by M. J. Duncan
The girl took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Ellie Brighton.”
Mallory smiled and offered the girl her hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. This is my friend Will Adrian. He plays the bassoon in the symphony.”
Ellie offered him a polite smile and shook his hand as well. “Mr. Adrian.”
Will laughed. “Will is fine,” he assured her with a wink.
“Yes, sir,” Ellie murmured.
Mallory chuckled and arched a brow at him as she mouthed, ‘Sir?’, before she crossed her legs and turned to face Ellie more directly. “So, what can I do for you, Miss Ellie Brighton?”
“Is this really you?” Ellie carefully unfolded the mailer in her hands and turned it to show Mallory the large picture inside the fold. It was the one Pierce had directed them into immediately following their brief performance for him the day of the pictures—the one where Addison was in a full arabesque, supported by her fingers on the scroll of Mallory’s violin. “There? With the violin?”
Mallory’s smile softened automatically at the sight of her and Addison together. Their expressions were professionally neutral, focused, but there was a light in Addison’s eyes that made her heart flutter with joy. “That’s me.”
“So you’re a dancer, too?”
Will guffawed, and Mallory shot him a glare before returning her attention to Ellie. “I have only ever been properly trained in the violin, I’m afraid. But Addison Leigh, the ballerina in the picture there”—she tapped the child’s mailer—“has been helping me learn just enough so that we can do that one dance. Do you enjoy the ballet?”
“Oh, yes.” Ellie bit her lip, looking positively sheepish, and added, “It’s my favorite. I’ve been taking lessons ever since I was three, but my mum says I have to play the violin as well.”
“Do you not enjoy the violin?” Mallory asked.
“It’s okay. I mean, it’s fun to learn new songs, but I would much rather dance,” Ellie admitted softly, her eyes darting nervously toward the restaurant entrance where her mother, at least, was no doubt waiting on her.
“Well, there’s no reason you can’t be amazing at both, right?” Mallory offered gently. She was not a fan of forcing children into activities they had no interest in, but at least Ellie sounded like she didn’t actively hate her music lessons. She tilted her head and leaned forward to add in a playfully conspiratorial whisper, “And, I mean, who knows—if this new ballet Addison and I are going to be performing in the new year is well-received, they might very well need a talented musician to perform it in the future who knows ballet. Do you think that might be something you would be interested in?”
“Dance and music?” Ellie murmured, her eyes widening.
“Dance and music,” Mallory confirmed with a wink. “If you want to see videos of someone who does just that—not ballet, exactly, but she absolutely dances whilst playing her violin—ask your parents if you can look up some Lindsey Stirling videos on YouTube.”
“I will,” Ellie enthused, nodding eagerly.
“Ellie!” a voice called from somewhere near the entrance to the restaurant. Ellie’s mother, Mallory was sure.
Ellie blushed and offered Mallory her mailer. “Sorry. I was just, um, wondering if…well, if you maybe could sign this for me?”
“Of course.” Mallory smiled as she took the mailer and spread it on the table in front of her. Nina had shown her and Addison the finished product the day they had been sent out, and she had seen this picture of her and Addison on posters around The Royal Opera House advertising the upcoming release, but she still got a thrill every time she saw it. “Do you have a pen?”
Ellie nodded and handed her a silver sharpie that would stand out perfectly in the black space above their heads. “Sorry.”
“No worries, dear,” Mallory assured her gently as she signed her name with far more care than she usually did above her half of the photograph, just in case the girl managed to track down Addison as well. “Here you are,” she murmured as she handed Ellie back the mailer and her pen. “Are you staying for the concert tonight?”
Ellie nodded. “And then Friday I get to see Ms. Leigh dance at the ballet!”
She was clearly more excited for the ballet than the symphony, and Mallory chuckled softly under her breath because, really, who could blame the child for that? Certainly not her. She would much rather watch Addison dance than be at the symphony—and she was playing in it. “Lucky you.”
Ellie beamed and nodded in agreement. “Thank you for signing my picture. My parents are waving at me to hurry along now,” she shared with a small roll of her eyes that would undoubtedly become much more impressive in a few years, “so I gotta go.”
“Have a wonderful evening,” Mallory murmured. “I do hope you enjoy the performance tonight.”
Ellie nodded and, with one last sheepish smile, turned and skipped off in the direction of her parents who, Mallory saw, stood waiting at the restaurant’s entrance.
“Addy’s performing twice in three days?” Will asked once Ellie had gone.
Mallory shook her head. “Well, yes. But she’s actually performing tonight, Friday, and Sunday. Tonight and Friday were on her schedule originally, and she offered to take the Christmas Eve performance so people with family within commuting distance might be able to go home for the holiday since hers is over in America.”
“That was sweet of her.”
“Yes, well…” Mallory smiled as she remembered the way Addison had told her about the change in her schedule. And, well, I mean, you’re going to be performing that night anyway, so I might as well take one for the team so that I’m not just sitting at home wishing I was with you.
“That’s quite the smile you’ve got there, Mal.” Will smirked and waggled his eyebrows. “Care to share with the class what it’s about?”
“Not at all,” Mallory retorted with a wink.
Will laughed. “Fair enough. So besides work stuff, how is everything going with the marvelous Ms. Leigh?”
“It’s wonderful,” she confessed with a happy sigh.
“Mallory Collingswood!” he gasped, clutching the lapel of his suit jacket. “Have you been holding out on me?”
“Hardly,” she chuckled. “It’s not like anything’s happened, really. I mean, cuddling doesn’t count, right?”
He nodded emphatically, and then brushed away the hair that had flopped into his eyes from the exuberance of the gesture. “It most certainly does.”
“Well, then I guess you’d think a kiss on the cheek is significant as well, then?” she ventured with an amused smile.
“Who did the snogging?”
“There has been no snogging.” She rolled her eyes when he just arched a brow and crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for her to answer his question. “It was a perfectly chaste and proper kiss on the cheek, thank you very much. We went back to hers with Gabs and Matt after tech last night, and I kissed her cheek when I was leaving.”
“Just the cheek?”
“Just the cheek.”
“Well, that’s at least something, yeah?”
“It’s definitely something. And I…” She took a deep breath and let it go slowly as she ran a hand through her hair. “I do think about kissing her properly. I want to. I just…”
He leaned his arms on the table and smiled encouragingly as he waited for her to either find the words she wanted or just give up on the train of thought completely.
“I’m afraid of moving too fast with this, I guess. I really like her, Will, and I don’t want to mess it up.”
He frowned. “How would you mess it up?”
“By being me? I mean, I don't have the best track record with women and, well, I’ve been trying to work on the things Gwen claimed to find so insufferable, and Addy and I certainly talk more than Gwen and I ever did, but…”
“You can’t keep thinking like that, Mal. It takes two people to make a relationship work, or not work, and that one was just…” He sighed.
“Not ideal. And what’s this thing you’re afraid of rushing, exactly? Because you’ve been spending practically every day with Addison since September…”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess just…moving on in general? I mean, we both remember what a mess I was in June when I saw that video…”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah, that was definitely rough. But do you also see how much happier you’ve been these last four-ish months?”
“No, I do, it’s just…”
When she didn’t continue, he reached out to take her hands into his own with a small, almost heartbroken smile. “You don’t have to stay hurt forever, Mal. What happened with Gwen…” He shook his head. “It was awful. It fucking sucked and it was awful and sometimes when I look at you and I see just how much you still feel that betrayal I wish you had given me the okay to fly out there and give her a piece of my mind about what she did. I know you don’t think she was being malicious by leading you on like that while she started up with Dana, but she didn’t just break your heart, Mal—she broke something inside you by lying to you like that. And I…” He looked up at the ceiling and blinked rapidly. “I hate it. I hate her. I honestly fucking hate her for what she did to you.”
Mallory sniffed and pulled a hand from under his to wipe at her eyes. He had supported her and tried to get her back on her feet ever since she had arrived utterly heartbroken on his doorstep, but their conversations had never been this honest. She had known, of course, that more than her heart had been broken, but he had never let on that he knew it, too. “Why haven’t you told me this before?”
He shook his head, and there was a hint of tears glistening in his eyes when he pulled his gaze from the ceiling to look at her. “You made it through last season by the skin of your teeth, and you needed me to look like I believed you when you insisted you were fine—so I did. But you don’t need that now. Gwen might have broken you, but…” His voice trailed off into a sigh, and he smiled. “Even utterly knackered by your workload, you are happier than I remember you being in years. Not just recently, but years. Like, since before you went to America to try and make a name for yourself. And maybe it’s just London’s wonderful weather or time working its magic or whatever, but I think it’s Addison. I think being with her is helping you fix what Gwen broke, and I fucking love her for it.”
Mallory huffed a teary laugh and nodded because, yeah, when he put it that way, she loved her for it, too. “So what do I do?”
He smiled and gave the hand still nestled beneath his own a squeeze. “Let yourself be happy. Let yourself heal and move on, and for fuck’s sake take that goddamn photograph Gwen gave you off the wall in your lounge and burn it or something.”
Mallory smiled. “But I actually do like that photograph.”
“Find a different one that you like more,” he retorted as he pulled his hands away. “Oh, and one more thing…”
She nodded. “What’s that?”
“If you think being with Addison will make you happy—don’t fight it. Don’t talk yourself out of it. Just…be happy.”
Mallory nodded as she pushed herself to her feet. A rogue tear rolled down her cheek when he hopped up and pulled her into his arms, and she took a deep, shuddering breath as she clung to him.
“Let Addy make you happy, Mal” he murmured against her ear. “Okay?”
She held onto him tighter and nodded against his shoulder, and she could feel his smile when he brushed a scratchy kiss across her cheek.
“Good,” he husked as he pulled away. “Now, how about we go get some food?”
“Food sounds wonderful,” she agreed softly as she wiped at her cheeks.
“So when are you going to see her again?” he asked as they began making their way toward the food stations.
Mallory shrugged. “She’s going to come over on Boxing Day, and we’re planning on just spending the day hanging out, trying to recover from the pre-Christmas performance insanity. But I don’t know if we’ll find a way before then.”
“You know, could always bring her over to Siobhan’s parents’ place for Christmas. They wouldn’t mind.”
Mallory smiled. During her time in America, her own parents had become used to traveling for the holiday as their only child wouldn’t be around. They had stayed home the year before and hosted a lavishly formal Christmas dinner at their house in Kensington, but this year, at her insistence that she genuinely didn’t mind if they went, they had decided to spend the holiday in Greece. Will and Siobhan had invited her to their family get-together the moment they had found out she’d be alone, and she was honestly looking forward to spending the day with Siobhan’s very laid-back family in Cambridge than suffering through another formal affair at her parents’ place like she had the year before. “Thanks, but Addy’s doing something with Gabs and the other dancers who aren’t heading home for the holiday. Maybe next year?”
He nodded and handed her a tray. “Okay, yeah. Next year.” He looked up at the clock on the wall and groaned when he saw the time. “We better get moving. We’ve only got forty minutes or so until the half-hour call, and I will need to warm up.”
Mallory glanced at her watch to double-check the accuracy of the centre’s clock, and nodded. She didn’t need to warm up, she had already played more than she should have for one day, but Clara liked to do a quick meeting at the half-hour just to make sure they were on the same page for the upcoming performance. “Right. I think I’m good with this.” She held up her tray of chicken, veggies, and a salad. “You?”
“I’m going to grab a piece of pie. Meet you at the table?”
“Sure.” And then, before he could scamper off in search of dessert, added, “And, Will? Thanks.”
He smiled and nodded. “Always.”
Will groaned and stretched his arms against the steering wheel as he waited for the traffic signal to change. “Tell me again why we didn’t just take the train?”
“Because the trains don’t run on Christmas?” Mallory offered from the backseat. The streetlights shining through the window made the glitter still trapped to her sweater sparkle, and she sighed as she tried to discreetly brush it onto the floorboards.
Not that it made much difference. They were all covered in the stuff, thanks to Siobhan’s brother Colin who thought filling the Christmas crackers with glitter was a marvelous idea. And, the car hadn’t fared much better, as nobody had been able to completely rid themselves of the menace. Of course, if the glitter bombing had been restricted to the crackers, the mess might have been manageable, but an all-out glitter fight had ensued after the initial quasi-explosions, and she feared Siobhan’s parents’ dining room might never actually recover from it.
Glitter had gone everywhere as everyone gathered at the table, regardless of chronological age, channeled their inner hooligan and flung handfuls of the sparkly bits at Colin in retaliation for the initial dousing. The entire scene devolved from there, with parents dumping piles of glitter onto their kids’ heads and siblings and cousins trying their damnedest to shove handfuls down the backs of each other’s shirts. Even her status as a guest hadn’t exempted her from the melee, as Will and Siobhan had taken great pleasure in teaming up against her to make sure she did not escape un-glittered.
As if anyone could, even without the glittery free-for-all. The paper crowns that had been inside the crackers were, predictably, equally coated in the festiveness, and tradition meant they had to put the paper crowns on for the meal, so… Yeah. It was definitely a holiday they would all remember.
“What she said,” Siobhan echoed through a yawn as she tugged at her jumper, which sent a small shower of glitter flitting into the air. “I’m going to kill Colin for this.” She sighed and brushed the glitter toward the floor in front of her. “I mean, if I’m going to be this covered in glitter, I should at least get a lap dance out of the deal.”
Mallory laughed as Will offered, “We can totally arrange that if you’d like.”
“A lap dance?” Siobhan asked
.
He nodded, and even from the backseat, Mallory could see he was grinning. “Oh yeah. Totally.”
He must have waggled his eyebrows at Siobhan or done something equally suggestive because she laughed and smacked his leg. “I don’t want a lap dance from you. I want someone who knows what they’re doing!”
Mallory caught Will’s eye in the rearview mirror and smirked. “Women are much more adept at it, anyway.”
“Right?” Siobhan sighed. “We need to go to a club again, sometime.” She turned in her seat to smile at Mallory as the signal finally changed and Will refocused his attention on the road. “I don’t think you enjoyed our last trip out as much as you could have, but I bet now you would totally get into it.”
“I really don’t think I would,” Mallory argued gently, because she knew Siobhan’s heart was in the right place and she didn’t want her to think that she didn’t appreciate the offer. “I’ve never been especially comfortable in situations like that.”
“Yeah, she’s more of a one-naked-woman-at-a-time kind of woman, aren’t you?” Will jumped to her defense. “And she totally just wants Addison, so…”
“Oh! I didn’t realize you two were there already!”
Okay, maybe he wasn’t jumping to her defense at all.
Mallory shook her head and, in what she could admit was a childish bit of retaliation, raked her hands through her hair to shake just a little more glitter out of it and onto the back seat. “We’re not.” Siobhan pouted, and Mallory couldn’t help but smile as she began collecting her things. They were only a couple minutes from her apartment and, as it was getting late, she didn’t want to make them wait for her once they got there. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Maybe, but at least I don’t make glitter bombs.”
“Excellent point,” Mallory agreed as the car began to slow. “You are going to get him back for that one, right?”