders. Ana hung them up on a rack side-by-side.

"And here they are!" she proclaimed dramatically. "Our finalists!"

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "I think we've found your true calling, Ana. Sports commentary. Look into it."

"Ha ha," Ana laughed sarcastically. "Now… which one is your favorite? And don't forget, the one you pick now is the dress. It's the dress you'll walk down the aisle in, the dress you'll dance with Will for the first time as husband and wife in, the dress he'll rip off of you with his teeth – "

"Ana!"

"Bet it's true, though," Ana grinned. "You're blushing. It's so true."

"Just because I'm blushing doesn't mean it's true!"

Ana shook her head. "Denial."

"Oh, shut up," Elizabeth said, turning away to hide an embarrassed smile.

Ana laughed. "Fine. But not until you pick a dress. An easily removable one."

"Ana…"

"I'm just trying to keep your future hubby's best interests at heart!" Ana said innocently. "Someone has to represent William in this deal – "

"The one on the left!" Elizabeth finally interrupted her. "I want the one on the left! Okay?"

Ana grinned. "Good choice. I knew that would work."

Elizabeth threw the bridal magazine at her.

"These invitations are scaring me…"

Elizabeth laughed, looked up to see Will staring at the envelope he'd just addressed. "Dare I ask why?"

"I'm pretty sure I've never met ninety percent of the people who are coming to our wedding."

Elizabeth took the envelope from him. "This is my great aunt on my mom's side. And she probably won't come, anyway. She's getting old, doesn't really like to travel much anymore."

"Hmm."

Elizabeth laced her fingers through Will's. "Are you sure there's no one else you want to invite?"

Will shrugged. "There's no one left. My dad didn't have any siblings, and neither did his dad or his mom. My mom had a sister I never really knew, but she died years ago."

"No kids?"

"I think two, but I don't even know their names. I asked Dad, he doesn't know either."

"But they're your cousins," Elizabeth insisted. "Surely they'd like to know that you're getting married."

"My mum died almost fourteen years ago, Liz," Will said quietly. "The only connection I could have had to them would have been through her. They probably don't even remember that I exist, if they ever knew in the first place."

"So all that leaves you is…"

"My dad, Jack, Ana, and a few of the guys on our football team."

"And Ana is my maid of honor."

"Yeah. So I've got… six. Six people."

Elizabeth leaned against his shoulder. "We're not going to do bride-side, groom-side seating, then. I'll have some of my family sit with yours."

"Yeah." Will gave her a small, almost sad smile. "You know, I never really thought about it before. Just how little family I have."

Elizabeth smiled. "I can help with that. You said you wanted a houseful of kids, I believe? I think we could shoot for an even dozen, don't you?" she joked.

Will laughed. "Sounds good to me."

"And besides," Elizabeth added a little more seriously, "once we're married, my family is your family, remember?"

"Yeah… assuming they don't hate me. They're not going to hate me, are they?"

Elizabeth looked at him in surprise. "No, Will! Why would they hate you?"

"I don't know," Will shrugged. "Your dad did at first."

"He didn't hate you."

"Okay, maybe not. But he didn't like me either. I want your family to like me."

"They'll like you," Elizabeth said. "I promise."

"And what makes you say that?"

"You only think they'll hate you because you've seen what my dad is like. He's rich, he's high class, and he doesn't like his daughter dating someone – "

"Poor?"

"I was going to say less rich. And anyway, the rest of my family are all a bit more… down to earth."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I mean, they don't all own chains of bookstores. All they'll see is a handsome, talented, hard-working, sexy young man who loves me very much," Elizabeth said with a smile.

"Did you just call me handsome and sexy?"

Elizabeth snorted. "That's what you took away from that?"

Will looped his arms around her waist, pulled her toward him. "Hey, it's not every day a guy gets called handsome and sexy. This is a big moment."

Elizabeth laughed. "I'm glad you feel that way."

Will kissed the top of her head, hugging her tighter. "You're sure they'll like me?"

Elizabeth gave him a reassuring smile. "They'll love you."

Because how can you not love Will Turner? :)