Patience's Do Not Do Resolutions

"I haven't got them with me, you arse, they're on my shopping list pad in the kitchen."

"Well, you must remember them, you only wrote them half an hour ago and you've not had any distractions since."

"You're a blessed distraction," she teased, but smiled broadly, admitting to herself that she was enjoying this banter, something she had never anticipated. "Anyway, you are always planning your approaches to bond deals, researching and anticipating issues, you are very good at it and it brings you more success than your everyday flippancy would suggest. So, do you make new year resolutions and what would they be?"

"I have in the past, but not made any yet, but feel, with the upturn in my feelings and prospects for the future, I'm prepared to give it a go this year if only for entertainment."

"OK, you do yours and by the time I get there we can compare notes, otherwise I suspect you'd just copy mine."

"I'd never copy yours, Honey," he laughed, "because I'll bet a pound to a penny that your resolutions will all be negatives, things you will stop doing, while mine will be positives. Knowing yours will help me bring us nearer to us both aiming for the same things. Yes? Am I right? Yours are negative?"

"Yes, damn you, smug bugger," she conceded, "but to be fair, my family ones, the examples I followed, were always about breaking bad habits."

"Much easier to start new, better habits, positives are always easier to keep and they add to your enjoyment of life, not depress it," Jez said, which Patience admitted sounded upbeat and positive, just like Jez himself. "You read out one and I'll interpret it and make you think about turning it to positive and I'll respond with one of mine off the top of my head."

Patience sat on the rolling train, noting she had one more stop before she needed to get off.

"Come on, Pash," Jez urged, "Numero Uno?"

Patience sighed, thinking back to the marks she'd scratched into her shopping list pad. "'No. 1. No chocolate'. Yes, there it is, a negative but I don't want to get fat."

"You're not fat," he said, and Patience felt by his tone he was making an effort to keep the mockery out of his voice, "I mean you are cuddly and I did enjoy cuddling you although I did have to put in a little effort, so an extra bit of chocolate wouldn't go amiss. OK, be honest now, how long is that rather feeble resolution going to last?"

"I have eked it out until Easter, quite a long time ago, I think I was still in school."

"And last year?"

"About six hours."

The loudspeaker of her phone almost exploded with laughter.

"OK, smarty blue pants," she sneered into the screen, wishing she could picture his handsome face. He had one of those faces where he put everything he had into a laugh, his eyes, teeth, cheek bones, shoulders, bending double. Laughing boy, she had to admit, was gorgeous when he laughed. "So, how would you reword that resolution?"

"I would make it something you could keep," he said quietly, so quietly that she had lean into her phone, "that you would love to keep, because the rewards of my resolution would make you even more special, even more than you are already."

"Darn it, Jez, how?"

"'Resolution number 1. I will treat my team of 12 to Hot Chocolates, the special ones with the whipped cream, flake pieces and marshmallows, once a week throughout January' and I will join them as my only chocolate treat for that week."

"Bloody hell, Jez ... " Patience remarked, then added, "so, you must think that I need to do this for more reasons than a resolution for my choc intake."

"Yes, Pash, I love you, and that feeling has been building for a while, I boasted about fictitious conquests to stop them noticing my focus on you," Jez replied, "I have watched you, our immediate boss, you drive us, inspire us but you're cold, and distant. The girls don't include you in their gossip or news, the guys are afraid of you. We all have nicknames and yours implies that you are unapproachable. My resolution would boost the team, boost you in their eyes and make for an even better atmosphere in our department."

"Wait, I have to get off here," she said, getting up and through the opening doors onto the platform, which was half filled with people getting off at the same stop. She held the phone as she got on the escalator and saw that Jez was still online, listening to her motion, listening to her getting off and flashing her ticket to exit through the barriers onto the street around the corner.

"What do they call me, Jez?" She asked, standing on the corner after everyone had filed past and she was alone, very alone, her office diagonally across the street.

"I know you are sensitive, funny, bright, beautiful and lovely, my Sweetheart," Jez said gently, "but in odd moments, when the frustration and lack of hugs gets to them in the tough environment in which we face the pressures of dealing, you have been referred to as, 'Frozen Bitch', never by me though."

"I see," Patience said, "and what would be your first resolution?"

"To find a new and different endearment for you every day for the whole of January and keep adding to them or recycling the ones that make you smile, for every day of our lives."

"OK ... Darling Man, I'm on my way up."