Breakfast With Charming Read online

  "Budget? Maybe 1800, I could go even to 2000 but I really wouldn't like to get to that point because it would wreck my travelling funds, do you know a place available?" Seriously, if this works then the spa was the greatest idea ever.

  "Darling, I'm a realtor. And you know what, I know a lot of nice apartments in that price range. I have some pictures on my phone, how about we go furniture hunting after this and you can move in next week! I'll have the contracts ready for Monday," the woman took her cell phone out of her purse and gave it to me to watch all the different places she had to offer.

  "I would really like that, but the thing is that I don't have a furniture budget, I was thinking of renting a living-ready place." Not even eating canned tuna everyday could I afford to rent a place with no furniture and buy furniture for it. Besides, what would I do with all the furniture after my internship ends?

  "Right now, I am starting the staging process of some houses, I could talk to the owners and I bet they would be thrilled by the idea."

  "I am sorry, but I don't really know what that is," I thought that I could have just gotten out of the horrible house-looking process, but I think that is not going to happen yet.

  "Well, as a realtor I look for things that would look nice for my client’s empty houses. The clients want to sell the house but to do the open houses we need them to look good so we fill them with furniture; beds, mirrors, table, kitchen appliances...everything to make the visitors imagine how could the place look once they buy it. So, if you want, I could make some calls and ask around if they would accept someone to live in the place during the staging process. You would have to be super clean and leave everything ready for visitors, and I'll make sure your budget is respected."

  "Wow! You are an angel! I would adore that, and I could help you getting the place visitors-ready," I am so glad right now, after yesterday's horrible house visiting experiences, I am ready to be done with the whole process.

  "Then it is done, I'll text my clients to see who is interested and we'll go furniture hunting after this."

  ∞∞∞

  After enjoying our massage session, Marilyn, the ginger hair woman, drove us to a place where you could borrow furniture instead of buying it, we started talking about palettes and distribution and angles and everything was heaven like until I saw the wall-hitter.

  "Don't be super obvious, but the guy who is crossing the door is super intense. I met him yesterday and he made a fuss about nothing, like literally punched a wall."

  When Marilyn turned to see him, she energetically waved to say hello, even if I wasn't looking, I knew he was approaching, and the worse is that the smell of his cologne really make me want to turn around.

  "Good afternoon ladies, are we staging a new place Mary?" I looked at him and his eyebrows fired up in recognition. I could feel my cheeks getting hot and I knew for a fact that I was blushing.

  "Becky this is Samuel, we've worked together for a long time now, he is a genius with his hands, Sam this is Rebecca, we met earlier today and I think I ship you guys, you would really look cute together," Samuel extended his hand to shake mine and act as if we hadn't yelled at each other last evening. His hand felt strong and his calloused palm matched his raspy voice.

  "It is always lovely to meet your friends; I would love to take you out. How do you feel about getting something to eat later, girls?" Is he for real? I can't believe he is going to act as if something could ever happen between us.

  "What a wonderful idea Sam! We would love to, how about we help you choosing whatever you are looking for to finish faster?" Marilyn had agreed to eating out together and since she was already making me such an enormous favour, I realized it would be really unpolite from me to leave them on their own.

  We choose our furniture and then his furniture and left. The guy look way better without paint all over his body, he wore shorts and flip-flops which gave him a really laid-back-kind-of-guy vibe, he wore aviator sunglasses and a sport watch, his dirty blonde hair was mindlessly combed back and every move he made make something in his body to tense up and make the muscles behind the movement visible.

  This was going to be a long meal.

  ∞∞∞

  "Ladies first," he said when the waiter came to our place to take our orders, and it wasn't only then, during the whole meal he acted like a real gentleman. He asked about how we had met, and Marilyn happily filled him with all the details, when I returned the question I was taken aback by the answer.

  "We met in a support group for widows, when I met him, he wasn't even working as a house flipper...what were you doing?"

  "Architecture, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoy house flipping. At the beginning I loved it, but then it started losing the magic. Maybe one day I'll try to do it again." He said it with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes and I knew that instant that he loved architecture until he became a widow. When I looked in his eyes, I could feel the pain he tried to hide every day and I understood that maybe, all the yelling wasn't because of a violence management problem. Somebody needed to take the thorn out of this lion's harmless paw because the only problem was that he was hurting.

  "It was really hard for us to open up and tell about our partners’ deaths, but when we did it, we all felt so relieved. Of course, not everyone got to that point at the same time, but now we all are good friends. When the Lord decided to take Michael with him, I was wrecked, I was on my eighth month of pregnancy and about to burst with the twins and after his death I started losing a lot of weight. My family was worried sick about me, and I fainted all the time, I was in so bad; the doctor had to perform an emergency C-section because otherwise I would have lost my babies. I promised myself I would be the best mother of the world to honour Michael's memory, but I lost myself. The group really helped all of us to understand that coping with death wasn't trying to block the pain it caused with more activities. Drowning with work was only postponing the inevitable," Marilyn's eyes became crystal clear and although she looked serene, the sadness in the atmosphere was breathable.

  "You know guys, if you hadn't told me about all of this, I would have never imagined you were in this situation. You are really strong people and you'll find a way out of the tunnel," I said from the bottom of my heart.

  I can't even start to imagine how hard it was for them to build another version of themselves after everything they knew as life collapsed around them. If just trying to live away from Brandon is going to be a real challenge for me, I don't know how they did it to live without their spouses.

  "Thank you for your kind words, but we found the way through the tunnel. The answer is always God, the question doesn't really matter," Sam squeezed Marilyn's hand while she wiped the tears that threaten to leave the corner of her eyes.

  Our food arrived and with it, new topics of conversation, although my mind couldn’t come back from imagining Samuel married. He couldn’t be much older than me and yet he had already lived through something most people don’t experience until they double our age.

  How could it be to know that you were still young enough to do whatever you wanted with your life, yet not having the energy nor the drive to do it because of a broken spirit? Marilyn still wore her wedding ring as a necklace pendant but Samuel wore no clue of having gone through something like that, he looked just like any other man.

  Fundraising

  After an energetic jog at the gym, I took a quick shower before heading to church. Today we were going to have a quick meeting about fundraising for Justin’s operation.

  Justin has always been a sweet kid and the moment her father told us about the leukaemia treatment we knew we had to do something for him. The Junior Youth Group was worried about their friend who stopped going to our weekly activities. Death is a topic a lot of the children in the group had never been exposed to, but they wanted answers.

  I’ve always thought that children are much more intelligent that adults, their creative senses are still accessible and for them anything is p
ossible. Being with kids is what helps this adults meetings go as smoothly as they go. The ideas we expose aren’t our own, they are just ideas we borrowed from the little ones while using better wording. The kids were willing to help us fundraising.

  "How about we do a big party for child's day? At the children group they thought about making a fundraiser, maybe not with that word. It could certainly be a good way to get funds and we don't have to spend a lot of money. The church has a big trampoline and if we ask around, I bet we could find volunteers for activities. What do you think?”

  “I'm in! I could bake a couple of cheesecakes and whatever gets sold, goes straight for our cause,” said Marilyn which encouraged other people to bake cookies, muffins and cakes.

  Marilyn is one of the sweetest women I've ever met and since the death of Michael, her husband, she has taken an important role as a leader of our congregation. She somehow has managed to raise good boys while being a single mother, taking care of the church choir direction and being a successful real estate agent.

  “I know a guy who rents games for children parties, I could call him and ask for a favour,” added Shawn, one of our most recent members. The guy is one of the friendliest men I’ve ever known, and I am pretty sure he has the biggest crush on Marilyn something she should have noticed by now because he is as obvious as one can be, but she is probably ignoring it to avoid making the choir meetings so uncomfortable, one of the disadvantages of being a small choir is that if one of us is missing, it is the most easy thing to notice.

  “You would be our hero, if you manage to do it please tell us as soon as you can to know we don’t have to take care of that, please.” Marilyn said as casually flipping her red hair back, something only a woman like her could pull off without sounding manipulative.

  The rest of the team promised to get tables, chairs, a karaoke machine, someone was going to face paint the kids for free and a local band was going to play in exchange of publicity. The party was due to next weekend, and the Juniors wanted to collaborate with a card writing stand, a sandwich stand and a lemonade stand. Everyone was going to put a little bit of their hearts in the party and the money was going straight to the hospital to help Justin dad during this time of trouble.

  ∞∞∞

  “Hey buddy! What's going on here? Why aren't you in the trampoline with you friends?” I squatted to be the size of Elijah and looked at him trying to assess the situation, what was he going to do? Body language is the best thing you can learn if you spend as much time with children as I do. Elijah stopped crying and threw himself to my arms.

  “It will be fine buddy, don't worry. Is there anything I can do to help you? Do you want me to find your mom or maybe a piece of cake? Just say it and it's yours.”

  “I scratched my knee and it hurts but then I thought about Justin and I am sad because he hurts more. I will try to be happy for him,” Elijah wiped his tears and went back to running around the place with his friends.

  “That is one of the sweetest things I've heard. He is so little and somehow understood his feelings and solved the problem by himself! Such a smart little boy” said Rebecca, Marilyn’s guest of honour.

  When we first met, I found her so annoying I ended up punching a wall, but something about her started to feel much more authentic than before and I started noticing that I was glad to see her again. Usually I am not that good with adults, I am way better communicating with children and feeling empathetic with them than with grown ups but there was something about this woman that simply was different. She somehow made me feel the way that Janeth did. She brought with her peace but also a taste of adventure and unknown possibilities.

  “Yes, Elijah is an amazing boy. They all are. We have been discussing Justin situation in the Junior group and they were the ones who came with this idea. Originally their idea was to have a 'lemonade stands fair' but they realized that if everyone sold lemonade it wouldn't be so fun. We evolved to 'lemonade and sandwiches stands fair' and the boys were thrilled about helping. I would like my children to be like them.”

  “I didn't know you had kids. How old are your little ones?” she was so excited about knowing more about my children that I wondered if she would ever like to have kids of her own.

  “No, I don't. I meant in a couple of years, maybe. What about you? Do you have children?”

  “I've never been too attracted to the idea of having children, it is kind of a problem in my relationship. I would like to adopt one day; you give a lonely kid the chance to have a new life, I don’t know.”

  One of the things I’ve learned the hard way is that when someone says ‘I don’t know’ after giving an opinion of an important topic they are just protecting themselves from being teased by others. They do know what they want, they are just afraid of what other people could think about them.

  "That is a sweet way of seeing adoption. I think having children can include adopting; family is more than blood and DNA. So, what is it your husband doesn’t like about adopting? There are people that have seen way to many horror films and are sure that if they adopt their foster kid will end up killing them in their sleep. Is that the case?”

  “Well I am not married, but I don’t think Brandon believes he will get murdered if he adopts. He just doesn’t like the idea that much. Lately it has been more complicated than usually, we were used to be together all the time and now all we have is our phones. I really miss him. Long distance relationships are harder than I thought they were.”

  “How long have you been apart? There are people who are worth the wait, I bet you are one of those,” she was already watching her feet instead of anything else at the party and I started being afraid of having hit a delicate spot with the conversation. Maybe this was too personal, and we still didn’t know each other that well. Where was Marilyn to save me from this? If she starts crying it isn’t likely things will go as well as they did with Elijah.

  “Almost two weeks now. Since I got the summer internship we’ve been apart.”

  “That is almost no time! I thought you had been in this position for years now. I would have never let you go. Why he didn't come with you? A summer of discovering Canada together and all of that…”

  “He just likes too much the place where we live. He is not the kind of man who likes impromptu changes.”

  “Well, that is sad. He'll never get to taste Marilyn's cheesecakes. Fancy a sandwich? My treat.”

  ∞∞∞

  Chef Georgia, what do you have today in the menu? We would like to eat a sandwich and a delicious lemonade, what are our options?

  “Welcome to our restaurant teacher Sam. Today we have PB&J sandwiches, Nutella sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches, and chicken salad sandwiches. All of them can be taken with strawberry lemonade or the more common lemon lemonade.”

  “Well, that sounds delicious. I would like to have a grilled cheese sandwich with the classic lemon lemonade. And for the lady...”

  “I would like to have a chicken salad sandwich and a strawberry lemonade please, Chef.”

  “Very well then, here is your dish teacher and here is your girlfriend's dish. I hope you enjoy.”

  “She is not my girlfriend Georgia; she is a new member of our congregation.” The kids of the group were always trying to get me to go out with whoever single woman they met. They’ve matched me even with girls who have just finished high school. I understand the sweet intention behind their acts but usually the other party doesn’t and things end up being really messy.

  “Oh, I'm so sorry Miss. I should have asked. I have a question for you. Do you know about God and Jesus and Mother Mary?” Georgia asked with a suspiciously conspirator tone in her voice.

  “I know a little about them, what about you, Georgia?”

  “I know what teacher Sam tells us, but we used to learn more before. We had two teachers and now we only have Sam. Would you like to be our second teacher?” So that was it, Georgia is always thinking a step ahead of me and if the girl she has just m
et is not my girlfriend now, she thinks that this will make her change her mind. But it could really be helpful to have someone else for the Junior group so I followed Georgia idea.

  “It isn't a bad idea. I have most of the activities already planned but it would be helpful to have someone help me supervising and helping the kids when needed. What do you say?”

  “I don't know Sam; I have just moved in here and there are so many things I must do. I must decorate my new place, get curtains...I don't have a lot of time right now.”

  “Then it is a good thing that I know where to buy curtains at sale, besides this is just a one-hour commitment on Thursdays. Say yes, one Thursday, if you don't like it, I'll buy you another sandwich.” I kneeled next to Georgia and started saying with her "please, please, please" trying to use the puppy-eyes that the children had so many times applied to me.