Breakfast With Charming
Breakfast with Charming
Claire Bauer
Tarvos Editorial
Copyright © 2020 Tarvos Editorial
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 9781234567890
ISBN-10: 1477123456
Cover design by: Art Painter
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
To all of those who are still waiting for the right one to come along.
Keep your faith and you will be rewarded.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Welcome to Ottawa!
The house flipper
Furniture hunting
Fundraising
Talking to the moon
Fallen walls
A touch of cinnamon
Splintered heart
Only soul
Preface
We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:18
"I don’t understand why you can’t stay here! I love you, and you know I always will, but it is easier to love you here than sending my love and hoping it will travel for thousands of miles", said Brandon.
I love Brandon, I really do, and I've known him since forever so it is really difficult for me to imagine my life away from him, but I feel like I've grown all I could grow in this town and I really need to expand my horizons. My mom told me that this wasn't a good move and that it would be better to just stay in town and take a summer job or to take some credits over summer to finish school earlier. I know that I could easily translate things online and make a living out of it, but I am not going to waste the opportunity of going to another country to show my skills. I've always wanted to travel but never really had enough funds to do it, this is a full ride scholarship for a three months internship in the Embassy of Canada. It is impossible to say no to something like that, and I honestly believe that if Brandon was in this situation, he would take the opportunity without even thinking about it. He always got anxious when I started talking about moving to Canada, but he never really believed I was going to do it. Now that I am waiting in the boarding line, I can only wish he could just tell me how much he loves me and will miss me.
"Come on, baby, where is your hopeless romantic soul? We will get through this and we'll be a strongest couple. Besides I am only a couple of hours away from home, you can go to visit me whenever you want, it would be the best surprise ever. I really have to go; can't you just tell me to have a good flight and kiss me?" I said pleading for a descent goodbye.
"Very well gorgeous, have a good flight and call me as soon as you arrive. Maybe you could get some sleep during your flight. Remember to send a message to your mom before calling me. I love you," he kissed me as he wrapped the neck pillow, he bought me as a farewell gift.
"I love you too and I will be here sooner than you could even imagine," I gave him a final hug and went to the boarding area. In less than an hour, I would be for the first time, out of my little town with a never-ending bucket list, a small suitcase and a vision board for the new life I was going to start.
Welcome to Ottawa!
The plane started going down, it was something I could have known even if the flights attendants hadn’t said it. My ears started filling with air and my stomach felt tickles of excitement. The light of the seatbelt was turned on and I was praying we didn’t crash instead of landing. I could hear the motors over the wing making weird noises and people around me acted like it didn’t matter. Maybe they know more about flying that I do. I don’t like this, I should have taken a good old bus from the station and I wouldn’t be freaking out in this moment. “Dear passengers, welcome to Ottawa! Local time 8:37, and for those passengers who live here: welcome home,” said one flight attendant over the speakers and immediately after almost everyone was standing up looking for their luggage and trying to race to the exit.
Would the ‘welcome home’ apply to me? I really intended on making this place a place where I could live someday. It is weird how a house is not necessarily a home. The thing is that house and home are not interchangeable nouns. When I was little I would use both terms as equal, and the situation remained pretty much the same until my teenage years but after my parents’ divorce, it felt wrong to call home the place where I lived during the weekdays or the place where I stayed just for the weekend. Sometimes I felt more at home at a friend's place that at my own and after graduation, I decided I was going to find my place in the world. I want to find my home and I want to do it outside of the comfy little town I've lived all my life.
"Hello B, I just wanted to call you to say I'm already at Ottawa. The flight was really short and next to me was the sweetest little boy ever, he kind of reminded me of you with all of his little freckles. Everything fine over there?"
"Everything is perfect, thanks for calling. I thought you would forget as you always do, and I would have to be worry sick waiting for your call. How about I call you later? I'm about to enter the next level of the videogame I was telling you about."
"Oh, sure. No problem. We'll just talk tomorrow; I am super tired right now. Good luck in your new level" Brandon is the biggest fan of videogames, he is planning on someday releasing one of his own so he is always designing characters and thinking about plots that would thrill the players. He always says that playing videogames for him is almost like a research activity.
"Good night gorgeous. Talk to you later"
One of the things I like the most about being with Brandon is how he can always call me gorgeous , without missing a beat. He doesn't even think about it. He says it as if it were my name.
People would think that after so many years of knowing him and of being a couple I would be anxious to marry a guy like him. After all, he is a honest and loyal man and he accepts me for what I am. I remember I thought about marrying him when I was younger, but after my parents’ divorce I just started doubting about being made for marriage.
After all, marriage is something quite serious. If you do it right, you only have one shot at it and the alternatives are black and white...either you stay together forever, or you break up at the end. I cannot honestly see myself fighting and yelling at Brandon like my parents did. And I want to stay the furthest possible away from that scenario. He is my best friend, and I would never trade our friendship for a diamond ring. It is just not worth it. And the best of it is that he gets it. I'm already missing him and we've been away just a couple hours!
Good thing about 21st century: you don't have to wait forever to get a taxi at the airport. I am so thankful for apps like Uber, they just make everything a hundred times easier. My driver is already waiting for me and I will be at my temporary Airbnb in the blink of an eye.
"Good night Miss, let me help you with your luggage," a man big enough to be mistaken for a professional weightlifter took my luggage that suddenly seemed quite little compared to his size.
"Thank you so much. You Canadians are really gentle people! That is a great stereotype to keep alive," getting myself in the back seat of the car I kept silent while answering to some messages when I started feeling a piercing gaze. I looked over to see my driver of the night quite inte
rested in the messages I was sending. "May I help you, sir?" I angrily looked at him who thought he had the right of be ogling at me.
"You seem quite more interested in your cell phone than on the city," this man looks like the kind of driver who is going to want to talk during all the trip. “I just thought it was interesting. I don't know if all Canadians are gentle, but at least all Canadians that I have met are more than polite. I've been a Canadian just for a couple months now. I am from Ireland. Have you ever been in Ireland Miss?"
At least the man had an interesting story, I decided not to be bitter about not being able to talk to Brandon and gave the conversation a shot.
"Oh, just call me Becky! Sorry for the rudeness. I shouldn't be on my phone all the time, it was one of my new year's resolutions, those that I rarely follow for more than a couple weeks. I've never been to Ireland but I've heard it is gorgeous. The land of clovers and rainbows that lead to gold, I bet you must really miss it."
"Well Becky, I couldn't call it home anymore. I couldn't find the goblins and pixies that lead to gold. I know it may sound illogical for an uber driver to say he is rich, but in comparison to how I was five years ago I am. This is my own car and I have a honest job and a small place to call home and I have so much free time I can really enjoy the small things of life."
"I adore how there are people that take the time to that. There is magic in every little thing of everyday life but with all the hustle and bustle of the city, many things are overlooked. Don't you think so?" I said to the man with the clover eyes.
"Your mouth is full of truth. Are you planning on staying for a while here in Ottawa?"
"I still don't know; I first need to know if it is the right place for me. I'll be here at least for three months which is what covers my contract."
"Well, as I see it three months will be more than enough for you to fall head over heels for this place. It is Heaven, you'll find people with so different backgrounds, there are a lot of foreigners, a lot of culture, landscapes are heart-warming. You would be a wonderful addition to our congregation, and you could easily make new friends there, what do you say? Everyone is truly open-minded, and I promise you that you will love them. When I first came to Canada, they were everything I had, they received me with opened arms and really helped me through all the process of living in a new place."
"Well thanks for the invite but I haven’t been quite in touch with my faith lately.”
"Well, you don’t have to worry about that. God isn’t as forgetful as us, he remembers you even when it seems you don’t. You should really give it a shot. There is nothing worse than being all by your own in a city you don’t know. You could start meeting good hearted people and take this opportunity as your spiritual retreat. I am going to give you a card with all of the information you need, I hope I get to see you on Sunday, but you still have tomorrow to think about it.”
Shawn helped me with my luggage and gave me a card with the information of the Church and the schedules for choir practice, he didn’t look quite like the singer type. He drove away while waving goodbye. Adventures await and I feel ready to conquer the world.
The host received me to her place with freshly baked cookies and a recommended restaurants list longer than life. She explained to me the basics and went away.
I had some cookies for dinner (I'm glad my mom doesn't know about this) and started searching for houses on rent near the area. Although the Airbnb was pretty, I needed to find a place that could be useful for the long run.
∞∞∞
I woke up when the sky was still dark, there is nothing better than a warm cup of tea in the quietness of the morning to start a new chapter. I took my phone, send a good morning text to Brandon and my mom and just like that the search of my future home started.
Everyone has a must-have list for their homes. Mine is simple: I want a place with some space for a little garden and a decent kitchen. I would love to have a small terrace, but I can live without it and I really want to have a place for reading. It could be just a window, or maybe a hammock in the garden; just some place where I can rest from the world and connect with the words people wrote hundreds of years ago without even knowing they would ever be read by someone set in a different country and a different historical moment than theirs.
For me reading has always been a way to escape from the world, when I was younger I used to devour books, I could wake up with a new book and by the moment the dinner was ready I was already looking for what to read next. Little by little my love for letters guided me to pursue language studies and being able to automatically translate cyrillic letters to Latin alphabet got me addicted to learning languages.
All the nights I stayed awake trying to understand the different sounds of Czech language lead me to build a tolerance for failure that not everyone has, and only after failing a million times when pronouncing their “cz” and “sz” did I master their pronunciation and more importantly a life lesson that I would always carry with me: never give up.
Having this internship opportunity means that I am more than just the grades I’ve worked so hard to get, I am all the knowledge behind those credits and even more. I am everything I have worked so hard to become and I am proud of having gotten this far.
I am in a place where my dreams can come true, where I can grow and become better, where the only thing that limits my greatness is my effort. I need to find a temporary home, one that can help me focus on my growth and that also helps me get the deserved rest I need after a long day of work.
I filled my water bottle and packed some of the remaining cookies to get me through the day before heading out the door in search for my perfect house.
The house flipper
I don't understand how much time it takes some paint to arrive to the place. I've been on this project for months now and my patience is about to end. The numbers are not bad, but I won't make a profit as big as I originally planned.
When I started home flipping, I thought it would be the kind of job I would never grow tired of, there is teamwork and project management, a lot of math and negotiations and creativity. But there comes a moment in all the projects I have taken where I feel as if I reached a plateau. There is not a real improvement and things just seem to take a lot of time to do. I've been in that situation for almost one month now and I need to break free from the situation as soon as possible.
My phone started ringing and David appeared on the screen. I met David during a foreclosure auction a couple of years ago. We both were starting our flipping houses business and were looking for our next project. Neither of us won the bid of that evening but we found something way better: a good business partner.
Ever since we've been working together in multiple projects at a time. We have successfully flipped eleven houses and for the number twelve we want to take bolder chances, incorporate real colour palettes and not just gravy, white and beige neutrals. Turns out that picking the right shade of paint is a real headache.
"There is this colour which is mango smoothie and we also have this colour which is tropical sunset and there is also this colour, which is not in the hues you told me to search for, but still it looks good...it is called spicy peppers....what do you say?"
"I don't understand why everything has such weird names, when I was at school mango was a fruit and yellow was a colour. These millennials are messing everything up."
"You do realize that you fit into the description of a millennial?", David was always making this kind of remarks which were usually laughable when I wasn't this stressed but right now, they weren't doing their trick.
"Yeah, I'm also messing everything up. Guess what, the tiles they send us are all wrong. THEY ARE NOT EVEN THE SAME COLOR. I'm so done with this house."
"Hey Sam, just relax. They are probably worry sick because another client needs those tiles you have, just give them a call and I am sure they will put everything back in order. Besides we are going quite well, the stained concrete is good to go, and the
epoxy countertop is amazing. We are days away from finishing downstairs, we'll be fine."
David has always been the voice of reason. He is way more relaxed than me and he always gets wonderful deals. He is good with words; I am better with actions.
Maybe my not-so-relaxed manner is what helps me get the job done and DIY things perfectly even if it is my first time doing them. Being able to not think about anything else but the technique I'm using, the drilling, the painting it is so peaceful I wouldn't trade it for anything else.
∞∞∞
Finally, the doorbell.
"It took you a sweet time to arrive. You couldn't find the paint where I told you?" I yelled out with the little patience I had left. My arms and neck hurt from painting the ceiling and all I wanted was to get our accent walls done as soon as possible, "the tile's company doesn't answer the calls, could you make your people magic and solve it?" I opened the door but on the other side it wasn't David with my paint supplies. The girl at the door wasn't expecting the upset tone my voice carried and her beautiful hazel eyes shone with fear, I instantly regretted my bad humour when I saw her taking a little step back as I opened the door.