First Impressions: A Modern Pride and Prejudice Adaptation

Chapter 11.1

Darcy crumpled his second piece of paper and tossed it towards the wastepaper basket. It bounced on the rim, tilting for a second before falling back and down onto the floor. Darcy sighed and scrubbed the heels of his hand over his face.

It was almost two in the morning; the fireworks had ended at 11, almost three hours ago. He knew he should have gone to bed, but every time he tried to climb beneath the sheets, his racing, almost electrified thoughts forced him out again.

Ever since he had allowed himself to think the words, admit them, at least inside his own head (I am in love with Elizabeth Bennet.) he had thought himself almost irredeemably stupid for refusing to accept it for so long. He had been staring at the girl, hoping she would speak to him, seeking her out, for weeks. His stubbornness was perfectly unjustified; at least giving a name to the affection meant he could try to control it.

Darcy pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and tried again. At the top he wrote "Pros" on one side and "Cons" on the other before drawing a straight line horizontally beneath the two words and another, vertical line straight down the center of the page. List making always helped him organize his thoughts, whether on a business venture, a plot of a story... or apparently his love life. If he wasn't so engrossed in his work, he would have laughed at himself.

Under the cons, he wrote:

- Ridiculous family members
- Indelicate mother
- Obnoxious sister
- Jane??

Then he crossed out the last point. If Elizabeth was so different than her younger sisters, then surely any questionable thoughts Jane may or may not have had about Bingley's wealth wouldn't have been passed on to her...

But what if that was only because he hadn't made his interest apparent? (Not that he had necessarily consciously acknowledged it before, but he couldn't rule it out.) No. That was ridiculous.

Nothing in the way she spoke or dressed or acted told him Elizabeth Bennet was interested in money. He dragged his hand over his face, pressing the ball of his thumb against one eye until multicolored spots like fireworks erupted in his sight. Eventually, he lowered his hand, moving to rest it against the edge of the desk. He pressed the pads of his fingertips against the wood until the skin around his nails turned pale.

He stared at the empty pros list for several minutes without moving a muscle. What were the pros to this situation? She was beautiful and witty and sharp. Even when the point of her tongue was directed towards him, he relished being the center of her attention, even for just a minute or two at a time. Even when she misquoted him back at himself or attempted to bait him to ridicule...

Moving his hand slowly to the empty column, he added simply:

- I love her.

And then added once again to the cons list:

- She has no idea...

~~~~

Darcy knew he would never quite understand Caroline as he sat back and watched her plan for the party that she was so dead set against hosting. She wrote up an elaborate menu list and doggedly selected songs, as well as the order they were to be played in, before ordering an expensive lighting display that would cover the yard.

Bingley meandered over one afternoon, eating an apple as he prodded through Caroline's mountainous stack of papers. "You should change some of these songs around," he said through a mouthful. He swallowed. "Put a bunch of slow ones together. That'd be very nice." He grinned and straightened his collar.