Engaged

Chapter 9

A week later, Elizabeth walked into the apartment she shared with her fiancé — though that wasn't a term she would be using much longer, she knew.

As soon as she walked in, she was greeted by said fiancé with a tight hug. Elizabeth let him hug her, but barely returned it at all, and certainly not as much as she had at their reunions before then, causing her fiancé to pull back and look at her.

"What's wrong?" he asked concerned.

"We need to talk," answered Elizabeth with a sigh.

"That's never a good thing to hear," replied Elizabeth's fiancé with a sigh of his own. "Well, let's go into the living room."

Once they had settled onto the couch and arm chair respectively, Elizabeth looked over at him and said straightforwardly, not wanting to drag this out any longer than she had to, "I'm calling off the engagement. I'm sorry, but I can't go through with it."

Her fiancé studied her carefully for several long seconds, before asking, "Is it Iain?"

Elizabeth gave a very small nod, not needing to actually say anything.

Her fiancé sighed resignedly. "I was always afraid this day would come. Iain has always been first in your life ever since I met you, and when we first started dating I thought for the longest time that it was just a matter of time before you went to him — guess in the end I was right. Is there any chance we can talk about this, or have you already made up your mind and you're just telling me?"

"Sorry," said Elizabeth softly, shaking her head just slightly.

Her fiancé nodded sadly, before saying, "Elizabeth, don't expect me to be happy for you any time soon, or even happy with you. It hurts, and even more so that you didn't talk to me about it at all, but I can't say that I am that surprised. That it happened, or that you didn't talk to me about it. After all, I would have tried to convince you to stay, which you already knew. But I do have to know, how long have you known you were going to break up with me?"

"For sure, just a week," answered Elizabeth quietly. "But I was pretty sure two weeks before that, and I've been thinking about all this for three or four months now — since a month or so after we started shooting season seven."

"And I assume Iain already knows?"

Elizabeth nodded. "Since he's the one I'm breaking up with you for, and I've had to talk with him about this entire thing for the same reason, I had to tell him as soon as I'd made my decision. But the only other person who knows is Chloe, because I had to have someone to occasionally talk with about trying to figure out what to do, and then she could just see it on us the day after I told Iain — you know how Chloe is."

Her fiancé chuckled very, very lightly at this. "If anyone could just see it, it would definitely be her. And I don't even know her all that well."

"She certainly knows everything going on whether you want her to or not," replied Elizabeth with a slight smile of her own. There were several seconds of silence, and then she said, "You know, I honestly expected you to be more a little more surprised about all this, and definitely more mad or angry."

"Just because I'm not being vocal about it, doesn't mean I'm not upset," replied her fiancé. "But I know you Elizabeth, and I know that once you've made up your mind there's no changing it, and you've clearly already made your decision here. So getting angry or yelling or anything like that would just lead to a nasty fight, and you certainly wouldn't change your mind then, so there's nothing for me to gain and a lot to lose doing anything like that. And as for not being as surprised as it might seem like I should be, it had seemed like you'd been becoming more distant over the past few months, I'd just been hoping it was all in my head and not real. That it really was just a busy final season, and I was worrying too much over nothing. But as soon as you told me you were calling it off, it was obvious that I hadn't just been imagining it, so it wasn't really the surprise that it could have been." He paused for a few seconds before saying, "I do have to ask, though. Have you two already started dating?"