Chapter 11: Alicia and the Love Interrupted

Alicia sighed dreamily as she gazed at her laptop screen, flicking through photos of the New York apartment she and Wade had chosen as their first home. It was one of the many suggested to Wade by his company, placing them right in the bustling centre of Manhattan; surrounding by Wade's world of business and finance and Alicia's world of fashion. Alicia had been won over by the sizeable closet space in their master bedroom and the spacious living area that the apartment offered and was ready to sign the lease within five minutes of seeing it. Wade had been more practical, taking a close look at the neighbourhood surrounding it, transport links, money matters and so on but eventually Alicia's gut feeling had gotten him on board, too. In a month's time they would be making the move and Alicia's dream apartment would no longer be just a selection of photographs on a computer screen.

After some time, she was finally able to bring herself to shut the laptop and put it back on her desk, before stretching out comfortably on her bed. Today was going to be her and Wade's day. She had spent the past couple of days with her girlfriends, finding herself occupied with Kelly's personal problems, and today she had vowed to devote all of her energy to her fiancé. Staring at the sparkling ring on her finger, she grinned to herself. Fiancé. It had a hell of a ring to it. The only people so far she had been able to share the news with were her parents, who were over the moon that their only daughter was about to marry a man who was not only sweet, kind and generous, but also highly ambitious and driven; about to enter into one of the most lucrative careers in the world.

Wade was currently in another room in the middle of a Skype meeting. Most of Alicia's most treasured belongings were already packed into bags and boxes, making her room feel strangely bare. As she had told Wade a couple of nights before, her bedroom was covered in memories; and now it would also serve as the place where her future husband had made his proposal. It was a bizarre sort of full circle moment that the same spot where she would read romantic novels or watch romantic movies and dream about her own romantic future would end up being the place where her so-called romance would truly begin.

The couple had plans to make the drive from Hartford to Greenwich and have a sort of mini-vacation for a couple of days; both as a tourist experience for Wade and a brief moment of total privacy for the two in one of the city's swankest hotels. They were to set off later in the afternoon to make the hour and a half drive to Greenwich, leaving more than enough time to go out for an engagement celebration dinner and head back to the hotel for the evening ahead.

"You're looking pretty chuffed with yourself."

Alicia sat up in bed and looked over at Wade as he entered the room, her wide smile not once leaving her face.

"That's because I am, silly!"

Wade chuckled and took a seat on the edge of the bed, leaning down to kiss his fiancée.

"Are you all packed?" He asked, scanning the room. She nodded and gestured over to a small suitcase over in the corner of the room. "Great. I'm quite excited to see Greenwich. I've heard it's a pretty affluent place; who knows what kind of people we could potentially bump into over those two days?"

Alicia rolled her eyes. "Wade, we're not going for business."

"Of course, of course. This trip is all pleasant, right?" He smirked and tried to kiss Alicia again, but she ducked out of the way.

"I mean it Wade! Can we please just have this trip as a couple of days for us to enjoy ourselves and celebrate getting engaged? And not think about work or business or anyone else..."

"I know, Alicia. That's what we're going to do."

"Pinky swear?"

Rolling his own eyes, Wade played along with her game.

"Pinky swear."

He swung his legs around so that he lay on the bed beside her.

"So," he said. "Does that mean there's definitely no chance of you having to rush back to Hartford because one of your girlfriends needs boyfriend advice, or has broken a nail or something?"

Alica lightly smacked his arm but giggled at his joke.

"The girls know that once we're in Greenwich I'm totally off the grid, Wade. I'm sure the four of them will be able to survive."

Almost as soon as she said this, her phone started buzzing on the bedside table. Wade groaned and put his head back on the pillow.

"Sorry babe," Alicia murmured as she answered Maria's call.

"Hola biatch!" The redhead's voice called out loud enough for even Wade to hear.

"Hey Maria, me and Wade were just getting ready for our trip."

"I know, that's why I had to call you ASAP, you know, before you go off the grid and everything. Eve's here too, we're out getting smoothies at the mall. I'll put you on speaker."

"Hey girl," Eve called in response.

"Hey Eve. So are you guys gonna tell me what's up?"

"You will never guess who Eve had lunch with today?"

Alicia shot a guilty glance towards Wade who had now picked up his own phone; busying himself with that. Alicia sat up properly in bed and crossed her legs.

"Who?"

"Mike Mizanin!"

Alicia could hear Eve groaning on the other end of the line as she let out an audible gasp.

"No way! Eve, tell me everything!"

"Keeping in mind we're setting off in a couple of hours," Wade murmured beside her.

"Okay," Alicia sighed. "Maybe just the footnotes."

Maria and Eve caught their friend up on Eve's encounter with Mike a few days earlier in a grocery store, leading up to their lunch date today and his stories about LA and his supermodel girlfriend. Alicia's eyes opened wider and wider as the tale progressed, responding frequently with 'OMGs!' and 'No ways!'.

"But," Maria continued excitedly. "The best part is that he's supposed to be some big shot now and has a ton of cool friends, one of whom is throwing the most awesome sounding VIP launch party in the city this weekend, and guess who Mike decided to invite? Eve and her girls!"

Alicia and Maria shared a squeal over the phone as Maria and Eve continued catching her up on the details.

"And it's perfect, because you get back from Greenwich Saturday afternoon, which gives you more than enough time to come..."

"Uh, no duh I'll be there!"

The girls said their final goodbyes before hanging up.

"You'll be where?" Wade asked, almost forcibly casual.

"Eve got invited to this launch party for that new gym downtown and she got the rest of us on the guest list! It's on Saturday so it doesn't interfere with Greenwich..."

Wade sighed.

"Alicia, don't get me wrong, you know I understand, but sometimes I..."

"Sometimes what?" Her expression softened and she placed a small hand on his large arm.

"Never mind. This party sounds like fun," he said finally, to her surprise. "You should go. Besides, seeing as I have to go to New York for the weekend..."

"What?"

"It's a work thing. I've got to go there and meet some important people, you know how it goes."

"And how long have you known about this?"

"I didn't find out until earlier on; that's what that long Skype meeting I had downstairs was about. Surely you're not upset about this? I mean, you are spending your weekend living it up with your girlfriends, right?"

"Babe! You should have told me. We could have gone together; extended our little vacation."

"I just thought that since I'll be up to my eyeballs in business stuff you'd just be pretty bored. "

She pouted.

"If I'd have known before I found out about this party I would have loved to have gone anyway, you know that."

Wade shrugged.

"I'm pretty sure your phone had already begun ringing off the hook before I even had the chance to invite you. Besides, I've got business to attend to and you've got... your friends to attend to."

"You're right. A weekend apart won't kill us, right?"

"Exactly. We've got these next couple of days together anyway."

"Yeah."

Wade smiled softly and placed a kiss on the top of Alicia's head before stepping off of the bed.

"I better start loading the car."

"Sure."

She smiled at him as he left the room before sinking back down into her pillows. Okay, so maybe he had the right to be annoyed. Alicia was aware of how often her friendship with the girls had got in the way of her relationship with Wade, and especially now with them being back in Hartford it felt as if she was giving him less and less of her attention. It was something that put unnecessary strain on their relationship and something that she needed to learn to avoid.

Admittedly, there was something about Alicia that usually attracted men who would dote on her, making it easy for her to live her life as she pleased. Most of her past boyfriends wouldn't dare debating with her about how much she was seeing or talking to the girls; it would probably take several times to count the amount of times one of her men would be about to get lucky before she'd have to dart off to deal with some sort of drama. It was different for Alicia. Eve, Maria, Kelly and Kaitlyn were nowhere near as experienced as she was with dating, and as they would joke about often, since their school days she would be the one who never be without a boyfriend. Sometimes it was hard to keep up with the single lifestyles of her best friends, and now that they were no longer in high school or even college, it was becoming harder and harder to convince Wade that it really was necessary to spend hours on Skype talking about the complicated love lives of her friends, or to have to cancel plans because someone needed an emergency girls night.

Wade adored Alicia, but he was no push-over; something that she was slowly learning. More and more often he would get into a strop when her phone rang, but he hadn't yet crossed the boundary into possessiveness. Now that they were engaged there was really no excuse; all of these interruptions would have to end if Alicia was to successfully build a family with this man.

"Hey babe."

Wade was startled by Alicia's surprise presence out at the front of the house, where he was loading their suitcases into her car's trunk. She wandered over to help him out.

"Hey, are you alright?"

She nodded with a small smile.

He closed the trunk with a slam and looked over at her with a grin. She moved closer to him and wrapped her arms around his middle. Instinctively, he wrapped his large frame around her smaller one.

"You know I love you, right?" She murmured into his chest.

"Of course I do, silly. Why else would I want to marry you?"

She beamed out of sheer delight and leaned upwards onto her tiptoes so that she could kiss him.

"I can't wait to get out of here, babe. I'm so excited to move to New York, I wish we were doing it right now."

"Well, right this minute may be out of the question, but who says we can't make the move a little earlier than planned? Three weeks feels like a long way away. What about next week?"

She gasped, not really registering the fact that he was taking her words seriously.

"Can... can we do that? Is that possible?"

He nodded proudly.

"I can find a way."

"Oh my god," she breathed. "That's crazy. That's so soon. Oh god, I need to tell the-"

She trailed off and cleared her throat.

"Okay, let's do it! No more interruptions; just me and you starting our lives together."

He put an arm around her and squeezed tight as they began walking back up the porch into the house, excitedly coming up with plans for the last-minute change to their move to New York. Alicia felt that the more she talked about it, the less chance there was for her to change her mind or to get distracted. They enthused about it all throughout the hour and a half car ride to Greenwich, at dinner later that evening and again between the sheets of their hotel bed after a long, overdue session of lovemaking. As she lay in bed after Wade had fallen asleep, she held her hand out before her and began fiddling with the ring on her finger. She almost couldn't believe how quickly her happily-ever-after was playing out.