She wasn't.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid!" Paulette shouted to herself with teary eyes, angrily kicking a pebble that had popped itself out from the cobblestone street, a horse carriage loudly passing her by. The sun had long since set itself to sleep, taking her long-awaited attempt at a dream with it. Walking underneath the dim green glow of the street lights, she squinted upwards at the street sign, and then turned down a tight side road cramped with shops on either side of her, all of them closed and bordered up for the night. She kept going until she found what she was looking for: Mallory's Shoe Repair.

It was a small place, a two-story building made of coarse blocks of dirtied brown brick, wooden fittings over the windows and the door, the upper part above the barred windows of the shop a mix of wood and cream paint. Paulette smushed her face against the bars of the window, trying to see if there was a light in the cobbler's workshop, but determined that the place was in fact closed.

Paulette dug her hand into her purse, pulling out a rather large key and after fitting it into the slot below the doorknob of the door placed next to the shop, and after a moment of fiddling, opened it up with a loud whine, to a staircase leading upstairs. She walked in, making sure to lock the door behind, and pulled herself up the stairs.

                                                        ~~~

"Charles, I'm home," she called out, opening the door with an exhausted heave, practically holding it up as she pushed the obviously broken door back into it's frame.

"Damn door, I should've fixed the thing yesterday. Charles?"

She threw her key onto the shoe cabinet that stood next to the door with a loud clang, and looked around. Expecting the pale green, oil-smelling lights to be on and brightening the room, she stood in almost complete darkness, the outline of the room only visible from the moonlight shining through the windows.

"Charles?"

Paulette gently placed her purse on the shoe cabinet and listened.

Nothing. Or was it? She strained her ears listening to the silence, until eventually she heard something. A quiet rustle that seemed to come from the kitchen at the far corner of the apartment. Feeling around the wall, she managed to place her hands on what she hoped was the umbrella, and with light footsteps made her way towards the sound.

"Charles!" she whispered as loudly as she could.

The rustling suddenly stopped and she heard the tell-tale sound of a gaslight being twisted on, causing her to sprint to the kitchen, battle umbrella ready for action and-

The gaslights in the room flickered to life, revealing a small mustachioed man beneath the kitchen's chandelier, balancing on a threateningly unstable stool on top of the puny table in order to reach it.

"Paulette! I… did not… know you were home already!"

She glared at him with impossibly tired eyes.

"Or… perhaps I did know?"

"U-huh."

Charles gave out a weak laugh and slowly eased himself off the stool, taking it with him as he clumsily leapt off the table with a thump.

"I do hope that you had no plans to actually hit me with that," he said, eyeing the umbrella that she was clutching in her hands, and Paulette gave a small smirk.

"I was planning on hitting a burglar, Charles."

"Well, no intruders here, I assure you," he replied, and he stepped over to the kitchen counter, which she noticed was topped with a set of porcelain plates and metallic utensils, as well as a small pile of napkins.

"Is that… the set that we bought a few months back?"

"Well of course! What other one would I use for your special day?"

Paulette's weary eyes widened as he set them on the table, the lack of chipped edges making it the best plates and cups they currently had.

"Charles."

"Oh right, of course! You must be exhausted from all that running you had to do, please, sit," and he pulled out a chair and motioned for her to come sit down, and then continued to pull things out of the kitchen counters, not even realizing that she hadn't moved from her spot. It was when he pulled out a large box covered with a lace blanket and placed it in the middle of the small table that he saw her still standing.

"Paulette, it does not matter how you think it went, what is important is that you finally took the exam! So ease up on that glum look and join me."

He looked up at her with a big smile, only to see her stare at him with an expression that seemed as if she was nearly coming to tears.

"Did it really go that badly?"

"I... I didn't go," she quietly muttered, directing her gaze out towards the window.

"I'm sorry, what?" Charles' smile dropped, his hands hovering over the lace cover on the box.

"He wouldn't let me go."

"Mr. Kirkham?"

"Mr. Kirkham."

"Oh Paulette." The box covered in lace suddenly forgotten, Charles ran up to Paulette and swooped her into the best hug he could manage, his figure ridiculously small compared to Paulette's, who loomed over him with a teary and yet appreciative smile.

"I appreciate the hug Charles, even if it is technically around my hips." she eventually uttered with a quiet chuckle, patting for him to let go.

"Consider yourself lucky that I'm tall enough to give you any sort of hug," he grumbled as he finally released himself from the embrace, motioning for her to sit down, which she did with an exhausted sigh. He joined her at the table, splaying his arms onto the top, his face revealing his utter distress in the form of a pout, lower lip thrust out in solemn displeasure.

"I'm sorry."

"What for? It is not your fault, that that buffoon known as your employer, refused you the chance of a lifetime," Charles mumbled, the semblance of profanities escaping him as he whispered. The two proceeded to sit there for a while, the awkwardness of the silence slowly starting to enveloping in what felt like a choke-hold, all the while Paulette stared at the box.

"So... what's in it?" She finally asked, Charles looking up at her from his place on the tabletop.

"Cake, obviously."

"Obviously. But, uh, what kind of cake?"

"American, of course." Paulette's eyes widened as the words left his mouth.

"What do you mean, American?"

"I mean," Charles stated, "that it's an American cake, that I got for nothing, since you didn't even get to take your god-damned exam."

Paulette pulled the box towards her, and turned it around until she saw the company name.

"WHAT!?"

"That's precisely what I said when I saw it in town." Charles looked at the box and gave out a long sigh, a sigh that choked only a second later as she proceeded to throw off the lace and tear the top off of the box.

'W-What are you-"

"You bought it, so we're eating it! I don't give a damn whether or not our day was ruined." With shaky hands, she pulled the cake out of the box, and marveled. It was certainly small, but the scent of pure sugary sweetness hit her almost instantly, the frosting a wonderful myriad of colors in the shape of small flowers that covered it's white creamy surface. Her mouth practically watered at the thought of it's fluffy filling, American filling of all things.

"Do you smell that?"

"You mean the diabetes?"

"No Charles, the sweetness of pure sugar, fresh creamy frosting, the fluffy, fruitless- This... This doesn't have fruit in it, does it?"

"Not unless you count vanilla as a fruit," he replied with a small smirk. Paulette returned the smirk with her own and jokingly gave him a whack on the arm.

"Hilarious," she said, lifting herself out of the chair, "We got tea, right?" Charles simply shrugged.

"We can hardly afford it these days, so..." She walked over to the cabinets hanging on the wall and flung one of them open. Other than their pitiful set of cracked plates and chipped cups, there were no signs of any containers of tea. With a dissatisfied sigh, Paulette moved on to the next one, which gave equally depressing results.

"Well?"

"Still looking," she replied, opening the last cabinet left. And upon seeing the glimmer of metal, she swung it wide open with an equally wide smile.

"Jackpot," she said, and pulling it out of the cabinet, proceeded to place it on the table in front of Charles. The tin container was dented beyond all it's years, roughened up in such a fashion that the tin lacked any sort of corners, and the small speckles of color that decorated it was all that remained of whatever design it had once carried. Paulette gave it a good shake, satisfied with the soft tink that rattled inside, and she started to pry it open, Charles straightening up a bit from his position of moping.

"Look at us, we got a delicious cake all for ourselves, and we're using our nicest set, meaning the forks are actually straight for once, the table's all pretty, and we're going to enjoy all of it with a nice cup of..." Paulette stopped speaking, staring at the inside of the tin container that she had just opened.

"There is no tea in the tin, is there?"

"No, there isn't." But what was in the tin, of all things, was a folded scrap of newspaper, "BUY MORE TEA" scrawled on it in what Paulette immediately recognized as her own handwriting.

"Damn," she said.