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“You should go home.”
Fuzzy blue eyes hit dark stormy ones. “Chris.”
An almost imperceptible shake of the head, the chiseled jaw firm. “No, you really should go home.”
A sigh. “Chris, come on.”
An answering sigh. “No, you should go home. You really should.”
“I don’t want to.”
Chris inhaled deeply and rolled his eyes. “Charlie, no, you’ve had too much to drink. You need to go home.”
“You’re an old woman,” Charlie Bing replied waving a hand. “I’m fine, fine like sunshine.”
Chris Brandon leaned his hands firmly on the wooden counter and attempted to look the inebriated man in the eye. “Look, man, you’re not fine. You’ve been here for five hours, and I cannot in good conscience sell you another drink or let you drive yourself home.”
“I’m fine.”
“You and I both know that isn’t true.”
Charlie slammed a hand down on the bar. “Look, just give me another beer. I’ll go home after that. I promise.”
Chris ran a hand through his hair. “Charlie, you can’t look me in the eye. You’re slurring your words. Just let me call Gwen and ask her to come pick you up.”
“She won’t come get me.”
“She won’t?”
“No, she’s mad at me.”
Chris nodded cautiously. “Gwen Bennet, your fiancée, is mad at you?”
“Yeah.”
“But why?”
“She wants to get married,” Charlie replied before resting his head on the bar.
Chris was puzzled. “But you’re engaged. I thought that you both wanted to get married.”
“Yeah, we’re engaged. I like being engaged. Being engaged is nice. It’s fun. I like it.”
“You two have been engaged for almost four years.”
Charlie lifted his head up and grinned. “I know, and it’s going really well!”
“Well, typically, getting married is the next step after being engaged.”
Charlie sighed. “But being engaged is going so well for us. Why ruin it by getting married?”
“Do you not want to marry Gwen?”
“I like being with Gwen. She’s great. But getting married, that’s a big deal.”
Chris sighed. “You probably should have thought about that before you asked her to marry you.”
“You don’t understand, Chris. It was Valentine’s Day, and her younger sister had just gotten engaged and we’d been together for a while, longer than Will and Elsa had. And I knew that Gwen wanted to get engaged. It seemed like it was what I should do, so I asked her to marry me. She said yes. It was great. But now she actually expects me to marry her.”
“Shocking,” Chris muttered.
“Don’t worry,” Lily Bennet said as she joined them at the counter. “My idiot sister will be here to get him in about fifteen minutes.”
Chris smiled slightly. “Thanks, Lil.”
She shrugged. “My sister is an idiot.”
“You mentioned.”
“Well, she is.”
“She loves him, Lily.”
The youngest Bennet sister shrugged. “Which is dumb; Chris, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve dated dumb before. I know how bad of an idea it is.”
“Are you comparing Charlie Bing to Matt Wick?”
She sighed. “I realize that it’s an imperfect comparison, but there are a few similarities.”
“Such as?”
“Well, to start with, a massive fear of commitment,” she said.
“Okay,” Chris replied. “What else?”
Lily screwed up her face in an expression that Chris had seen too often on Elsa’s face. “I don’t know. I’ll think about it and get back to you.”
He shook his head as she practically skipped away. Then he turned his attention back to the poor sop on the barstool in front of him. “Gwen is coming to get you, Charlie.”
Charlie groaned. “Why did you have to call her? Couldn’t you have called someone else?”
“Who would you have preferred?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie moaned as he settled his head on his arms resting on the bar in front of him. “Just not her, she’s mad at me. And this will only make her madder.”
“In my experience, Gwen Bennet is one of the kindest people on earth.”
“Which just makes it worse. She’s so good, and I’m so ME!”
Chris patted the other man’s shoulder wordlessly.
Charlie moaned. “I’m just not good enough for her, Chris.”
“Clearly, she disagrees. You two have been together for quite a while.”
“Yeah, but she wants to get married, and I don’t think that I’m ready for that yet.”
Chris poured a glass of water and set it in front of Charlie. “Drink that. You don’t have to make any decisions right now. Just drink some water, and actually talk to Gwen about all of this when you’re sober.”
Charlie just nodded and began to slowly sip at the glass of water.
A short while later, Lily Bennet led her oldest sister over to the bar. Gwen, clad in pajama pants and a winter coat, had clearly been dragged from her bed. She smiled slightly at Chris before turning her attention to her fiancé. “Alright, Charlie, let’s get you out of here.”
“Gwen!” he replied, slightly startled. “You came!”
“Of course I came.” She grabbed his coat off the back of his chair and held it out to him. “Let’s get this on.”
“I didn’t think that you’d come.”
She shook her head. “Why wouldn’t I come?”
“Because I’m dumb,” he groaned.
“That ain’t anything new,” Lily muttered.
Chris glared at her but said nothing. She shrugged wordlessly in response.
“C’mon, Charlie,” Gwen said, shaking her fiancé’s coat. “Let’s get you home. I bet that Chris and Lily would like to go home sooner rather than later.”
“Oh, gosh, I’m keeping them out late too?”
“On a weeknight, too,” Lily snarked.
“Be nice,” Chris told her. “You chose to work tonight.”
“You pay good money the day before Thanksgiving.”
He rolled his eyes. Lily had worked as a hostess at the Green Dragon from the pub’s opening from its opening during her junior year of college until she finished graduate school four years later. She worked in management at the Longbourn with her father, but she occasionally picked up shifts at the Dragon because she thought that it was fun.
Charlie tried to stand up, but his foot slipped as he tried to put it on the ground. Gwen looked up meekly at Chris. “Can you please give me a hand with him? I know it’s not your job or whatever, but I’m a little worried about him.”
Chris immediately made his way out from behind the bar. “No problem, Gwen. It’s not a problem at all.” He gently helped Chris to his feet. “Alright, now buddy, let’s get you out to the car.”
“What about my car?”
“Where are your keys?”
“Pockets, no, coat pockets.”
“Gwen, grab his keys. Lily, drive Charlie’s car home.”
“She’ll mess up the seat,” Charlie sighed.
Chris shrugged. “Beggars can’t be choosers. Come on now.”
Slowly but surely, Chris led Charlie out to Gwen’s car, which was parked right in front of the restaurant.
As Chris angled him into the car, Charlie leaned forward. “You’re okay, Chris Brandon. You’re…” And then Charlie vomited all over Chris’s shoes.
“Oh, Chris, oh no.” Gwen’s brown eyes were wide and her face paler than usual. “Oh no. I’m so sorry.”
“I’ll figure it out,” he told her. “Don’t worry about me.”
“But Chris,” she began in an apologetic tone.
“Don’t worry about it,” he repeated. “I’ll get it sorted out.”
“But I feel bad! He ruined your shoes.”
“Gwen,” he said firmly. “Seriously, it’s not a bother. I’ll get it sorted out.”
Lily watched her sister drive away before turning to her sometimes-boss. “You should make him buy you a new pair of shoes.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“He can afford it. And he puked on your shoes.”
“I can clean them, Lily. It’s fine.”
She shook her head. “You’re ridiculous.”
He shrugged casually. “That may be. I don’t know.”
“He owes you a new pair of shoes.”
“Drive his car home, Lil.”
She sighed. “You’re no fun, Christopher.”
He shrugged. “Fine by me, but take his car home.”
“And how am I supposed to get home after that?”
“How far do you live from Gwen?”
“Too far to walk at almost midnight in November!”
Chris sighed. “Call me when you get there.”
In the end, Lily didn’t have to call him because Gwen insisted on driving her home. “And I’m going to make Charlie buy Chris a new pair of shoes.”
“Chris said that’s not necessary.”
“Chris says a lot of things,” Gwen replied. “Charlie is going to replace those shoes.”
Lily smirked. “Good luck with that one.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Lily muttered.
Her older sister glared her. “It doesn’t sound like nothing.”
“You won’t want to hear it.”
“Try me.”
“Okay, but don’t bite my head off, please?”
Gwen looked over at her youngest sister. “When have I ever bitten anyone’s head off? Are you mistaking me for Elsa?”
Lily chuckled, then began tentatively. “Okay, it’s just that Charlie...”
“Oh, Lord, not you too.”
“What?”
“Mom’s been going on about him again lately.”
The shit-stirrer of the Bennet family stared at the family’s golden (well, really strawberry blonde) angel. “Well, why do you think that is?”
Gwen sighed and groaned. “It’s fine. I’m fine. He’s fine. We’re fine. It’s all fine. Why can’t you people believe that?”
“Because we all know that you want to get married,” Lily replied simply. “Elsa got engaged six weeks before you, and now she’s been married for almost three years.”
“And she’s about to have her second kid.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,” Gwen sighed looking down at her steering wheel. “I’ve got to do something, Lils. You’re not wrong here.”
“I know. I rarely am.”
The oldest Bennet sister rolled her eyes. “And I’m definitely making Charlie buy Chris new shoes because no way am I letting that absolute saint of a man walk around in shoes that my fiancé barfed on when we can definitely afford to replace those shoes.”
Lily grinned.
The next morning, Gwen texted her next-younger sister. “Can I talk to you before dinner today?”
The response came back about three minutes later. “I can meet you in the bathroom before dinner.”
“Could we get together before dinner? I need to ask you something serious.”
“How serious?”
“It’s about Charlie.”
“We’re getting there just after two. I’ll have Will take Clara, and we can go talk in Dad’s office.”
Gwen grinned before replying, “Perfect.”
Elsa was already at the Longbourn when her sister arrived. Gwen winced looking at her sister. It was below freezing outside, but Elsa, all 38 weeks belly, wore a sleeveless dress and a lightweight sweater. Charlie, nursing a hangover poorly, shook his head as he looked over at them. “She’s huge. Like, she’s just massive. I can’t imagine you doing that to yourself.”
Gwen looked over at her fiancé. “Doing that to herself?”
“You know,” he replied. “She let herself get massive.”
“She’s pregnant, Charlie. She’s thirty-eight weeks pregnant, she has a short torso, and Will is not a small guy. And she’s having a boy. She didn’t let herself ‘get massive.’” She sighed. “She’s just very pregnant.”
“Well, if you say so,” he shrugged, looking away as Chris Brandon approached.
“Gwen, Charlie, good to see both of you.”
Gwen gave him a one-armed hug. “Good to see you.”
“You too.”
Charlie shrugged. “Always good to see you, Chris.”
Chris nodded wordlessly.
“I’m going to get a drink and talk to Ed.”
Gwen gently pushed her fiancé’s shoulder. “Get me a glass of white please.”
“You got it,” he said without looking back at her.
“I’m sorry about him.”
Chris shrugged. “You don’t have to apologize for him.”
“I feel bad.”
“Gwen, let him do his own apologizing.”
She laughed and shook her head. “You got new shoes.”
“No, I’m just wearing different shoes. Last night, I was wearing my brown boots, and today, I’m wearing my black dress shoes.”
“We’re going to replace your brown shoes.”
“You don’t have to.”
Gwen glared at him. “We’re going to. Charlie needs to.”
“Okay,” he assented gently.
“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I need to go talk to my sister.”
“Talk to you later.”
Gwen put her hand on Elsa’s shoulder. “You got a minute?”
“Sure thing.” Elsa handed Clara to Will. “I’ll be back in a minute or two. Clara, be perfect for Daddy.”
Clara threw her arms around Will’s neck. “I love Daddy. I love him.”
Will kissed his daughter’s cheek. “Go talk, ladies. Clara and I will be fine.”
“Thanks, darling. I love you.” Elsa pressed her lips to Will’s cheek. “I’ll be back as ASAP as possible.”
Elsa followed Gwen into their father’s office. “What’s up, Gwennie?”
Gwen leaned against Tom Bennet’s desk. “How did you know that…no, how did you get Will to marry you?”
“How did I get Will marry me?” Elsa repeated as she slowly settled into a chair.
Her sister nodded. “Yeah, like, he proposed and you guys got engaged, but how did you get him to actually walk down on the aisle and marry you?”
“Gwen, I never had to convince Will that he wanted to marry me. He was ready to book St. Mart’s for December 31st about ten seconds after I agreed to marry him. The only reason that he didn’t was because I wouldn’t let him wake Fr. Mark up at one in the morning.”
She ran a hand through her long red hair. “Of course he did. Of course he would.”
“That’s just Will. He wanted to get married. He wanted to be married. He would have married me earlier if I would have agreed to that.”
“How did you know that you wanted to spend the rest of your life with him?”
Elsa ran her hands over her belly and sighed. “A thousand things both big and little over the course of dating him for three years, I guess. There wasn’t one lightning bolt moment. It was things like him trying to support me when I was getting ready to defend my dissertation while he was in the heat of tax season. And then there was the way that he helped and supported Nora when her dad was dying and then after he died. It was watching him with his sister and seeing him with our friends’ kids and a million other things. He learned about the things that I’m passionate about. He read my dissertation before I defended it. He made sure that my freezer was well-stocked when I was getting ready for my defense. He helped out at our Saturday farmers market stand. It was a million different things. I’ve always said that I was in the middle of it before I’d realized what had happened.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“Gwen, what’s going on with you and Charlie?”
Her older sister sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t even know. He proposed almost four years ago. But he won’t talk about setting a date or actually getting married. He keeps saying that he likes being engaged and he’s not ready to move on to the next step. I feel like I need to force the situation or something.”
“That’s not your only option.”
“I’m not going to break up with him.”
“I didn’t say that you should.”
“No, but Mom and Lily keep saying it.”
Elsa nodded slowly. “What happens when you try to talk about it?”
“Well, last night he got upset with me and went to the Dragon and drank so much that Lily had to call me to come get him.”
“Yikes.”
Gwen nodded. “Yeah.”
“I think you need to ask him what he’s afraid of.”
“You think he’s afraid of something?”
Elsa shrugged. “I could be wrong, but to me, his behavior indicates that he’s scared of something.”
“But what?”
Another shrug. “You’ve got to ask him that.”
Gwen’s face fell. “I hate confrontation.”
“I know. But honey, if you want honesty, you have to have these conversations.”
“Maybe I don’t want honesty. Maybe I don’t need to know.”
Elsa leveled her gaze on her sister. “Do you want to marry him?”
Gwen nodded.
“Then, like it or not, you have to have this conversation.”
“Blergh.”
“I know.”
“Elsie, I don’t want to do this. Can’t I just go with what’s easiest?”
Elsa sat down and folded her hands on her lap. “I know that you don’t want to, but you need to. And in the end, you’ll be better off because you’ll have answers.” She paused for a moment. “And I’ll give you ice cream and watch While You Were Sleeping with you when you’re done.”
Gwen smiled. “What would I do without you?”
“You would have had a calmer childhood. But alas, I’m here, and you’re stuck with me.”
“And I love you.”
“That’s wise.” She paused for a second, resting her hand on the side of her belly.
Gwen leaned forward. “Are you alright?”
“This kid,” Elsa sighed. “He keeps kicking my bladder.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He’d better be good at soccer someday.”
Gwen chuckled. “Do you need to go to the bathroom?”
Elsa nodded as she rose unsteadily to her feet. “Yet again.”
“You’re almost there, Elsie,” the oldest Bennet sister said in what she hoped was a reassuring tone.
Her younger sister smiled at her. “I know. Soon I will be able to see my feet and make Will carry this kid around sometime. And it’ll all be worth this.”
“Where were you?” Charlie asked when Gwen reentered the ballroom. “I got you a glass of white wine, but then you vanished.”
“I needed to talk to my sister about something.”
He looked at her. “Yeah?”
She nodded.
“Something important?”
“Yeah, I wanted her opinion on something, and I didn’t want to talk to her in front of everyone.”
“Should I be worried?”
Gwen furrowed her brow quizzically. “Why would you be worried about me talking to my sister?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Chris told her what happened last night and she wants you to break up with me?”
“Chris wouldn’t tell her. He says that the bartender’s seal of the bar is like the priest’s seal of the confessional.”
“Well, Lily can be a gossip sometimes.”
“Lily didn’t tell her. I made her promise.”
“She could have broken a promise.”
Gwen glared at her fiancé. “My sister would not break that promise. She knows what would happen if she did.”
“Okay then,” Charlie said slowly. “What did you talk to your sister about?”
“Honestly?”
“Yeah.”
Gwen sighed. They didn’t normally have conversations like this. For one, they were both conflict adverse, and for another, they definitely didn’t have these sorts of conversations in public. But she was tired, and Charlie wasn’t making things better. “Fine, we talked about you and how you don’t want to marry me.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to marry you in general,” he snipped back. “It’s that I don’t want to marry you right now.”
“Right now?” she repeated. “We’ve been engaged for three years and nine months. How much longer do you want to wait before we get married? We got engaged six weeks after my sister and she’s about to pop out her second child any day now and then in six weeks she’ll celebrate her third wedding anniversary. When do I get to have a baby? When do I get to celebrate my wedding anniversary?”
Charlie stared at her. “I didn’t know that you wanted those things.”
She narrowed her eyes, her blood growing hot and her hands tightening. “Why would I have agreed to marry you if I didn’t want those things?”
Before he could reply though, Erik Wentworth and Will Darcy appeared. “Alright, you two,” Erik said, grasping Charlie by the shoulder. “Into the hallway with you.”
“What? Why?” Charlie sputtered as the larger man started walking.
Will looked at him as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “You’re causing a scene in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner, and the Great Mary Frances does not want that.”
“Shit,” Gwen breathed. “Mom.”
“Yeah, Mom,” her brother-in-law said, putting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Now, come on. If you two are going to fight, you’re going to do it in private.”
Erik practically dragged Charlie into the hallway while Gwen walked patiently with Will. Once they were well clear of the ballroom, Erik turned to face the couple. “Here’s the deal. I don’t know what the problem is. Frankly, I don’t really care. But I know that you two need to resolve this. So, we are going to lock you in Tom’s office for twelve minutes. Talk it out. Fight it out. Whatever. We’ll come back for you at two-thirty. Just figure your shit out.”
Will grabbed the beer out of Charlie’s hand. “Without alcohol, just get it sorted already.”
“Come on now,” Erik said, leading them towards Tom’s office. “In you go.”
Gwen sat down at her father’s desk as Erik clicked the door shut. Charlie meanwhile started looking at the various family photos that hung around the room. He picked up a picture of Tom and Mary Frances with their daughters from somewhere in the neighborhood of 1997. “Nice bangs,” he quipped pointing to her seriously rounded fringe.
She smiled slightly, then picked up a much more recent picture of herself with her four younger sisters. “I was very stylish.”
“Clara looks like Elsa,” he remarked as he picked up another picture, one of herself and Elsa from Christmas somewhere around 1984.
She nodded, not needing to see the picture. “She really does. Elsa is all Bennet, and she passed most of that on to her daughter.”
“Are you jealous of Elsa?”
She dropped the frame in her hand on her dad’s desk. “Why do you ask that?”
“She’s married. She has a kid and another one on the way. Are you jealous of that?”
Gwen pondered for a moment. ”I don’t want to say yes.”
He looked down at his feet. “But you are.”
“She has a good life. I want that kind of a life. I want to have a husband. I want to have babies of my own.”
“How is a husband better than a fiancé?”
“The commitment,” she replied without hesitation. “It says that you’re willing to commit to me no matter what for the rest of your life, however long that life may be. In the time that we’ve been engaged, Alice has been widowed and found love again with Chris. She’s loved and lost, but she’s willing to gamble and make that commitment to be Chris’s person for as long as they both shall live. I want that. I want that public commitment, that getting up in front of God and everyone and saying that ‘Yes, this is my person. I have found the one whom my soul loves and I will bind myself to him or her for as long as we both shall live.’”
“Wow,” Charlie breathed. “I never thought about it like that. I always thought it was…I don’t know? Just a big party and whatever?”
Gwen stared at him. “No, that’s the wedding. The wedding is only the beginning. I don’t really need the wedding. I want the wedding. I really want it badly now. But the marriage is the point. I want to be married.”
“So, we should probably get married sooner rather than later?”
She tried desperately to keep her face expressionless-or at least calm. “Charlie, I’m thirty-six. If I want to have babies, that’s something that I should probably get on.”
“I didn’t think about it like that.”
She took a deep breath. “Charlie, are you scared of getting married?”
“Well,” he began slowly. “I mean…I wouldn’t say that I’m scared. But it’s a big step, Gwen.”
“It is.”
“But you want to get married, and I feel like at this point if I want to keep you, then I need to marry you.”
Gwen looked at him steadily. “So, you’re willing to set a wedding date now?”
He took a long breath. “Yeah, I think we can do that.”
“How does Memorial Day weekend work for you?”
“Where do you want to get married?”
“Here.”
“Here?”
She nodded. “I want to get married on the beach out there and then have our reception in the big ballroom.”
“My sisters might not come if it’s a beach wedding. They don’t like sand.”
Gwen shrugged. “It’s our wedding, not theirs. Let’s do what WE want.”
“What if we got married on the long porch? You could see the beach from there, but it’d be better if there’s rain?”
She thought for a minute, then nodded. “Okay, we’re getting married here on the porch on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend.”
“You got it.”
She grinned as she jumped to her feet. “Good, now knock on that door and make Erik let us out so we can go talk scheduling with my dad.”
Charlie laughed. “You’re going to do this in the middle of Thanksgiving?”
“I have to get the date pinned down now,” she insisted. “I want this on the calendar.”
“Why? So I can’t back out?”
She looked at him with something like irritation in her eyes. “I mean…that isn’t my reason, but it’s not a bad reason. But no, my reason is just that I want it on the calendar. That makes it real for me.”
Charlie smiled as he knocked on the door. “Well, then, let’s get it on the calendar.” He spoke louder. “Hey, Erik, let us out! We set a wedding date.”
The lock clicked, the door swung open, and the imposing blond man stood in the doorway. “Did you?”
“We’re getting married Memorial Day weekend,” Charlie said.
“Once we get that settled with my dad,” Gwen added.
“Good,” Erik replied. “Now, go talk to your dad. And no more fighting in public, please and thank you.”
After a brief conversation with her father, Gwen came up behind her sister. She put her hands on Elsa’s shoulders and said, “Alright, Elspeth, I need you to buy yourself a teal bridesmaid’s dress and meet me on the hotel’s back porch on around sunset on May 27.”
Elsa turned to look at her sister. “Oh, do I?”
Gwen grinned. “You do.”
“Well, do I need heels or flats?”
“Flats,” Will Darcy inserted. “No one wants to see you try to walk in heels.”
Elsa grinned and shook her head. “Just tell me what color flats to wear.”
Gwen leaned her head against her sister’s and smiled. “I’m getting married.”
“Finally,” Will breathed.
Elsa looked at her husband. “Dude, you already used that line last year for Ed and Nora’s wedding.”
“But it was a good line!”
“And it was a one and done,” his wife said. “You can’t use it again.”
Will playfully stuck out his lower lip. “Boo.”
Life wasn’t perfect after that. They didn’t all live happily ever after, but no one does. The following Monday, Charlie gave Chris a new pair of brown leather shoes. Then on December 3, Thomas Edward Darcy made his arrival. Two weeks later, Chris Brandon and Alice Kingsleigh got married.
Then, in March of the following year, Gwen Bennet found out that she was pregnant. “Well, that seals the deal,” Charlie said. “May 27 is our day.”
And it was. On May 27, Charlie and Gwen got married on the Longbourn’s back porch. On November 5, Hunter Grace Bing was born. “Is she worth it?” Gwen asked her husband.
He smiled looking at the tiny baby in his arms. “This is definitely better than anything that I could have imagined.”
The End!