Chapter Text
“This is a truly terrible idea.”
Cressida was beginning to wonder if she’d been suffering from a concussion or serious illness when she'd agreed to this harebrained plan.
“It’ll be fine Cressida, don’t overthink this.”
“At least I’m thinking.”
“Hey! If all goes well you’ll never have to attend another boring Cowper party again, and you’ll have one person to thank for it.” Eloise gestured grandly at herself before reaching for Cressida’s clammy hand as they began walking up the driveway.
The sensation of their hands fitting together was both familiar and unfamiliar.
“I’m never talking to you anything other than stone cold sober ever again,” Cressida muttered.
The prospect of making a grand statement about her sexuality and opinions on her parent’s idea of ‘respectable nuptials’ was suddenly not as appealing as it had been a week ago when Eloise Bridgerton had made terrible ideas concocted under the influence of far too much wine seem like good ones.
She’d witnessed many of the girl’s half-baked schemes in her younger years, but her time at Cardiff University had clearly erased from her memory just how foolhardy and ridiculous they truly were.
She’d apparently also forgotten what being around the younger Bridgerton felt like. How alive, how happy, how free she’d felt in Eloise’s presence. As she’d made her desperate escape from her family to Wales, her and Eloise too slowly lost touch.
It had been her own fault really. In trying to leave behind her old life, she’d let go of the only true friendship she’d ever made in her life. Until last month, when she and Eloise had bumped into each other at a pub on Tottenham Court Road.
They didn’t talk about the past. Eloise skipped over Cressida’s failures as a friend, instead striking up lively conversation about their jobs and friends and graduating university. Slowly they began to rebuild their friendship. Things had been going just fine. Good, even. Until they consumed too much of that Sainsbury’s Pinot Grigio at Cressida’s apartment during their weekly scheduled movie night a week ago, and all her frustration with her parent’s had spilled over.
Her father had been trying to arrange a marriage for her for years, one that would be beneficial to his business. And now they were planning a ‘gathering' under the pretence of welcoming Cressida back to London. Cressida knew better. Her mother had firmly told her over a brief phone conversation that ‘Alexander would be there’ and her father expected her to be on her ‘best behaviour’.
“You’re a raging lesbian, so unless Alexander is really an Alexandra, I have no idea what they expect to happen.” Eloise had declared. Eloise had been the first person she’d confided where her true affections lay when she was just 13 years old. Apparently she hadn’t forgotten.
“I know El, I tried to tell them a couple of years ago when I introduced them to a girl during my final year. They just kept calling my girlfriend my ‘friend’ while telling me all about how brilliant this Alexander Debling is, and how his father and mine have worked together for years.”
Eloise sat up. “Just take this girlfriend to the gathering then. If your parents won’t listen, maybe this Debling will?”
“There is no girlfriend anymore El,” Cressida sighed, “Clara broke up with me a couple of months after I told them about her.”
“Aww, shit,” was all Eloise could muster.
Before the silence could get stifling Cressida stood up and made her way to the fridge for more wine.
“You can choose the film we watch tonight,” she called from the kitchen.
By the time she’d settled back down next to Eloise with the newly opened bottle, the familiar sound of the Netflix ‘Tudum’ had announced the start of whatever cheesy rom-com Eloise had picked out.
They sipped their way through three-quarters of the second bottle and Sandra Bullock was busting a move around a tree when Eloise suddenly sat up again. She turned her head to stare at Cressida, a glint in her eyes that announced Cressida should brace herself for whatever Eloise was about to say.
“I have an idea,” Eloise began, “but promise to hear me out before you call me an idiot and never speak to me again.” Eloise had always had a dramatic flourish about her. Great start.
Cressida eyed her. She nodded slowly.
“So, think about it. Your parents are the Immigration Services dude.”
“What?” she sputtered. This was not how Cressida had seen this conversation starting.
“In 'The Proposal’,” Eloise looked at her as if she were an idiot before continuing, “you’re Sandra Bullock and being deported back to Canada is marrying this Alexander.”
Cressida glanced at the television that now showed Sandra Bullock trying on a wedding dress as the cogs began to turn in her head. She was beginning to understand how Eloise’s brain worked, and it was immensely… stupid.
“Who’s going to be my Ryan Reynolds Eloise? You?” Cressida rolled her eyes. She wasn’t in a mindless romantic comedy film with an inane plot line.
A pause.
“That’s not a terrible idea, actually.”
Cressida blamed the wine. They had been on their third bottle by the time they’d wrapped up their ‘planning’.
“It’s important to plan these things Cress.”
“We don’t need to create an entire backstory,” Cressida whined as the credits began to roll on her TV. She leaned over Eloise to nab the remote, missing the slight hitch in the girl’s breath as she turned to click the television off.
“Of course we do. What if they ask how long we’ve been together and we spit out two different answers? One of us will look like a terrible girlfriend at best.” Eloise’s pointed glare was actually quite intense.
Cressida wondered why she was entertaining this idea at all. This was a terrible idea really, and not just because it was inspired by a film they’d been watching wine-drunk and that it was almost entirely likely to fail. But because before she’d left for Cardiff six years ago, she had fallen deeply and irrevocably in love with Eloise Bridgerton.
“Fine,” Cressida conceded, “we stick to the truth, and just embellish a little. We bumped into each other at a pub after I came back from uni and we reconnected.”
“Fantastic! And, of course I swept you off your feet before you even knew what was happening.” Eloise winked.
Cressida could feel the revival of a single butterfly in her stomach at the facial gesture. Her feelings weren’t as dead as she’d initially thought.
Fuck.
As her hand reached out to knock on her childhood home’s door, Cressida recalled that feeling of trepidation she had felt as Eloise had confirmed she’d be there to pick her up from her flat at 6pm before she'd left still rosy from the wine and all planned-out.
She turned to face the object of her not-so-past but still entirely unrequited affection. The warm honeyed eyes, the curling brunette hair that fell down to shoulders encased in the light blue blazer Eloise had donned for the night, and the high cheekbones that curved into a gentle smile framed by two dimples— the appearance of which made her heart beat a little bit faster.
Cressida knew this night was likely to be a shit-show, but since she got to pretend, just for one night, that Eloise was hers, she found she couldn’t bring herself to care anymore.
She squeezed the hand in hers gently, before turning to face the opening door.