After Beautiful Bastard | ENGLOT

Chapter 13

Engfa's POV

As impossible as it may seem, I was completely bored in that beautiful and huge French countryside. The place didn't require maintenance or cleaning, my internet connection was so slow that I couldn't get into the WMG server to do any work and - perhaps most tragically - I felt I shouldn't be doing things until Charlotte arrived.

It felt wrong to dive into the infinity pool knowing she was stuck in Thailand. I didn't want to wander around the vineyards around the house, because I thought it was something for us to discover together. The housekeeper had set aside a few bottles of wine for us, but only a complete idiot would drink alone. Discovering the rest of the house was also her right. Until then I had only opened the door to a room, where I slept, without wanting to evaluate our options until she arrived. Together, we would decide where to spend our nights.

Of course, if I told her anything about it she would laugh in my face and say I was being dramatic. But that was why I wanted her here. Something monumental had happened to me the other day, when I used the bat-signal, and the sense of urgency had not abated since then - and probably would not abate until she came and listened to what I had to say.

I walked through the gardens, contemplated the sea and checked my phone again, reading Charlotte's most recent message for the hundredth time:

It looks like Air France has a seat available.

She had sent the message three hours ago. Although it looked promising, her previous three messages had been similar, and in the end she was left out of those flights. Even if she had taken off three hours ago, she would not arrive in Marseille until tomorrow morning, at best.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a person appear from behind the house and put a plate of food on the table near the pool. With another look at my cell phone, I had managed to kill more hours and it was finally lunchtime. There was a cook in the house, a woman in her fifties named Dominique, who baked bread every morning and, until now, had served some variations of fish, fresh salad from the garden and figs. The dessert consisted of handmade macaroons or jelly cookies. If Charlotte didn't arrive soon, Dominique would have to roll me over to the door to receive her.

Next to my plate was a glass of wine, and when I looked at Dominique, she stopped at the back door, pointed at the wine and said:

"Le boire. Vous vous ennuyez, et solitaire."

Well, that sucks. I was bored and lonely. A glass of wine would not hurt. I wasn't celebrating, I was just surviving, right? I thanked Dominique for lunch and sat down at the table, trying to ignore the perfect temperature brisana, the sound of the ocean so close, the feeling of the heated floor under my feet. I would not enjoy a single second until Charlotte arrived.

Engfa, you are a pathetic egocentric.

As usual, the fish was unbelievable and the salad with small onions and cubes of white cheese tasted so good that I didn't even notice it when my glass was empty and Dominique was beside me, filling it again. I started to stop it, saying I didn't need any more wine.

"Je vais bien, je n'ai pas besoin de plus."

She winked at me.

"Puis l'ignorer."

So, ignore it.

//

A bottle of wine later and I started to wonder why I hadn't bought a country house in France myself. After all, I had lived in that country before, and although I had not very pleasant memories - I was away from friends and family, with a strenuous work schedule - I had lived there for a time in my life that, in retrospect, seemed so short. I was still young. It was just getting started, actually. Charlotte and I met when we still had our whole lives ahead of us.