* -- manic monday

[cora west]

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there tradition that was carried out every once in a while at scarborough’s restaurant. its timing changed every now and then – sometimes the employees had short-notice, and sometimes they had time to prepare.

and it was called “andy watch.”

“andy watch” was something that carlisle had come up with only a month after naïvely hiring andy doyle and realizing that health inspectors would never give his establishment an ‘a’ rating if they took one look at the unkempt brunette. so, every time he found out the restaurant was going to be inspected, he enlisted one of his trusty employees to keep her busy and away for the time that the health inspector was around.

oh, and ‘enlisted’ actually meant that he had them all draw straws to see who got the shortest one. last time, it had been lionel – unfortunately, andy hadn’t been so kind of the adorable japanese import. first, she’d stolen his glasses and played keep-away with them for an hour. then, once she’d grown tired of him trying to get his glasses back from her, she’d stepped on them and gone to the corner store to buy a pack of cigarettes.

needless to say, lionel had withdrawn from “andy watch” until further notice for emotional reasons.

this time, cora west had been unfortunate employee to draw the shortest stick and be placed in charge of “andy watch.” she’d met carlisle’s apologetic stare with a fearful one of her own at the time, but now she was actuallt feeling confident about her ability to keep andy away from the restaurant for the short time that the health inspector would be present. it couldn’t too hard – although she was irritating and weird, andy was still a person. she could just buy her ice cream and take her to a movie or something.

she remembered the first time she’d ever met andy: cora had been nothing but nice to the slightly older, dark-haired girl, but her efforts had been immediately shot down with a snide remark plus expletive followed by a puff of cigarette smoke blown in her face. things had only grown worse after andy had realized that cora and topher were best friends – apparently, andy had met topher earlier that day and fallen head-over-heels in love with him. topher was still oblivious to this fact, of course, but cora knew that andy’s pure dislike for her was rooted in jealousy. truthfully, cora was glad that he was oblivious because andy was a horrible influence on him. when he’d left new york city and moved to montréal for his masters degree, through her immense grief about his absence she’d been partly glad that at least he’d be away from andy.

then, only a week after cora had moved to montréal to be closer to topher (and make her acting debut in the marty bellefleur-directed zombie movie that was filming locally), andy had moved as well. and, to make matters worse, the girl applied for a job in the same exact place that cora had just begun working: topher’s new friend’s restaurant, scarborough’s. while cora had easily gotten the job because she was topher’s best friend and carlisle was topher’s other best friend, she really wasn’t sure how andy had gotten the job. everytime she asked carlisle, he evaded her question and drank more grape soda.

anyway, in conclusion, andy was just jealous of cora, and cora knew it.

jealous or not, cora still had a duty to do – keeping andy away from scarborough’s for the next couple of hours so she wouldn’t embarrass carlisle and the restaurant by saying something ridiculous or whatever. it had been a hard task trying to coax andy out of the restaurant, but cora had bribed somehow gotten her to leave the restaurant with her.

she’d taken the other to the parc du mont-royal, which is where they currently were. andy was busy wasting away on a park bench while cora was ordering ice cream at a vendor nearby. as the ice cream man handed her two cones of vanilla ice cream, her blue eyes landed right on a group of bright red balloons tied to the handle of the vendor’s cart.

“oh my god, balloons?” she asked, although it was obvious that she was, in fact, staring at balloons.

the vendor nodded, turning his attention to the balloons himself. “that’s right.”

a bright, enthusiastic grin formed on cora’s soft features as she stared at the balloons. “red balloons? like…are there ninety-nine?”

“i – uh, i don’t know. i could count them for you,” the vendor joked, although cora didn’t seem to get it.

“really?”

“do you want to buy one or not?”

moments later, cora ambled towards andy with the ice cream cones and a red balloon securely in her grasp. “look what i bought!” she exclaimed, her smile wider than ever. “here is your ice cream…,” cora handed andy one of the ice cream cones, making sure to give her the one that looked like it had more ice cream so as not to cause andy to complain that she’d kept the bigger one for herself. after a short moment, she grabbed andy’s wrist with her free hand and began tying the string of the balloon around it. “there! we don’t want you to lose the balloon now, do we?”

status: finished.
tag: andy doyle.
length: 892 words.
music: manic monday by the bangles
notes: haha, andy is going to hate cora so much.