Lovestruck Forever

by Rachel Schurig

  “Thank you, Lizzie.”

  “What are you thanking me for? It’s your cash.”

  “Our cash,” he said again. “I’m thanking you for trying to not be uptight. I know it isn’t easy for you, but it makes me very happy.”

  I kissed him back before pushing him away to finish my breakfast. “I aim to please.”

  ***

  We didn’t find our house that day, but I didn’t let it get to me. I had the best time looking at houses with Thomas—I had never realized real estate hunting could be so thrilling—and so silly. In each new place, Thomas insisted we pretend we lived there, to see how it would feel. In a massive loft in Camden, he made me stand in the kitchen, pretending to chop onions while he stirred an imaginary pot on the stove. At a new -construction penthouse along the banks of the Thames, he lay on the floor in the empty living room, making me sit cross-legged on the floor across from him in an imaginary armchair. “So we can see how it will be to watch telly.”

  I was pretty sure Alisha thought we were ridiculous, but I could only giggle at his antics. It was hard not to be giddy. This wasn’t all pretend; it was real. We were really picking the house that we were going to start our family in. Maybe it made me childish, but I was going to soak up every silly, fun moment of it.

  And I had to admit that it was refreshing to not think about the money. At the first place, an attached townhouse in Mayfair, I had happened to catch a glimpse of a detail sheet on the counter. The number of zeros had made me feel sick, even worse after I tried to mentally convert the pounds to dollars. But Thomas’s enthusiasm had prevented me from saying anything. After a few properties, I eventually managed to put it out of my mind entirely. I got to look at some of the most gorgeous, highly sought after properties in the city, and I was determined to simply be grateful for that fact.

  On Saturday night, Thomas’s parents made the drive down from Edinburgh to spend the night and all day Sunday with us. They were, if possible, more excited about the house hunting than we were. Alisha got us in to see three more places—a detached, proper house in Hampstead, another loft by the river, and a classic four bedroom in Westminster, within walking distance to Buckingham Palace. Thomas’s parents came with us and agreed that the classic flat in Westminster, with its original wood floors, traditional crown molding, and working fire places, was much more our style than any of the more modern, renovated properties had been.

  On Monday, Thomas had to go back to work. I actually took him up on his invitation to come hang out on the set, though I usually felt out of place on movie shoots. But Monday was the day Ciara was accepting final offers for my book, and I knew if I didn’t stay busy somehow, I was going to go crazy.

  It was fun getting to meet Thomas’s co-stars. Journey was a family drama, with lots of humor and a bit of romance. The actor who was playing Thomas’s father had also played the role of the father in my favorite Jane Austen adaptation, and I had accidentally squealed a little bit when we first came face to face.

  “That’s what it takes to get you to lose it over a celebrity, eh?” Thomas asked, after I’d begged for an autograph and gotten my picture taken with the increasingly bemused actor. “You openly make fun of Jackson Coles. You fail to recognize Matt Damon at that studio party last year. You thought Ryan Gosling was a waiter, for Christ’s sake. But Hamish from the BBC means autographs and pictures.”

  I crossed my arms. “Have you met me?”

  I watched them do several takes. It was fascinating, the way they could repeat the same few lines of dialogue so many times with different inflections and change the entire feel of the scene. After a while, there was a lengthy break to adjust lighting, and I found myself getting bored.

  “Want to head back to my trailer?” Thomas asked. “I know you’re just dying to read whatever book you have in your purse.”

  I kissed his cheek in thanks and allowed a P.A. to lead me back to the trailer, where I spent a few comfortable hours reading and texting with Callie. As the day grew later in New York, Ciara was sending me updates on the progress of the offers. The numbers she was sending me sounded crazy, more than I’d make in several years of teaching. I could actually pay off my student loans without help based on some of these offers. I tried to keep in mind her often-repeated warnings: book advances were only a small part of the picture and could be quickly eaten up by agent and lawyer fees; and they weren’t all paid up front. “The important thing is the contract,” she had told me over and over. “The details. What you owe them and what they get. Royalty shares. Long-term rights. It’s often worth turning down the biggest monetary offer if the contract itself isn’t strong.” It was those details she was trying to hammer out now.

  Even though I knew there were actual, honest-to-God offers on the table, I was still having a hard time believing any of it was true. It felt like a daydream that would disappear at the first light of day. So it was somewhat of a shock to me when my phone rang around three o’clock.

  “Lizzie, I have a few offers I’d like to talk you through,” Ciara said. I could tell from the satisfied tone of her voice that it was good news.

  “A few?” I squeaked, my throat immediately going dry.

  “There are several that I’m happy with,” she said. “The ultimate decision, of course, will be up to you. But I’d like to tell you which ones I think will be most beneficial to you, and why.”

  My heart pounding, I clutched the phone to my ear while she went through the details. Much as she predicted, the top offer did not come with the highest advance. It did, however, offer the best terms. And, as she pointed out, the editor from that house had seemed the most invested in my book. “I think they’ll commit to making you a success, Lizzie.”

  My mind was whirling by the time we hung up. She was sending me contracts to look over, but it was mostly a formality. I had agreed that her preferred offer made the most sense for my book and my career. The contracts had already been thoroughly reviewed by her lawyers, so there was nothing to surprise me. It was now simply a matter of signing on the dotted line.

  When the door to the trailer opened a moment later, I was standing stock still in the middle of the room, the disconnected phone clutched in my hand. “Lizzie?” Thomas asked, his voice sounding very far away in my ears. “What’s the matter?”

  I shook my head, not knowing how to say it out loud. I didn’t even know if I believed it yet. I looked back at the blank screen of my phone as if to confirm that the call had taken place.

  “Is everyone okay?” he asked, his eyes on my phone now, too. He was scared now, probably thinking I’d gotten bad news. “What’s going on?”

  I looked up at him, at his familiar, much-loved face. In that moment, I thought of all of his encouragement, from the very first time I told him I wanted to write. Up until that point, anyone I had mentioned my writing to had basically told me that it was a pipe-dream, that I should concentrate on finding a real job. Thomas’s support, so unfamiliar to me, had felt like such a gift. And it had never gone away.

  “Lizzie?”

  “I think I just sold my book,” I whispered, and promptly burst into tears.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The next two days were the craziest two days of my life. I felt like I got phone calls from everyone I had ever met. Family from home, having heard the news from my mom; friends from London, having heard from Thomas; and a random assortment of others who had read the news online or in the papers. Ciara had released an official press statement on my book deal, and the entertainment sites seemed way more fascinated by it than I thought possible.

  “It’s because of Thomas,” I told Sofie over the phone the second night, looking out the window at the reporters below the flat. “They wouldn’t even know who I was if it wasn’t for the engagement.”

  “Who cares why?” Sofie asked. “The result is that you’re getting tons of publicity out of this. You were on Entertainment Tonight last night. This all has to be good for your book.”

  �
�It’s not all flattering,” I muttered, thinking of the website I had quickly clicked away from just an hour ago. The headline of the article was something along the lines of me cashing in on my fiancé to get a book deal.

  “Lizzie, you can’t possibly expect all the press to be good,” Sofie said sternly. “That’s just silly. The important thing is that people are talking about you and talking about your book. Take it for what it’s worth and ignore the rest.”

  “You’re right.” I heard a commotion downstairs and peeked out the window again. Thomas was home, making his way through the reporters and photographers. “Sof, I gotta go. We’re going to look at a house.”

  “Have fun,” she said. “My life is equally exciting, by the way. I might not have book deals worth tens of thousands of dollars, and I might not be house hunting with my rich celebrity boyfriend, but I did find a dollar in the cushions of your couch today.”

  “That dollar is mine.”

  “Finders keepers, babe.”

  No sooner had I hung up the phone did the door swing open. “How’s my favorite about-to-be-published author?” Thomas asked.

  “You do know it’s going to be at least a year before the book actually comes out, right?”

  He waved his hands dismissively. “Whatever. When it does happen, it’s going to be huge.” He looked down at his watch, wincing a little. “We should probably run, love. Alisha will already be on her way.”

  “Ready when you are.”

  “Let me just hit the loo first.”

  I grabbed us each a bottle of water to drink in the car while I waited. The appointment was to see a house over in Hampstead. We were lucky she was able to get us in so late in the evening.

  “Ready?” he asked, appearing in the sitting room.

  We made our way downstairs and through the crowd to the waiting car. Thomas gave the security guy, not Joe or Ross this time, directions to the house and then relaxed back in the seat, putting his arm around me.

  “Hi.” He kissed the tip of my nose.

  “Hi, yourself. You look tired.”

  “It was a long day.”

  I handed him his water and held out my own bottle for him to toast with me. “Here’s to hoping this is the one.”

  When we pulled up in front of the house in Hampstead, I seriously doubted it would be. Of all the places we had seen, it was the most like a proper house. Detached, two stories, all red brick, and surrounded by its own yard. That yard, however, was completely overgrown. A black iron fence surrounded the property, lined with bushes for privacy. Those bushes were scraggly, about three feet overgrown, and threatening to escape past the bounds of the property.

  “Great,” Thomas muttered. “Just the kind of time waste I need after a long day’s work.”

  “Be open-minded.”

  Alisha greeted us by the fence, smiling a little sheepishly. “I know how it looks from the outside,” she said quickly, probably able to read the expressions on our faces. “And to be honest, the inside needs some work as well. But I think it has a lot of potential.”

  She opened the gate and then the front door with a set of keys from her purse. “The private garden has some really nice trees,” she pointed out from the top of the rather tall front porch. There was a battered porch swing on the far end. “It looks messy, but it’s really nothing a good landscaper can’t sort. And it gives you some privacy from the road.”

  “That’s a good point,” I said, thinking of the reporters that we were having to wade through on an almost daily basis.

  The house opened up to a staircase. “Shall we start with the lower level?” Alisha asked, gesturing for us to go down ahead of her. Down the half flight of stairs, we found the sitting room. The walls were covered in horrible flowered wallpaper, but the far corner contained a giant fireplace. The last of the day’s sunlight filled the room from the multitude of windows.

  “Nice view out into the garden,” Alisha said. “The floor is original to the house, could probably use a re-finish.” Now that she said it, I did notice a few scuffmarks and scratches in the wood, but felt they added some character.

  We followed her through the sitting room and into one of the largest kitchens I’d seen in any property so far. It had a farmhouse feel to me, with the scrubbed pine counters, apron sink, and full fireplace. “Wow,” I said, stopping to look around. Through a door to the side, I could see a dedicated dining room, but there was plenty of room right in the kitchen for a big wooden table. The entire back wall was windows looking out into the back garden. I didn’t need Thomas to pose me or pretend like we lived here in order to know how it felt. I could imagine it perfectly, us cooking together, having friends over, someday eating dinner with our kids right at that table on a summer night like this one.

  “Dining room is through there.” We followed Alisha’s gesture into another room with very unfortunate wallpaper. “This room wraps around the side of the house,” she continued. “So you have an entrance from the front sitting room as well. Kind of nice if you have a formal party and don’t want to lead the guests through the kitchen.”

  I realized that Thomas wasn’t saying anything and tried hard to read his face as we made our way up the half flight of stairs to the main foyer. “Reception room is right here,” she said, opening a door to yet another flowery monstrosity. “This room is a bit more formal, away from the main family areas. Aside from the loo, it’s the only room on this level.”

  Upstairs we found four bedrooms. The master overlooked the back garden. If I could ignore the teal and black tiles in the en-suite bathroom, I could see that it was rather large, big enough, even, for a whirlpool tub if we wanted—I had grown somewhat used to the one in our rental house. The other three bedrooms were on the small side, but the original wood floors continued throughout the second level.

  “Shall I give you a few moments to talk it over?” Alisha asked once we were back on the main floor.

  “That would be nice.” Thomas took my hand and led me back down to the kitchen, and we stood in front of the windows, watching the sunlight turn from gold to orange over the crumbling stone patio. “So, what do you think?”

  It was hard to tell from his tone how he was feeling, so I took a deep breath, deciding to be totally honest. “Maybe it’s crazy, but I love it.”

  He turned to me, his eyes wide and bright. “You do? Lizzie, so do I!”

  “Really? I figured you thought it was too run down.”

  He shook his head. “I mean, it will be some work, for sure. Did you see that tile in the upstairs loo?”

  I giggled. “Pretty awful.”

  “But that might be kind of fun, yeah? Doing it up the way we want?”

  I nodded, feeling ridiculously excited at the prospect of what I was sure would be hard work. “We’re not touching this kitchen,” I told him. “I love it just the way it is.”

  “Scuffed floors and all?”

  “Especially the scuffed floors.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Four bedrooms. That’s a lot of room for family.”

  “A big family could definitely live in this house.” I realized that I was grinning like an idiot but then, so was Thomas.

  “We never really talked about Hampstead,” he pointed out. “It’s not quite as in the middle of things as that Westminster flat.”

  “But it’s close to Hampstead Heath,” I pointed out. “And that’s probably the best park in all of London.”

  “I saw a tube stop a block down on the way in.”

  “And I’m sure there’s a nice local pub around.”

  “I’ve never spent much time in Hampstead.”

  “We could explore it together.”

  He laughed. “You do realize that we sound like we’re trying to convince each other.”

  I met his eyes. “I don’t need convincing, Thomas. I’m ready to put in an offer.”

  He looked so much like a little boy right then—happy, excited, hopeful—that I felt my heart clench. “Yeah?”
<
br />   I wrapped my arms around his middle, resting my head against his chest. I could see the whole back garden from here. And I could imagine a little boy with Thomas’s green eyes out there playing. “Definitely, definitely yeah.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Oh, Lizzie, I’m so glad you’re here,” Maria called out the moment I set foot in the church basement. “There’s so much to do and no one is here yet. Can you help me with this crepe paper? Oh, and we need to get the flowers spread out—”

  “Can I put my bags down first, Maria?” I asked, scowling at her over the four brown paper bags I was currently balancing in my arms.

  “Sorry,” she said, sounding slightly abashed. “I may be a little stressed out.”

  I set my bags on one of the card tables, taking in the space where we would soon be hosting Laura’s shower. “Why are you stressed out? We have two hours.”

  “I know. I just want this to be perfect for her, you know? She’s had such a rough road trying to get pregnant and now she is!” Was I imagining the moisture in Maria’s eyes? “I can’t believe my little sister is actually having a baby! In like, a month!”

  “We’ve planned a beautiful shower for Laura,” I assured her. “And I’m here now to help, so no stressing, okay? Let’s just get it all ready.”

  Maria took a deep, somewhat shaky breath. “Okay.”

  We worked steadily for the next hour before my mother and Sofie’s sister Carla showed up. Under Maria’s strict instruction, we were pretty much done by the time they arrived. We’d tied balloons to the backs of all the chairs, placed vases filled with carnations on each table, laid out the tablecloths and table settings, strung crepe paper from the ceiling and walls, and set the poster board Maria had made the night before in the place of honor next to the gift table. Maria had made a collage of baby pictures of both Laura and her husband, Frank. I marveled silently at the amount of work she’d been putting into this shower, while simultaneously doing so much for my wedding, helping out at my parents’ house, working, and raising her own family. She may be bossy, but my sister Maria got shit done.