Lovestruck Forever

by Rachel Schurig

  “Seriously. I booked her flight this afternoon.”

  “Thomas! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He shrugged. “I was a little pre-occupied pretending to be a pony, to be honest.”

  I laughed and grabbed his hand again. “That makes me so happy!” Sarra was one of our friends from London. Along with her brother, Charlie, boyfriend Mark, and friends, Meghan and Carter, Thomas’s tight group of friends had accepted me with no reservations. They’d become a little family to me in London, thousands of miles away from home. Meghan, Carter, and Charlie had all made plans to attend the engagement party as soon as we mentioned it. Sarra, however, had a work commitment that she wasn’t sure she could get out of.

  “So she got out of work?”

  “The conference was rescheduled.” He made a scathing noise in the back of his throat. “She did tell me that she was only coming because I offered to buy her plane ticket.”

  I laughed. It was stuff like that that made me love Thomas’s friends all the more. They took his job and his recent celebrity in stride, refusing to let it change the way they treated him. Sarra, in particular, took it as an excuse to tease him even more than she usually would.

  “I’m so happy they’ll all be here,” I said, unable to wipe the grin from my face. I hadn’t seen any of them since New Year’s Eve, the last time Thomas and I had been in London.

  “It will be great,” he agreed, squeezing my hand. “Even though I’m sure Meghan will be even more annoying about the wedding plans in person.”

  I giggled. Meghan was definitely the stylish, sophisticated one in the group—it sometimes seemed odd that she even hung out with the rest of them. More than anything else, she loved party planning and had been sending bi-weekly emails with ideas for the wedding. Our protests that we had not even set a date yet fell on deaf ears.

  “We probably should be getting on with it,” Thomas said after a moment. “The planning, I mean. It’s been two months.”

  I nodded in the darkness, knowing he was getting impatient. I hadn’t wanted to commit to anything until my mom was better. Thomas had been completely supportive, but I knew he was ready to get moving on our plans. We’d been through a lot to get to where we were now, and we both felt a strong urge to make it official, finally. To be married and committed to each other.

  There was also the matter of Thomas’s career. When my mom was hospitalized he had walked away from a huge opportunity to star in a summer blockbuster. I had tried to urge him to take it, but it would have meant a lot of time apart. I still couldn’t believe that he’d been willing to walk away from it, for me. If I had ever needed proof of the depth of his feelings for me, that had taken care of it. But now, his career was somewhat on hold. For the time being, he was performing at a local theater run by Jenner Collins, a Hollywood mega-star who had produced Thomas’s last film—and who just happened to make his home in Detroit. Thomas loved the theater—probably even more than he enjoyed making movies, so I knew the work wasn’t a hardship for him. Still, the ambiguity of our situation made it difficult for him to make plans for the future. His agent, and my former boss, Heidi had been getting increasingly hysterical in all of her communication with him. Opportunities were coming in, and he refused to even consider them. She could barely speak to me anymore, blaming me, I was sure, for his sudden lack of drive. I hadn’t told Thomas that detail, though. The last thing I needed on my conscience was for him to fire her over me.

  “Let’s set the date,” I said impulsively, hit by a familiar wave of guilt over the current inertia of his career.

  He turned to look at me in the darkness of the car. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. Seriously. I mean, we’ve been waiting all this time to see how my mom was doing, and she’s clearly on the right track. Isn’t that why they’re finally throwing the engagement party? Because she’s made enough progress to be there and enjoy it?”

  I thought he might attempt to argue with me, to remind me that there was no rush and we could take it as slow as I was comfortable with, so I was a little surprised when he sighed in relief. “I would love to set the date.”

  I squeezed his hand over the console. “Then let’s do it.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the ghost of a grin on his mouth, giving him a very mischievous air. “What?” I demanded. “What’s that smile for?”

  “I was just wondering,” he said, and I could tell he was trying not to laugh, “if this means you’re going to show me your secret Pinterest wedding board.”

  My mouth dropped open. “How do you know about that?”

  He did laugh then. “Oh, come on. I’ve known about it for ages.”

  I tried and failed to keep from blushing as I wondered what exactly he meant by ages. Did he, for instance, know that I had started the board long before he ever proposed? Like, before I even left London? It had been my favorite daydream for months, pinning little pictures and articles about my dream wedding to Thomas. But I thought it was just that—a dream. A secret dream.

  “Oh, don’t be embarrassed,” he said. “I think it’s cute that you’ve been planning our wedding since you met me.”

  “It has not been since I met you,” I said, my voice defiant, before adding in a mumble. “It was a few months after that.”

  He laughed, bringing the hand he still held up to his mouth to kiss my knuckles. “See? Totally cute.”

  “Whatever.”

  “So how ‘bout it? Do I get to see?”

  I gave him my sternest look, though I doubted he could really see it in the darkness. “Only if you promise not to tease me.”

  “I would never tease you,” he said, sounding genuinely hurt. “This is our wedding, Lizzie. I want it to be everything that you want it to be. I’m happy that you’ve been thinking about it. That means you’re as excited as I am.”

  I felt that familiar rush of happiness. “I think I’m more excited than you, mister.”

  “How do you know? You haven’t seen my secret Pinterest board yet.”

  I burst out laughing at the thought of Thomas pinning flower arrangements, or something. “God, I hope you’re not joking.”

  He gave me a rueful smile. “Sorry, I was. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about the wedding all the time.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were more excited about the honeymoon.”

  He turned his gaze from the road for a moment to waggle his eyebrows at me. “You’re onto me.”

  I realized I was sitting on the edge of my seat, nearly bouncing up and down. Now that we were actually free to talk about it, I was practically beside myself with excitement. I hadn’t given a ton of thought to my wedding when I was growing up. While my sisters and cousins had been fond of playing “bride” with dress up clothes, I was more than happy to daydream about the weddings of the heroines in the novels I loved. When Thomas proposed, I had tried to convince him to take me to Vegas immediately—to get married right away. Not really caring much about the fanfare that went along with the wedding—I just wanted him. But now I was thankful that he’d declined the Vegas idea. I guess I had a bride gene after all.

  As Thomas pulled off the freeway toward our temporary home, I wished he would hurry. We had a wedding to plan, and suddenly I didn’t want to waste another minute.

  Chapter Two

  Our house in Detroit, much like the beach house in Malibu, was far too big for just the two of us. When Thomas had decided to come home with me, instead of staying in L.A. to start a new movie, he had enlisted the help of Jenner Collins in finding a rental not too far from my parents. Jenner had hooked us up with a real estate agent who had experience working with the rich and famous. I had found the entire thing silly—I had lived here my whole life here and knew the area as well as anyone. Plus, the houses Jenner’s agent was showing us were enormous, comically large for two people, most of them secluded on large tracts of land out away from the suburbs. I’d bugged Thomas about it until he finally admitted that h
is management team was concerned about security.

  “What do you mean, security?” I had asked. “We never had to worry about security in London or Malibu. We just lived in regular neighborhoods.” I paused. “Well, I guess you couldn’t call that mansion on the beach a ‘regular’ neighborhood, but we weren’t as secluded.”

  Thomas had looked exceedingly uncomfortable. “Heidi just thinks it would be better for us to be off the grid a little bit. We’ve been getting a lot of fan mail—apparently some people are very excited about me being in Michigan.” His voice was light, but there was something in his tone when he said “fan mail” that sent a little chill down my spine, though I couldn’t pin point why. Thomas was always getting fan mail—I even got a few letters a week, though Heidi’s team generally kept me from seeing any of that. So why did I get the sense that something was different?

  “Besides,” Thomas had said, sliding an arm around my shoulders. “I think it sounds kind of nice, being all cozied up with you miles away from any neighbors.

  So we had ended up in this sprawling, riverside mansion, set far off the road and surrounded by trees. It took some getting used to. I was accustomed to the traditional, suburban track home layout of my hometown and the overwhelming crowded closeness of Thomas’s neighborhood in London. Out here, it was actually quiet—an admittedly nice feature after leaving the craziness of my parents’ place every night.

  After parking in the garage, Thomas deactivated the security system and held the door open for me. “After you.”

  The garage door entered into the immense kitchen, and I set my purse on one of the long granite counters. We had rented the place with all the furniture and kitchen things in place, and it was a good thing, too. I never would have been able to think of enough kitchen supplies to fill up all the cabinets. Several times, I had imagined my family here—even our masses could have fit in this kitchen, and much more comfortably than we did at my parents’ house. That, of course, was out of the question—only Sofie had actually set foot in this place.

  “You okay?” Thomas came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my middle. I realized that I’d been standing at the counter, lost in my thoughts.

  I turned in his arms, smiling, determined not to let myself get upset about my family’s strict propriety. They can be crowded in that kitchen if they want, I thought, standing up on my tiptoes to kiss Thomas. “I’m fine.”

  “Good.” He released me, heading for the fridge. “Wine?”

  We ended up on the couch in the den, our favorite place to relax in the house. The great room was much larger and had a better view of the river out back, but the furniture was way too fancy to feel comfortable in. The den was cozier, lined with bookshelves and filled with slouchy old leather couches. There was even a fireplace, which Thomas turned on with the flick of a remote control. I leaned into him, sipping my white wine, while he turned on his laptop.

  “Okay. Let’s see the dream wedding preparations.”

  I navigated to my Pinterest page and opened the secret board of all my collected wedding stuff. Immediately the screen filled with a collage of dresses, flowers, decorations, and cakes.

  “Wow,” Thomas murmured. “You weren’t kidding.”

  I laughed. “I just pinned everything I liked. A bunch of the stuff Meghan has been sending. I wasn’t really trying to narrow stuff down, you know? I thought it was just for fun.”

  “I like that,” he said, pointing at a photo of a loft space, the rafters filled with twinkle lights, romantic table settings glittering across the floor.

  “That’s the Madison in London,” I said. “It’s a schmancy restaurant in the West End. I thought it would be cool for an elegant city wedding.”

  “Are we elegant city people?” he asked, wrinkling his nose a little.

  He did have a point there. We loved living in London, but I wouldn’t really call either of us elegant or sophisticated. “What about this?” I asked, pointing to a sprawling set up in a barn. The tables were decorated in mason jars filled with wildflowers and lanterns hung from the exposed beams above. “Are we rustic-chic people?”

  He snorted. “Have you ever set foot in a barn before, Lizzie?”

  I giggled. “Not that I can recall.”

  “Okay, maybe we shouldn’t pick a theme yet,” Thomas said reasonably. “What if we started with the season?”

  I chewed on my lip, scrolling down the page. “These colors are all for fall.” I pointed at a flower arrangement in oranges and reds. “That’s really pretty.”

  “Fall, huh? That’s only a few months away.”

  “Not this fall,” I said quickly. “There’s no way we could pull off a wedding by then—it’s only five months until October.”

  “Next fall?” His voice was incredulous, and he pulled away from our cuddle to stare down at me. “Lizzie, we are not waiting more than a year. No way.”

  “Then I guess fall is out. I wasn’t joking, Thomas, you really can’t pull something like this off in a few months.”

  “How hard can it be?” he asked. “I mean, we get a venue, a cake, and some flowers, right?”

  I laughed, patting his cheek fondly. “You’re such a guy.”

  “And you forget that I’m a terribly rich, terribly famous movie star—rich and famous movie stars can hire other people to meet their demanding deadlines.”

  I started to roll my eyes, but he pointed at me, a triumphant look on his face. “Lizzie Medina, we had an agreement. No more eye rolling when it comes to money talk. We’re about to be married, miss. It’s your money, too.”

  I scowled, forgetting the pinky swear I had made just last week when he insisted on buying me a new cell phone to replace the one I had dropped, though I had argued the cracked screen was still perfectly usable.

  “Fine,” I muttered. “I won’t roll my eyes. But that doesn’t mean we need to spend a ton of money on this wedding.”

  He made a big show of rolling his eyes then. “There are like, a thousand people in your family. How will it be possible to not spend a ton of money?”

  “We can spend money on essential stuff—like feeding everyone. But that doesn’t mean we need to get extravagant and hire a wedding planner and rush order everything just to get married in the fall. A winter or spring wedding would be perfectly fine.”

  “I don’t want it to be fine.” I could tell that, for all of his eye rolling, he was awfully close to losing his temper with me for real. “I want it to be amazing. Perfect. Your dream wedding.”

  “Thomas—”

  He let out a frustrated groan, letting his head fall onto the back of the couch. He closed his eyes, running a hand roughly over his face. “Why can’t you just forget about the money for once? It’s such a stupid thing to get worked up about. We’re lucky to not have to worry about money. Can’t we just leave it at that?”

  I looked down at my hands, feeling my own frustration rise. We’d had this fight before, many times. I had never liked him spending money on me. I told myself it was because I was independent and had been raised to take pride in providing for myself, but I knew, deep down, that was only part of it. The truth was, I hated that other people might think of me as a gold digger, someone who would use Thomas and his wealth just to achieve an extravagant life style. I didn’t want to be thought of as that girl.

  You can’t live your life worrying about what other people think, I reminded myself for what felt like the hundredth time. You can’t make your decisions based on some tabloid-reading stranger’s opinion.

  “You’re right,” I conceded. “We’re lucky to not have to worry. Let’s not fight.”

  He opened his eyes, turning his head to look at me. “Really?”

  “Really.” I held up a finger. “That doesn’t mean I want our wedding to be silly and extravagant—no champagne fountains or crystals in the flower arrangements.”

  His eyes twinkled at me as he grinned. “I hardly think of either of us as champagne fountain kinds of people.” His f
ace grew serious. “We won’t be showy, Lizzie. That’s not like either of us. But I have absolutely no qualms about throwing my name around if it means I get to marry you sooner.”

  “Such a diva,” I sighed, squealing and sliding away down the couch when he moved to tickle me.

  “Answer me this,” he said, grabbing my hands and pulling me back toward him. “If you had your choice, and timeframe was no object, what season would you want to get married in?”

  “Autumn,” I said automatically. “Maybe October. It’s my favorite time of year.” I looked down at my lap, a little shy. “It’s also when we fell in love.” When I raised my eyes, his smile was huge.

  “October it is, then.”

  We stared at each other for a moment, both grinning like idiots, as the magnitude of the decision hit us. We were getting married in less than six months.

  “So,” I finally said, turning back to the laptop screen, still unable to totally wipe the goofy smile from my face. “We have a date-ish. We should probably figure out what kind of wedding we want—formal? Church? Outdoors? Ballroom?”

  “There’s probably one other thing we should decide first.” His voice was slightly guarded, as if he was worried about my reaction.

  “What’s that?”

  “Where are we doing this? Detroit? Or…London?”

  I swallowed hard. I couldn’t pretend I had never thought about this. My entire family was based here, obviously, and, like Thomas had joked, there were quite a few of them. Thomas, on the other hand, had a much smaller immediate and extended family. It would make more sense, logically, to have the wedding here, just based on the number of people that would need to make a transatlantic trip. But still…

  “Lizzie?”

  “I’ve always imagined it there,” I whispered. “Every single time I think about it, I think of us getting married in St. Mark’s Church.” I met his gaze, his eyes softening, and I knew he was thinking about our weekly visits to the church when I was living in London. Though he’d never been much of a church-goer before, he knew worshipping on a weekly basis was important to me and had joined me every weekend he wasn’t working.