Chapter Text
July 2015
As much as she hated stress-induced nightmares, Lizzie had to appreciate the way her brain went straight for the classics. She was back in high school, realizing she’d forgotten to study for a math test. She was in the middle of a crowded sidewalk and glanced down to discover she was naked. Her teeth were falling out.
Or, her current favorite: she was standing behind a spotlit podium, wearing a tight gown that didn’t belong to her, while a vast crowd of rich men in suits waited for her to give a speech – but her notes had vanished and her mind was blank.
Just as a wave of mocking laughter swept down the auditorium toward her, she woke up in a cold sweat, gasping for breath. For a second her panic spiked higher as she found herself alone, cramped and uncomfortable, staring at the walls of a strange room. Then she groaned and flopped back into the pillows.
Lizzie was in New York City. She had fallen asleep in her clothes, the bedside lamp still on and now glowing weakly in the pre-dawn light from the window. The mattress was littered with clippings and print-outs and her laptop was blinking patiently beside her.
She sat up, shaking her hair loose from its messy ponytail, and picked up the article she’d been reading when she nodded off: a six-page business feature from a 2004 edition of Vanity Fair. She stared at it blankly for a moment, then grabbed her phone from the nightstand and pulled up Twitter. “Do you ever get used to waking up in random hotel rooms?” she typed.
Not half a minute later, the phone rang. Lizzie rolled her eyes as she answered, even though she’d been secretly hoping for this the whole time. “William.”
“To answer your question,” Darcy said, “no, one does not.”
“It’s one in the morning over there. At least tell me you’re not still at the office.” Guilty silence on the end of the line. She sighed. “You’re going to nod off in a conference room at this rate.”
“I doubt you’re in a position to criticize, Lizzie.” She could picture him perfectly as he said it, slouched and disheveled at his desk, a posture he only adopted when no-one was watching – no-one but her. “Unless you can claim to have not worked past midnight yourself.”
She could not. “Fine. We’ll be an overachieving zombie duo.” She shoved her laptop aside, rolled off the bed and walked stiffly to the window, which gave her a view of the rooftop ventilation units across the street. The growl of Midtown’s morning traffic was well underway ten stories below. “Just be glad you don’t have to deal with my mother and her relentless wedding ideas on top of everything else.”
“Yes,” he said absently, then yawned and stretched. “There is that.”
Two weeks ago, it finally happened. It took years of waiting and many serious talks about the future, but in the end they decided it was meant to be.
Jane and Bing were engaged. They had gone to Central Park on a warm summer evening to attend the New York Philharmonic concert, equipped with a picnic basket, candles and wine; and as the music ended and fireworks bloomed in the night sky above the trees, he proposed and she said yes. It was ridiculously perfect.
The news was barely twelve hours old when Mrs. Bennet called Lizzie at work. “We must go to Manhattan at once,” she said breathlessly. “There’s a weddin’ to plan and hardly a moment to lose.”
Lizzie shot a long-suffering look at her assistant. “You pulled me out of a meeting to talk about the wedding? Mom, you said it was an emergency.”
“It is an emergency, dear! If my precious Jane does not have the most beautiful ceremony any of our friends and neighbors have ever seen, I’ll never be able to show my face again.”
It was no use explaining that wedding preparations were at least another year away. Jane was working toward a promotion and frantically busy preparing for Fashion Week in September; and as for Bing, the next eight months would see him travelling halfway around the world for weeks at a time. Thanks to his medical training, his charity work experience and a few well-placed contacts, he had landed a job at Médecins Sans Frontières earlier in the year. The work suited him so well, he’d already been assigned to a team setting up tuberculosis testing centers in Cambodia. He and Jane would barely have time to see each other, much less think about venues and guest lists.
But Lizzie had not followed her mother to New York just to rein her in. It so happened that MSF were working on a television documentary about the Cambodia mission, and they needed an innovative way to promote it online. Seeing her chance, Lizzie had called them last week and suggested a series of short, vlog-style web videos featuring different people involved in the project – doctors, patients, charity workers – as a teaser for the official air date in the spring.
Bing’s Internet fame from Lizzie’s video blog made him an obvious choice for one of the videos. Even better, Jane’s fashion house regularly developed charity clothing lines that benefited organizations like MSF. With a little strategic maneuvering, Lizzie might be able to get Jane on camera as well.
Last night, as Bing, Jane, Lizzie and Mrs. Bennet went out for Italian food in the West Village, Lizzie explained her idea. “It’s a great story,” she said, scrawling notes on a cocktail napkin. “We can use your romance as a sub-plot tying the different efforts together, and it’ll attract a lot of my viewers to the project. That is,” she added with a sheepish smile at Bing, “if you don’t mind me putting your love life on the Internet again.”
“Of course I don’t mind,” he said, wrapping his arm around her shoulders – her third hug that evening. He had always been affectionate, but now he seemed determined to make up for all the years Lizzie had gone without a brother. “This is a really important cause. I’ll do anything I can to help.”
“Anything, huh? You know, the viewers consider shirtless guys a real attention grabber…”
He laughed, jostling her. “Okay, I’ll do almost anything.”
Jane was glowing with excitement, which made her look lovelier than ever. Her ring sparkled as she reached for Bing’s hand across the table. “Wait until we show you the pictures from Phnom Penh. It’s so beautiful. We’re thinking of spending our honeymoon there, maybe doing some volunteer work.”
“Oh, you would,” Lizzie teased. “You’re both so generous, you’ll probably give away all your money by the end of the trip.”
Mrs. Bennet scoffed. “Lizzie dear, why are you talkin’ such nonsense?” She beamed triumphantly at her future son-in-law and waved a forkful of gnocchi at the elegant, pricey restaurant. “Give away all their money – there’s hardly any danger of that! Now Bing, wouldn’t you just love to hold the reception at the Four Seasons? Isn’t it absolutely charming!”
Lizzie downed half her wine glass in one gulp.
“How come you get to skip Engagemageddon 2015?” she complained to Lydia on the phone that night. “This isn’t fair.”
“Haaaa, sucker,” said Lydia gleefully. “Call me when it’s time to plan the bachelorette party. It’s technically your job, but we all know your ideas will be total snoresville.”
“Gee, thanks. What are you gonna do, hire a stripper?”
“I am shocked you would even suggest such a childish idea. So anyways, I know this awesome candy store where you can get chocolates shaped like pe—”
“OKAY GOTTA GO BYE.”