Blackbird

“I’m sorry, what?” Louis gasped.

“Okay,” Cara repeated, her voice sounding sure and clear; a great contrast to how her head was. She’d said that she would do this, twice now, so she couldn’t really back out at this very second. Or could she? She could have told Louis that it was a slip of the tongue and that she had meant “okay, continue on with your uncontrollable nervous ramblings.” But now she’s simply said ‘okay’ twice, so he surely must think that she was alluding to the fake relationship.

The more that Cara thought this over the more confused she become. She could back out now but she still thought in a weird sort of way this was fate’s way of telling her to do something outrageous; something that was completely out of her comfort zone.

“Okay to what, exactly?” Louis asked while looking absolutely confused. He raked his hand through the crumpled mess of gelled brown locks.

Cara took in a quiet deep breath while mentally preparing herself, once again, before stating in a matter-of-fact tone, “Okay, I’ll ‘continue a relationship’ with you.”

Louis’ eyes snapped up at her. He looked at her like she had grown three heads while looking slightly thankful that she had made this decision. He opened his mouth to speak and as he did so Cara quickly cut him off.

“However, we need to set a few ground rules and conditions.”

Louis simply nodded so Cara continued; her voice holding a tone of authority that she had never heard before, “One: if I am going to do this we need to at least be friends. I refuse to spend a ridiculous amount of time with someone that I know nothing about.”

“I agree, that makes sense,” he said quietly whilst nodding.

“Two,” she continued, “I refuse to stop any friendships because of this ‘relationship’ and I wouldn’t ever expect you to do that. Three: I’m not going to stop everything in my life at a drop of a hat for this. I’ve worked way too hard to simply stop everything to follow you, and One Direction, around. That said, I will attend things if you want me to but I need to know in advance.”

“I can do that,” Louis said while nodding again. Cara couldn’t help but compare him to the bobble-head figurine that sat on the dashboard of the baby blue ute that she used to drive in Australia.

“Four: I will not be paid in any form. I absolutely refuse to be made feel like I’m a prostitute or a slag in any way, shape or form. Five: we should be both allowed to tell people who we think are absolutely trustworthy about this. I will tell my best friend Brenna, that is a given, and you can tell your family, that is if you want to, but I want to be there when you tell your bandmates, well at least when you tell Harry.”

Cara wanted to make sure that the remaining four fifths of One Direction didn’t think that she was someone who was trying to buy in on One Direction or Louis for that matter. She wanted to make sure that they had met her before making any assumptions about her.

“Aren’t you going to tell your family about what’s going on?” Louis questioned.

Cara scoffed and then laughed cynically, “Don’t worry, they won’t give a shit.”

Louis seemed to be a bit taken aback by this but recovered quickly.

“Is that all?”

Cara sat silently for a few seconds before stating, “No, there’s one more thing.”

She fell mute again before Louis gave her a look of slight exasperation, so she quickly exclaimed, “My final condition is that we don’t announce the ‘relationship’ for a couple of weeks.”

“But,” Louis quickly cried out.

“Hear me out,” Cara cut in quickly, “It will give us an out if we need it. I’m pretty sure that if we both don’t really like each other or enjoy the other’s presence after a couple of weeks, then we really aren’t going to like each other after a couple of months. If we don’t announce anything to the media but continue to get pictured together you will get the positive publicity that you need without having to release any statements if we ‘break up’ and it means that we can both get on with our lives without too much drama.”

“Oh, that’s actually really smart,” Louis exclaimed.

“I’m a little offended that you doubted my intelligence,” Cara laughed, defusing the all the remains of the prior awkward conversation, and Louis quickly followed suit. His loud chuckles and her quiet but heartfelt laughs echoed of the warm brown walls and filled the otherwise empty room.
Their laughs were abruptly joined by the monotone honk of a small van causing Cara’s eyes to flicker to the clock. To her surprise it read 5:15 pm.

“Shit,” she cursed, flung herself out of the booth where Louis sat looking confused, yet again, and rushed towards the door.

Flinging the door open she yelled out, “I’ll just be a moment Frank.”

“What are you doing?” Louis questioned from his spot at the booth.

“I’ve got to close up the bakery and get the food ready to be picked up for the shelter,” she called while running into the kitchen at back of the bakery knocking every corner, bench and tray on the way.

She emerged seconds later carrying numerous cardboard boxes and trays and seeming slightly out of breath. Cara moved towards the display and began practically pouring the baked goods into the cardboard. The van outside honked again causing Cara to utter profanities as she continued to race around the kitchen.

“Would you like a hand?”

Cara stopped, placing her feet firmly on the ground, craned her neck and stared at Louis for a few seconds before crying out, “Yes. Get the bread and put it in a box,” gesturing roughly behind her to where the bread was situated.

“Please,” she added as an afterthought.

Louis moved was a grace that shocked Cara slightly. The small ginger-headed girl and the boy with the messy brown locks quickly found themselves in a smooth waltz around the small around behind the display, ducking and swerving for each other as they reached for more cardboard and the fresh baked goods with lissom movements. Within mere minutes they had cleaned the glass display of all the sticky, sweet and tart goods and removed all the varying breads from the stand they lay against the wall separating the kitchen from the front.

Cara glanced at the clock and felt a wave a gratitude rush over her, without Louis’ help it would have taken her at least twenty minutes to have done what they had accomplished in just over five minutes. They were a good team, she thought. She handed a few of the boxes to Louis, took the remainder and walked towards the door gesturing for him to follow.

Outside the air was frigid, the sleet from the morning had covered the ground with a thick icy sludge that made Cara wish she hadn’t worn her favourite pair of boots because they were getting drenched as she walked across the footpath towards the deep blue van and Frank. Frank was a robust man of about sixty who sported bushy grey eyebrows, a Manchester United jersey regardless of the weather and scuffed grey boots that he wore everyday but Saturday, when he wore his Church shoes (a pair of slightly less scuffed boot). He had been the person to collect the leftover goods from the bakery every day without fail since Cara had begun working at the bakery shortly after arriving in London three years ago.

“Hello Miss Cara, hope you had a great holiday,” Frank said while moving to get out of the driver’ seat.

“It was alright. Don’t get out, it’s bloody freezing out here,” Cara shivered, “I’ve got it.”
She pulled the door open and placed the numerous boxes in the back and gestured for Louis to do the same. Frank’s small brown eyes, widened behind his thin wire rimmed glasses, his eyebrows rose to his fading hairline and he turned his rotund body towards Cara.

“’Who’s this young lad?” Frank chuckled.

“Oh, that’s my… friend Louis,” Cara said somewhat awkwardly as Louis finished placing his boxes in the van and pulled at the rusted door. Cara stepped forward, pushed on the door and then pulled on it with all her might, as she had done numerous times before, to close it. A not so feminine grunt broke free of her lips as she pulled.

A blush rose in her cheeks as both Louis and Frank looked at her. She mumbled as more blood pooled in her cheeks giving them a certain resemblance to tomatoes and her hair, “You gotta… push it… and then, ah, pull.”

Frank chuckled at Cara’s awkwardness and said in his deep garbled voice, “Well, I’d best be off.”
And with that he drove away without so much as a goodbye, leaving the odd pair standing in the cold, wet slush.

“I’ve got to finish closing up the store,” Cara said while briskly walking inside and leaving Louis still standing awkwardly in the chilled London air.

▪▪▪▪▪

The awkward pair found themselves walking down the icy street in an even more awkward silence. It occurred to Cara that the silence that they had fallen into at the bakery was, for the most part, not this awkward. As they continued in their snail pace down the street more and more eyes, mainly belonging to pre-teens and teenage girls, kept following their every move causing more and more awkwardness between the two. Their hands, which had been wrapped around each other upon seeing the first set of following eyes, firmly squeezed each other in a reassuring fashion.

“Soooo,” Louis drew out, “Frank?”

“He’s been collecting the food that we don’t sell and taking it down to the shelter every day since I began working at the bakery,” Cara explained.

“Don’t you lose profit doing that?” Louis asked with curiosity present in his voice.

“If we don’t sell all of the food by the end of the day then it has to be disposed of, it’s part of health and safety regulations. We could sell it as bread crumbs or at a discounted price the next day or even just throw it into the bins out back and regardless we'd still be out of pocket slightly. I personally prefer for the leftovers to go to shelters so that they can feed people who might otherwise go hungry,” Cara said while slowly stopping and facing Louis.

She reached up with her free hand and smoothed a piece of Louis’ brown locks that had been falling onto his face back with the rest of his hair. Louis looked down at her with a confused look on his face.

Cara smiled and said quickly and quietly, “There’s a girl in the shop we just passed who is practically crying as she’s taking photos of you. I bet you five quid within the next five minutes they will be up on the internet, so I may as well give her something to talk about and give you some positive publicity while I’m at it.”

Louis looked gratefully at her, replied simply with a heartfelt, “Thank you,” and they continued their slow walk down the street.

Upon reaching the end of the street Cara turned again to Louis and asked, “Where to now?”