Chapter Text
“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay home?” Penelope called out as she exited her bedroom. She dropped her two large tote bags at the front door of the flat with a thud, then crossed the sunroom to the sofa. She slouched onto her knees next to Eloise, who was cocooned in her duvet on the sofa. Penelope pushed a few stray hairs away from Eloise’s eyes and reached to mute the morning news playing on the TV. “I can try to get you in to see a doctor. This is like the fourth time you’ve been sick since we’ve been back.”
Eloise lightly shook her head and pulled away from her friend. “I’m fine. Just adjusting.”
“We’ve been back for two weeks! You should have ‘adjusted’ by now.” Penelope air quoted the word she wasn’t really sure the meaning of. Eloise travelled all the time, and she had never once before thrown up violently for weeks afterwards. “Eloise…I’m starting to get very worried about you.” She rubbed her friend’s shoulder, who groaned and rolled to face the back of the sofa.
They had recently graduated from university, and even more recently returned from their joint graduation trip to New York City. After never missing a single class since primary school, Eloise had stayed home sick from her new job five times in these first few weeks.
Penelope’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She didn’t move to check the notification, instead continuing to comfort Eloise with an assured pat on the back. “It’s fine, Pen, I swear,” Eloise responded, a bit muffled as she buried her face further into the cushions. “I promise to go to A&E if it gets really bad.” Penelope’s phone buzzed twice more in rapid succession. “You have to go!” she shouted, “don’t lose your job over some bad chicken I ate. I’m pretty sure it’s just food poisoning.” She turned to look at the redhead with a weak, feigned smile.
Penelope seemed unconvinced, but luckily for Eloise, she was also beginning to be very late for work. She stood up and strode back across the room to collect her work bags.
“Why don’t you call one of your siblings? Better yet, call your mother! You haven’t even seen her since we’ve been back from holiday.” Her stubborn friend groaned again, louder this time. Penelope shrugged and slipped out the door, having learned the previous four mornings that no amount of pleading would convince Eloise to accept the help of a caretaker.
…
As personal assistant to a busy book publisher, Penelope’s tasks consisted mostly of running all over London to pick up her boss’ favourite coffee, her dry cleaning, and her dog from his grooming appointment. If she was lucky, Penelope would be allowed to sit in on her boss’ last author meeting on the schedule, but that required her to return to the office on-time with the dog, the clothes, and the coffee in tow.
Her goal was to eventually be the author in the meeting, but for the meantime, her fleeting opportunities to observe the publisher would have to be enough. Unfortunately, due to a mix-up at the dry cleaners and the author showing up early, Penelope ran through the elevator and her heart immediately fell through the floor.
Past a wall of windows in the main conference room, her boss was already going through her notes with the author. She brought the items she had collected all over the city to her boss’ office, hanging the clothes in the coat closet, refreshing the dog’s water bowl, and placing the coffee on the desk before shutting the door behind her on the way out. Penelope crossed the small distance to her cubicle across the hall to see a massive stack of contracts with a sticky note that read “FILE TODAY” and she quickly got to work.
Around 6:30pm she was finally done with the contracts, the second coffee, the mail sorting, and all the other asinine tasks that Penelope’s boss had thrown at her. She stopped at the grocery store and collected the ingredients to make veggie soup. No chicken, in case Eloise’s line about the food poisoning was true. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe her friend, but more that the timeline of her symptoms didn’t make any sense. Eloise was sick for three days last week, seemingly recovered, and then had been down for the past two days. It didn’t make any sense.
…
Eloise was in the same position when Penelope returned to the flat as when she left. “Feeling any better?” Penelope asked in vain as she moved towards the kitchen. She lifted and shook the grocery bags slightly at Eloise as she moved by her. “Veggies only. Don’t want to feed you any more bad chicken.” Eloise didn’t miss the sarcasm in her tone.
“I should be fine tomorrow. If I don’t start going in to the station, then I’m going to have like…two stories for my reel.” Eloise responded as she sat up and attempted to comb her hands through her haphazard chestnut hair. “My post-internship job offer relies on me actually being there and producing stories!”
Eloise had been working for a large news network since they returned from America, and although it was nice to have a workplace that allowed her to take time off for being sick, she understood the practical realities of being an intern. She needed to show up and do her job if she wanted to keep working there long term.
“But you can’t produce stories if you’re sick,” Penelope responded as she began cleaning and chopping vegetables.
Eloise only grumbled in response and leaned back against the sofa, unmuting the TV, now playing the evening programming from her news station. Penelope turned her attention fully to the soup she was cooking. During the process, the two didn’t say much. Eloise ran to the bathroom to empty her stomach only once, and Penelope’s phone buzzed twice. She didn’t flinch either time, and made no move to check it.
Eventually, Penelope dropped two piping hot bowls of flavorful soup onto the table in the middle of the room. At the sound of the unison clanks of the bowls, Eloise looked up, and silently turned off the TV, unwrapped herself from her duvet, and joined Penelope silently at the table. They ate for a few minutes, the only sounds being soft slurps and spoons clanking against bowls.
“You’re being weird,” Penelope finally mustered the courage to announce, although she refused to move her eyes off a piece of carrot floating around in her broth.
“You’re being weird,” Eloise eventually said back with a little chuckle.
Penelope’s eyes shot up at her then. She tried to convey as serious of an expression as she could.
“I’m serious,” Eloise continued, “you’ve been getting messages all day and you haven’t looked at a single one.” Penelope flinched and finally looked at her phone for what seemed like the first time all day. “That is very unlike you, Pen.”
Unfortunately, that was true. Penelope was normally glued to her phone and usually responded within minutes. Her phone often interrupted conversations between the two of them, with Penelope picking it up as soon as she heard it buzz.
Their conversations were normally easy to interrupt, a constant stream of chatter flowing through their flat, filling it with a loud, boisterous energy. That day, the air was thin and quiet.
“You have not seen your family in the two weeks since we got back here,” Penelope shot back, a slight edge in her tone, “That is very unlike you, El. You usually facetime your mother every day.”
“I have been sick,” Eloise attempted to justify her own behavior.
“But that is very unlike you as well!” Penelope raised her tone in a slightly accusatory way. “You’ve never missed a day of school, and now you’ve missed all but a few of the days you’ve meant to be working. You’ve never been sick like this before, El.”
“I told you. I had some bad chicken and now I have food poisoning.” Eloise abandoned her attempt to shine any of the spotlight back on Penelope.
“For five days?” Penelope quickly responded, her voice continuing to get more and more heated. “Or rather, for three days, fine for almost a week, and then two more days after? It doesn’t make any sense.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, Eloise had run out of excuses. Maybe if the silence went on long enough, Penelope would drop it.
“I’m just worried about you,” Penelope finally offered, more softly than her agitated tone from moments before. “What if it’s something really serious?”
“It is something really serious,” the words tumbled out of Eloise’s mouth before she could stop them. She hoped maybe somehow Penelope hadn’t heard them, but when she looked across to see her friend’s concerned expression, she knew she could no longer hold her secret entirely inside.
“I’m pregnant, Pen.”
…
Later that night, as she plugged her phone into the charger on her dresser, Penelope’s phone buzzed, and she could no longer resist the urge to open her messages app and read the eight messages she had received that day from Colin Bridgerton.
8:23am: we need to talk…
8:25am: dont ignore me
8:25am: pls pls pls at least tell me what i did to make u mad
3:46pm: ugh sorry lol was so drunk when i sent those
3:46pm: we do need to talk tho
7:22pm: ok maybe u were busy at work but its like 7:30 over there now so u should be off now
7:48pm: pls call me asap
10:14pm: ur killin me pen
During the time it took her to read the messages, two more came through.
10:16pm: i gave u space
10:16pm: i need to hear from u
She blocked his number before putting her phone down on the dresser and curling up in bed.