Turning slowly and deliberately to look Mark in the eye, “I said I would consider not telling him. After thinking about it I realized he had the right to know. I also explained that to him that I didn’t want it to affect your friendship with each other but that I did not want anything to do with you. If you’ll excuse me I’m going to go join my friends.”
As she got up to leave Mark grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her back down onto the couch. Leaning in close to her, she could smell the alcohol on his breath.
Angry and slurring, “Why did you have to be so difficult?! Was I not good enough for you?! You were lucky I wanted you.”
Eleanor felt panic rising and frantically looked around but in that moment, couldn’t see anyone else from their group as they were all on the dance floor and Mark’s grasp on her wrist was getting tighter. Everything around Eleanor slowed down, she could hear her heart pounding in her ears. Before she knew what she was doing, she had wrenched her wrist out of his grasp, feeling a sharp pain shoot up her arm. Pushing hard on his chest she managed to launch herself off the couch while simultaneously forcing him deeper into it. A second later Jonathan and Jack were at her side, the rest of the guys right behind them. Jonathan looked horrified and beyond angry.
“Are you ok Ellie?” He asked, shooting daggers at Mark over Eleanor's shoulder.
“I’m fine, really. But I’m leaving,” Eleanor said firmly, trying to catch her breath and slow her heart rate back down. She held her wrist to try to rub out the painful twist.
“No, Mark will leave,” Jonathan said angrily.
“Damn straight,” Jack said in agreement, he also looked angrier than she’d ever seen him.
“I don’t give a damn if Mark stays or goes, but I’m leaving. I have a headache, I just want to go somewhere quiet.”
“Fine, we’ll go back to the flat,” Jonathan said, but she could see the reluctance on his face. She knew he was looking forward to ringing in the New Year with Celeste.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You all stay here, everyone’s having a good time. I’ll be fine. I’ll text you when I get back to the flat. But you stay here, if you don’t give Celeste a proper kiss at midnight I won’t speak to you for a month,” she said with as much conviction as she could muster.
Before anyone could argue with her she headed towards the exit. She quickly grabbed her coat from the coat check and headed out of the club, texting Patrick as she did. She quickly tapped out the low points of the evening and that she was going home to ring in the new year by herself. As she got to the bottom of the steps and saw a taxi waiting she quickened her pace and waved at the cabbie, when she heard her phone alert her to a new text message. It was from Patrick:
Come over. I'm home.
* * * * *
About a short drive later, and just minutes to spare before midnight, the taxi pulled up in front of Patrick’s home. As she finished paying the driver and got out of the car the front door opened and Patrick was standing in the light. Within seconds he had taken her coat, settled her on the couch by the fireplace wrapped in a warm blanket, and got her a glass of champagne.
“All you have to do now is relax Elle. You shouldn’t spend New Year’s Eve alone if you don’t want to.”
As usual, she automatically felt at ease in Patrick’s presence. He had the TV on the BBC and they were counting down to the fireworks. At midnight, Big Ben struck twelve times as fireworks started to explode. For the next fourteen minutes, she sat mesmerized by the fireworks over the Thames. When it was done she noticed she had finished her champagne.
“Would you like another?” Patrick asked.
“I should probably switch to something else,” she replied with a small laugh.
“Tea?”
“That would be great,” she said with a smile.
Patrick soon returned with two mugs of tea and some shortbread biscuits and sat at the other end of the couch from Eleanor. “Do you want to talk about it?” He asked hesitantly.
“Not particularly,” Eleanor said glumly, and paused before continuing, “But only because it feels like all I do is complain to you about Mark. It’s not fair to you.”
“Elle, we talk about so many other things than just Mark. Besides, that’s what friends do, they listen to each other. What happened?”
Eleanor then filled him in on everything that had happened over Christmas and that she had told Jonathan about everything. Patrick nodded approvingly and Eleanor continued to catch him up on the evening’s developments. When she got to the part where Mark grabbed her by the wrist she saw Patrick’s eyes dart down to her hands, which were wrapped under the blanket.
“Really, Patrick, it’s fine, it was nothing.” But even as she said that she could feel her wrist still throbbing and remembered the sharp pain she had felt when she yanked it out of Mark’s grasp.
“Let me see Elle,” Patrick said firmly.
When Eleanor gingerly brought her hand out from under the blanket she and Patrick both gasped at the sight of her wrist, now turning pale shades of blue and purple. It was faint, but still a noticeable bruise. Looking up at Patrick she saw his expression had gone very tight. He quickly got up from the couch and went back to the kitchen. She heard him rummaging around for a bit and then silence before the faint sound of Patrick taking a deep breath. When he came back he had a bag of ice wrapped in a towel. Eleanor winced as he placed the ice on her wrist, but within seconds the ice had started to numb the pain.
“Does Jonathan know where you are Eleanor?”
“Yes, I texted him during the taxi ride over.”
“Ok, I think you should text him and tell him you’re staying over. I’ll take you home at any time if you want, but you may as well stay here. We can keep an eye on that wrist and just relax tomorrow.”
“Don’t you have any plans? I feel like I’m imposing on you enough as it is.”
“No. There were some parties I was invited to tonight but I didn’t feel like going. I’m working on preparing for my next two films and I have nothing planned for tomorrow, other than practicing lines.”
“But I don’t have anything to stay the night…”
“I have some clothes you can sleep in and some skincare stuff from a swag bag at a party I went to a couple months ago, there was some women’s stuff in the mix that I thought I’d keep the next time I had a guest. Looks like that’s you,” he said with a smile.
Feeling very weary, “Alright, if you’re sure it’s ok,” she agreed after a slight pause.
“Of course I’m sure,” he replied and then left to get the guest room set up.
Eleanor texted Jonathan to let him know she was staying over and not to worry. By the time she went upstairs to the guest room, Patrick had set out some basic toiletries and the same t-shirt and sweat pants she had worn that first day she came over. She smiled at the memory of that day and at the friendship that had developed since then.
Soon she was changed and cleaned up and ready for bed. Climbing into the soft and luxurious guest bed, she sank into the pillows and duvet and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
* * * * *
The next morning, she woke up, late, judging by the amount of light coming into the room through the window. She slipped on the large pair of wool socks Patrick had laid out the night before, to use as slippers, and slipped into the bathroom to wash her face again and brush her teeth. By the time she was finished she could smell something amazing baking in the kitchen. As she walked into the kitchen she was overwhelmed by the smells of fresh coffee, fresh baked scones, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, and an assortment of other breakfast goodies.
“What have you done?!” She exclaimed.
“It’s New Year’s Day, we have to do breakfast right,” Patrick replied with a sly grin.
Sitting down in the window seat side of the table, she tucked her feet up under her and pulled one of the throw blankets that Patrick kept around the flat over her shoulders and placed a napkin in her lap.
�
�Well, you won’t hear any complaints from me, but I hope you haven’t done all of this just for me.”
Placing a plate of eggs, bacon, sausage, and sourdough toast in front of her, Patrick said, “No, this is entirely for me, I’m just glad to have someone to share it with.” He got his own plate and came back to sit in the corner across from Eleanor. “This is kind of a family tradition. My parents always made a huge breakfast on New Year’s Day, with scones and other treats and we’d have a late large breakfast, or brunch essentially, and then snack on the rest throughout the day. It’s been years since I’ve spent this day with them at home, but I usually have friends over to cook for. This was going to be the first year I’d be by myself. So I’m glad you came by last night and stayed over. It’s like it was fate,” he finished with a wink.
Eleanor listened to him share this bit of his past and couldn’t help smiling at how happy he looked. As she reached for butter for her toast the sleeve of the sweater she put on that morning slipped back and she saw Patrick notice the darkening color of the bruise on her wrist, but to her relief he didn’t say anything. She knew she’d have to deal with Mark eventually, but she didn’t want to waste time thinking about him or talking about it today. She just wanted to enjoy the first day of a new year.
Patrick seemed to sense her desire to change the subject, so as he began buttering his toast, he asked, “So, what about you and your family? Any special holiday traditions?”
“Well…” Eleanor began slowly, “As a kid there weren’t many, my dad always said he, ‘didn’t go in for all that nonsense’ whatever that meant. But my mom tried. She still signs some of my Christmas gifts ‘from Santa’ every year.” Eleanor laughed warmly at the thought.
Patrick grinned in response, “So does my mum.”
Eleanor continued, “Since the divorce my mom got much more into creating routines and traditions for the two of us. You saw the one at Thanksgiving, writing what we’re grateful for on the paper on the dining table.” Patrick nodded and Eleanor went on. “But for Christmas…well…we’re both Christmas fanatics. Sometimes I think my mom is the long-lost daughter of Santa Claus. She always goes crazy with the house. I think she’d always wanted to do that, but my dad never let her when I was little. Plus, half the years of my childhood we weren’t even home for Christmas, we were off in some other city for my dad’s research. Winter break was valuable time for him to work on projects in between terms.
“But when it was just mom and I, the tree was always up Thanksgiving night, as soon as dinner had been cleared away, and the rest of that weekend was spent decorating the rest of the house, inside and out. We’d go raid our favorite stores for new stuff to add to our collection of Christmas decorations.” Eleanor smiled at the memory, and continued, “But there were also traditions like going Christmas shopping together, watching Christmas movies almost every night between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, reading A Christmas Carol every Christmas Eve night, and every year we did something with my cousin and my Aunt Vickie. Either they came to visit us or we went to visit them in Bath.”
“How long has your aunt lived in Bath?” Patrick asked as he took a sip of his coffee.
“Oh gosh, it’s been years. Since I was about 17? Not long after the divorce. Mom and Aunt Vickie are originally from Kansas, Overland Park, just outside Kansas City. Mom went to university at Yale, which is where she met my dad. Aunt Vickie went to uni in Edinburgh, and then got her first job in London, where she met my uncle. They moved to Cambridge, which is where Jonathan grew up. My uncle works for the university there, some fancy administrative position, I forget the details. Aunt Vickie is also divorced, a few years before my parents, she moved back to London for a bit, and then half settled herself in Bath. She travels a lot. Having divorced parents was something Jonathan and I bonded over. I mean, we were already close, but that made us even closer. But Aunt Vickie was in a very different situation. Her ex isn’t a complete jerk, like my father, so he continued to support and take care of Jonathan, paying his school fees for Eton and such. And Aunt Vickie had a career of her own, still does. She’s a successful interior designer, more successful every year. She has clients around the world and has designed her own collection of furniture and accessories for various interiors companies. It’s one of the reasons she has properties all over, she uses them as portfolio showcases. So, we stayed in her place in Paradise Valley when we first moved to Arizona, but she’s also got a townhouse in London, a loft in New York City, and her personal home, the cottage in Bath. But over the last ten years she’s also bought and sold at least five places that I can think of. I remember one in Canada and one in France. She also rents out her various properties to film projects, editorial shoots, and events, whatever and earns extra income that way as well. She’s a smart lady. And also incredibly generous. She owns the Holborn flat Jonathan and I live in. She’s always supported Jon as long as he’s in school. And she wanted to help my mom make this all happen for me. I don’t know what I’d do without her and Jon.
“So yeah, they always spent time with us for the holidays, whether here or in Arizona. And if we couldn’t afford the flight one year, Aunt Vickie would just pay. She’s always been like a fairy godmother to me. She and my mom were a good team, getting me through the divorce and high school and college. Between her and my cousin I always had someone to talk to if I didn’t want to make my mom worry or make her feel worse about things after the divorce.”
“It’s great having support in different places,” Patrick said kindly, thinking not for the first time, that for someone who’d been through so much, Eleanor seemed remarkably adjusted.
“I’m very lucky,” Eleanor agreed, “And privileged. A lot of people don’t have that kind of support. When the divorce was really bad in the beginning, my aunt kind of swooped in to take care of us while my mom sorted out what we would do. As soon as my aunt realized my dad was going to make things difficult she stepped in to help. I remember spending a couple weekends in New York with Jonathan and Uncle Edward, while Aunt Vickie was home with mom helping her make plans. I think they spared me from the worst of it. There’s still a lot of details from that time I don’t know about. Things they protected me from. I haven’t seen my uncle recently, I know Jonathan sees him every month or so, he goes to Cambridge to visit him. But he still sends me a birthday gift every year and something for Christmas, this year it was a stunning matching monogrammed notebook and fountain pen, and I’ll probably go out to Cambridge with Jonathan soon. I certainly feel closer to my uncle than I do my own father,” Eleanor concluded with a furrowed brow, staring darkly into her coffee mug.
Patrick, looking around at the remnants of brunch, offered, “Change of subject?”
Looking up and smiling at him, Eleanor replied gratefully and laughing gently, “Yes please. You make it so easy to talk to you that I end up saying way more than is probably appropriate.”
“Well, I’m always happy to listen, that’s what friends are for. But it’s New Year’s Day and I don’t want you feeling gloomy and sad.”
Smiling, “So what should we do then?” Eleanor asked brightly.
“Well…,” Patrick started, “Could I tempt you, or rather beg you, to help me practice lines for my next project? We start in a week and I really want to get the first several scenes we’re shooting memorized before we start.”
“Ooooh!” Eleanor squealed girlishly, “That sounds like fun! Of course I’ll help you. Just tell me what to do.”
“Well, for you it will be very simple, and you don’t have to move. Just sit there with the script and let me know what I’m getting wrong.” Patrick jumped up from the table and ran to get his script from the kitchen counter. Eleanor had thought she’d heard him talking to himself when she first walked in to the kitchen that morning, now she realized he’d been rehearsing.
Eleanor poured herself some more coffee and snuggled down into her seat and reached out for the script. They spent the next few hours with Patrick pacing the kitch
en, rehearsing his lines as Eleanor watched, mesmerized by how completely transported he seemed. Seeing him act in person like this was a real treat and Eleanor was transfixed.
Later in the day they relaxed in the lounge, Patrick sprawled out on the sofa, Eleanor cozied up in what had become her favorite armchair by the fireplace, watching films and drinking mulled cider and picking at leftover food in the fridge. All in all, Eleanor thought, the perfect New Year’s Day.
Around seven o’clock, thoroughly stuffed with good food and relaxed from good company, Patrick called a car and took Eleanor home. Ever the gentleman, he left the car waiting in front of Eleanor’s flat and walked her up the steps to the door of the building
“I’m glad you came over,” Patrick said, “It really was the best New Years I’ve had in years.”
“Me too,” Eleanor replied.
“Get inside before you freeze,” Patrick teased.
Eleanor laughed, “I’ll see you soon?”
“Yep, I’ll call you when I confirm the shooting schedule for next week.”
Patrick leaned down and kissed her lightly on the cheek and Eleanor felt her heart flutter a bit. She said goodnight and turned to let herself in to the building and walked up to the flat.
As she entered the flat and closed the door behind her, she heard Jonathan watching TV in the lounge. She started walking to her room and stopped when she heard Jonathan call out, “Eleanor, is that you?”
She walked to the lounge and leaned against the door and said teasingly, “Who else would have a key? Did you give one to Celeste?”
Jonathan muted the TV and turned to her with worry on his face.
Before he could speak, Eleanor held up a hand and pleaded, “Please, I will tell you everything tomorrow, but it’s been such a great day and I don’t want to spoil it by talking about last night. I just want to go to sleep right now.
Jonathan relented and leaned back against the sofa, “As long as you’re ok. You were really upset last night.”
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