Author's Note: Thanks so much for checking out and following this story to its conclusion. I have to warn you that the last few lines just may be the cheesiest thing I've ever written... but I've always liked cheesy so hopefully you will, too. Let me know if you loved it or if you hated it. All feedback is helpful!

"Elle… I hate pickles," he began without looking at her, "More than I hate tomatoes, and you're familiar with my position on tomatoes."

Elle laughed. Then she laughed some more. While it was nice to know that her suspicions about Emmett's anti-pickle sentiments were correct, this was not exactly the confession for which Elle had been hoping.

Just as she was about to consider the possibility that she had, perhaps, misread his signals, Emmet slipped his hands away from hers, expediting the arrival of the theory. But before she had time to seriously second-guess herself, he repositioned his hands around hers, very nearly encompassing them.

His palms were warm, but not sweaty. His grip was secure, but not overbearing. And the way he traced his thumb down the side of Elle's wrist gave her the best kind of goose bumps, the most certain sort of reassurance and an explosive resurgence of that new and still unfamiliar sensation she now knew for sure was love.

The notion of love made Elle feel suddenly self-conscious. She could not believe she had followed Warner across the country—to Harvard Law School—because he was her "one, true love." It seemed so silly and juvenile, like how her second-grade self spent every recess chasing all the boys she thought she "loved" around the playground.

Emmett, on the other hand, was a man Elle would never chase. If life took him away from her and toward some greater destiny, she would let her heart break—if it meant his happiness.

What Elle didn't yet understand was that Emmett considered no destiny greater than a life shared with Elle Woods, knew no purer happiness than to simply be in her presence, even if just on the periphery. And where Elle judged herself a fool for following her heart on some misguided path toward Warner, Emmett saw only that the same journey had led to this moment.

This moment. Not quite thinking of it as a destination, but hoping it was more than a speed bump, Emmett gently squeezed Elle's hands and wished not for the words—what he had to say was the simplest profession one could make—but for the courage to share his secret with Elle and for the strength to accept whatever her response would be.

"You know, I already knew," she told him, hoping to gently guide the conversation back on track, a track she was so much less afraid of than she had once been.

Emmett wondered, just briefly, if she had somehow been reading his scattered thoughts. Then he remembered the last words he'd spoken aloud. The pickles. The damned pickles. She already knew he hated pickles. Awesome.

"How do you know?" he asked, observing the mischievous spark in her eye and the way her lips formed into one of the smiles she once stockpiled only for Warner.

"I'm observant," Elle answered cryptically.

"Why didn't you say anything?" he questioned, though he knew they were getting into territory way deeper than the pickle barrel.

"Why didn't you?" she asked, only faking the accusatory edge her tone took.

Emmett smiled, suddenly bashful. He looked down at his hands, still wrapped around Elle's, and then answered her question with yet another question:

"Isn't it obvious?"

For some reason, that particular inquiry really hit home for Elle. She had a long list of things she initially thought were obvious. For example, she once thought it was obvious that her long-time boyfriend was taking her out to dinner in order to propose. Another time, she thought that her professor had obviously chosen her to be an intern because of her résumé.

So now, though it did seem obvious that Emmett never mentioned his aversion to pickles for the same reason Elle never mentioned that she'd noticed his aversion to pickles, she was simply afraid to jump to the obvious conclusion.

But, God, was it tempting.

Emmett had all but spelled it out, talked completely around his feelings. He knew he needed to say it, to confirm to Elle what he was fairly certain she already knew. He was also sure the odds were stacked against him, and was it completely idiotic—emotional suicide—to admit his feelings with the hopes that perhaps she felt the same.

But, God, was it tempting.

"Emmett," she began.

"Elle," he tried to start at the exact same moment.

"I'm in love with you," they both confessed, simultaneously giving in to their separate temptations.

Elle Woods and Emmett Forrest stared at each other, shock giving way to smiles of disbelief then morphing into unadulterated joy.

As he once wondered if one could die of a broken heart, Emmett now wondered if the complete opposite was as equally fatal. Could his heart handle the pure delight of a moment he assumed would be reserved only for his dreams?

Elle's heart was also dangerously full, but she barely noticed. She was instead focused on the thing she'd felt compelled to do since before she had ever even qualified her feelings for Emmett, since he'd walked into the courtroom and stood up to Callahan on her behalf.

But Emmett had wanted it longer, since their foray into department store shopping, and so he was the one who pulled Elle to her feet. He was the one who slipped his hands around her waist. And he was the one who, without any more doubt or hesitation, put his mouth to hers.

Without the time to over-think it, Elle could only follow her instincts. She responded to Emmett's kiss with more fury than she'd ever used to fight for a pickle. Each time her lips crashed into his, she felt tiny explosions prickle every inch of her body from the inside out. Elle had never experienced anything quite so exhilarating.

Nor had Emmett. And when Elle wrapped her arms around his neck, a refusal to let his lips move more than a few centimeters away from hers, Emmett wondered how he had spent so much time with this woman without ever fully realizing what was right there in front of him all along: the girl of his dreams.

Elle wondered how she could have ever thought Emmett wasn't her type, and why she had, for so long, been unwilling to recognize how absolutely perfect he was—and how perfect he was for her. Emmett was the only man who had ever shown her not only what it was like to truly be in love, but also what it was like to truly be loved in return.

As if to underscore her thoughts, he breathlessly mumbled "I love you" through her ever-intensifying kisses. She kept her arms around his neck, but pulled back enough to give him a little breathing room.

"But I guess you already knew that, too, huh? That I love you?" he questioned playfully as he gulped for air, "I mean, seeing as how you're so observant."

"No, but now that I think about it… I guess it is pretty obvious," she teased and gave him the coyest look in her arsenal before adding, "And, Emmett… I love you, too."

Elle then became aware that she was kissing and confessing her love to Emmett in the middle of a sandwich shop. Granted, there were no other customers and the sandwich girl had long since taken her leave, a polite attempt at giving them some privacy. But still. Then she thought of the pickle. She stepped back from Emmett.

"Oh my God, Emmett. I'm so sorry."

"What for?" he asked, trying desperately not to fear the worst.

"I totally ate some of that pickle… then kissed you," she said as if that statement were the explanation itself.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he asked, chuckling over the seemingly illogical, but fortunately harmless, statement.

"As previously established, you hate pickles. That must have been awful for you."

Emmett laughed and fought back the desire to tell her that he'd eat nine hundred billion pickles himself if it meant getting to kiss her even one more time; therefore, a little salt and brine after-taste was less than offensive.

"Um, Elle," he started as he closed the gap Elle's backwards step had created between them and then gently pressed his forehead into hers, "pickle-flavored kisses work just fine. Just, uh, be careful with the tomatoes because in their raw form, my aversion is actually more of an allergy than a preference."

"You're allergic to tomatoes?" she asked.

"Although, honestly, it's a contact allergy so… but, you know, I guess to be safe…"

"Got it. You want kisses, hold the tomato," she simplified as her lips drifted enticingly closer to his.

"Yeah… especially the first part," he agreed just before she completed his order.

The End