My Favorite Camren One-Shots

Cold Dark Earth

“Boys workin on empty

Is that the kinda way to face the burning heat?”

I am working at the restaurant like any other day. The heat from making the steak to cook perfectly hitting my arms and my forehead’s sweating from being inside the crowded kitchen, and also because I’m too focused on what I’m doing. I need to make it perfect every time, no waste, otherwise, Mr. Hozier would make me pay a debt of hundreds from wasting food.

Since the Earth was attacked by eight types of the same deathly virus that vanished with more than half of the population of the world, food is not something we can play with any more.

I am preparing the second dish that is directed to me when my eyes run to the double doors because I get the feeling of being watched, and I’m right. I see two brown eyes staring at me from outside, through the circular small window in the surface of the metal doors. I can’t see her lips, but I know she’s smiling to me. I do my best to hide my playful lips that are ready to open on a wide smile to answer her. No one can see me smiling at her. I wish she could just get in the kitchen and kiss my cheeks, telling me to have a good day at work, like Mr. Hozier’s wife does sometimes when she’s around, but she can’t. We can’t be seen together. Not in the kitchen, not in the restaurant, not out there, in this world we live now. We live in different segments and that is not allowed. Actually, there’s no law saying it with every word, but since I’m a Sixth and the girl I love is a Third, we are aware that that wouldn’t be accepted in anyway, by anyone.

I can’t keep our eye contact for much longer because, as said first, I can’t play with the dish I’m preparing. I look down quickly and after my eyes check the pan on the heated stove, they go back up to reach to her stare, but she’s not there any more. I sigh because that’s just how it is. I can only see her during the nights during the week, and not every night. But thankfully, on the weekends we make our encounters happen. Secretly, of course.

“I just think about my baby

I’m so full of love I could barely eat”

I’m anxious because my favorite hour of the day is coming. I can’t concentrate on nothing else when the clockwise starts getting closer to 8PM. As soon as it hits the eight, I’ll be out of here and run to the coziest arms that could ever embrace me.

Alejandro Cabello is the owner of the biggest restaurant of the Second Section, and his family, his wife and only child, work with him. During the time range from 8PM to 9PM, him and his wife get to the supply storage to make the daily check. That’s when I can sneak into the office on the second floor to see Camila.

Camila Cabello would be, I can say from the fast heart palpitations I get every time she touches me, the only person to make me live in fully happiness to the rest of my days if I had, at least, the chance of living with her.

I change from my white cooking uniform and put my usual black clothes. We don’t have many color options to wear in the Sixth Section, but I couldn’t care less. I dismiss politely from my co-workers and Mr. Hozier before walking out the back door of the kitchen that head to the back exit from the huge restaurant. Instead of going further, as other workers from the restaurant are doing, I wait to be the last one and turn to the right. I face the empty adjacent corridor and I run up the stairs. When I get to the second floor, before being able to turn to the left to head to the Cabello’s office, soft lips, sweeter than cherry, connect to mine. My heart melts immediately, just like the butter I tossed on the heated pan while cooking earlier.

“There’s nothing sweeter than my baby

I never want once from the cherry tree”