The Bakery

I was just about to sit down on the couch when I heard a shout from the other room. I was holding a liter bottle of apple juice on one hand and a fan-made mug on the other, while clenching on a bag of Doritos between my teeth.

“Harry!” I figured it was probably from Mark or Ramzy, but I couldn’t quite tell.

“Wha’?!” I tried to shout back, but soon failed miserably because my mouth was evidently stuffed with plastic.

“HARRY!” he got louder, definitely not hearing my reply.

I let go of the bite between my teeth and went on slamming my person on the couch. “What?!”

“Gym, now.” It was Mark, apparently, as he walked inside the common room and revealed himself.

I groaned, tilting my head on the edge of the backrest so I could look at him upside down. “I just trained with Ramzy four hours ago!”

“That was for muscles. This is cardio. Come on, chop chop!” he insisted, along with some annoyingly loud claps. I actually knew that. It had always been cardio training with Mark.

I opened the bag of Doritos while trying to make yet another excuse. “But, I don’t wanna miss… that…” I pointed at the TV screen only to find some car commercial playing.

“That’s a bloody advert. Come on, it’s better to move than to just sit on your arse all day. Let’s go.” Mark patted on my shoulder, slightly tugging it.

Before I could throw a comeback, Lou, Lux’s Lou not Eleanor’s Lou, suddenly decided to join in the conversation. “Listen to Mark, Harry. Burn the extra fat you got from that chili cheese fries yesterday.” Bad move.

“Oh look who’s talking! You know what, come to think of it, never have I seen you be around any gym at all, Lou.” Louise Teasdale was one of them women that lacks the ability of gaining weight. Her overall figure may look toned, but people knew that she would never be caught dead near a treadmill.

“Shopping and sex are just enough to burn my calories, thank you very much,” she defended herself as she snatched the Doritos from me and stuffed them in her mouth, “Now since you don’t shop, nor have sex, you might as well get that abs chiseled,” she continued. I loved Lou to death but that woman was just a beauty and a beast in one body. In terms of munching food.

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. “Cardio training doesn’t chisel abs,” I said mimicking her tone. She gave me a mocking, voiceless mouth movement in return, to which I just scrunched my nose.

“At least go run, Harry,” said Mark again.

I groaned at his presistence, dumping my back against the body of the couch and getting myself into this weird shape where my upper body was lying down yet my legs were still at sitting position, “Do I really have to?” I asked, looking up at him who was now hovering above me.

“Yes. Run, swim, I don’t care. Just move your arse.”

I was just about to smack Mark on his firm stomach when a bloody brilliant idea hit me and I swung myself back up, “I’ll run only if Lou comes with me.”

The statement kept Lou from shoving another Dorito into her mouth, leaving it hanging inches away from her tongue. “Nope. Not gonna happen,” she claimed before continuing the gesture.

I shot Mark a stare, trying to look as serious as I could while holding my laugh. “Mark, I won’t move unless Lou does.”

He knew so well that I was doing it only to piss Lou off, but he could tell that I was pleading for him to play along. “Oh come on Lou, go with him. It doesn’t hurt.”

“Yeah, it does! God knows when was the last time I actually work out, I don’t want any sore body parts, nope.”

“All the more reason to do it, then,” Mark countered, earning a big satisfactory grin from me.

I turned to look at Lou and tried to make a puppy dog face, only to receive a ridiculously loud slap by the mouth. “Jesus, woman! Run with meeee, Louuuu,” I pouted as I rubbed the spot where Lou had slapped me before.

“Not a chance, not going.”

Mark and I shared a glance, and by then we knew exactly what to do to intimidate Lou. Stare her nerves down.

With our eyes drilling onto hers, she tried to shrug it off by going back to munching and watching TV, but I could almost immediately tell that she started to feel the heat.

“For God’s sake, you two aren’t gonna leave me alone, are you?” she said when she finally gave up.

My expression beamed in pride, knowing that I had yet again won against her. Lou really didn’t stand a chance debating against Mark and myself; she really should’ve known better by now. “Nope.”

“Fine, I’ll go get my long-dusted trainers on,” she said as she stood up from the couch and tossed the Doritos back at me.

Mark shuffled my hair and pulled me by my armpits to stand up. “You think you can get away with that? You go get changed too, you prick.”

I threw my widest full-teeth smile at him as an action of mockery. “Couldn’t blame me for trying,” I replied before I went to the dressing room to do as I was told.

Although, I had to admit that ‘getting changed’ really meant switching my flannel shirt into a loose t-shirt and changing my tight skinny jeans into a pair of slightly less tight skinny jeans.

People often question me about my fondness towards it, which really fascinates me because out of the many things that I constantly wear – flannel shirts, headbands, and worn out boots – they chose to pick on the jeans. I have no idea why. My reason is nothing special really, and has absolutely nothing to do with fashion. I just don’t like the brush of the regular, baggier trousers against my legs when I walk. It tickles. Meanwhile skinny jeans don’t move at all, because well, they’re stuck to my legs, so I prefer them better. At first, when people ask about it in interviews, I told them the exact truth as said above but they went off laughing and couldn’t seem to grasp the fact that I was serious. So I figured I’d just brush it off and say that Caroline gave them to me.

As soon as I finished changing, I went back to the common room to look for the other half of my Nike running shoes. Not a moment later, I found it under the coffee table beside the pair of earphones that I have been looking for and grabbed the two of them at once. I brought the shoes as I moved backwards to sit on the couch and properly put them on. Just as I finished tying the last string, Lou startled me from behind. “’s go.”

I turned my head to face the sound source and I saw her standing between the door frames in full workout attire. That was when I almost lost it to the sight of her being overly self-conscious about running. I tried, mind you, I tried to restrain my laugh but I just couldn’t handle it so I bursted out a guffaw louder than I should have.

“What?” she complained.

“Nothing, you cleaned up nice, never once have I seen you like this. Look like a proper chav.” I bit my bottom lip to take my laughter into a minimum.

“Shut up, dickhead! It’s comfy.”

“I need to post this to Instagram. This is precious Louise Teasdale moment. Can I post this to Instagram? Yes, yes I can, hold on,” I rambled as I roamed over my back pocket to grab my iPhone and walked around the couch. “Pose for me, Lou.”

“You know, your page is supposed to be filled with your photos, not others.”

“Nonsense. Do a hand gang sign or something,” I commanded, disregarding what she said as I directed my phone’s camera at her. Lou stuck her tongue out but ended up obliging anyway.

“Perfect. Now let’s get going before the sun gets too high,” I suggested. I started to walk towards the exit while keeping my eyes on my phone screen, sharing the photo I just took to my social medias.

Harry Styles@Harry_Styles
Chav by ‪@louteasdale‬‬‬‬ ‪http://instagram.com/p/fZ47qBjCaS/ ‬‬‬‬

Notes

Send me thoughts?