Notes of Us

Chapter 1

Fina got up at 04:30 like most mornings to prepare and set up for the day at her cafe. Fina owned a cafe in Madrid with her father Isidro. It was something Fina always wanted to do in honor of her mother Adela who she loved to cook and bake with when she was younger. It was only fitting that the cafe was named after her. Fina and Isidro opened Adela's about 5 years ago and it's become a neighborhood staple at this point. The regulars come for their favorites and the newbies come to try the fun flavors and interesting dishes that Fina and Isidro come up with. The dishes that are Fina's favorites to make are the ones she watched her mother create. Fina lives with two other girls in her flat, Claudia and Carmen. Claudia works with Fina at Adela's and Carmen is an executive assistant and apprentice editor at La Reina Publishing.

Carmen works under Marta De la Reina, the daughter of Damián who owns the publishing house a few blocks over. Damián started the publishing house with his brother-in-law making the publishing house a family run operation. Marta is one of the head editors and board members, and is always at the cafe as are a lot of others that work there as well. It's how she met Carmen actually. Carmen forgot to get some nibbles for an important meeting for an author and ran in one morning right as Fina had opened the shop and begged her to help her out. She really saved Carmen's ass that day and to thank her Carmen took her out for drinks and the rest is history as they say. The three of them; Claudia, Fina, and Carmen became fast friends and are always up to something. Fina knows a lot of the people from the publishing house as they come in all the time and get a lot of orders from her for their meetings, launches, and other events. In fact Fina was actually going in this morning to make sure the last of the prep work was done for the big order that she was doing for a newer editor, Begoña Montes. According to Carmen, she is an old school friend of Marta's and worked for a rival publishing house before she came over to La Reina Publishing. This was a large account and a very popular author too so Fina is handling certain aspects of the order instead of letting her workers handle it. She's gotten to know Begoña a bit through this order and finds her to be a really charming and sweet woman. It's a bit confusing as to why she is such good friends with Marta, who according to Carmen is often cold and distant. She's softened over the last couple years that Carmen has worked for her but is still a tough person to work for at times. She's not like Jesus, the oldest of the De La Reina siblings. He doesn't need a reason to be a dick apparently. Marta is tough but fair and if you catch her on a good day she is actually quite pleasant.

Truth be told Fina has kind of had a crush on Marta a few times. Every time she thinks she's over it, she sees her at the cafe reading or at the office working and it comes back. Fina has never said anything of course. That would be too embarrassing. Fina is an amazing person and anyone would be lucky to be with her, according to Claudia who was really there for her after her break up with Matilde. Fina and Matilde met in business school while Fina was there getting her degree to better run the cafe. Matilde was a great girlfriend and she and Fina became fast friends at school which then turned into a relationship. They were really in love until one day Matilde completely blind sided Fina by telling her that she had accepted a job in Paris and was going to move there in a couple weeks. It was no surprise that Matilde was a fan of Paris and all things French, especially after their trip to Paris a couple years ago. Matilde asked Fina to go with her. Fina had the cafe. Plus her father and all her friends were in Madrid. It wasn't something that could easily be taken care of, nor did she really want to leave. She loved the city and what it had to offer her. Plus her father was never going to move to Paris with her. He was too old and unwilling to move away from his home. Fina was very close to Isidro and especially now that he was her only family left. She couldn't leave him. He was getting up there and she didn't know how much longer she'd have him around for. She and Matilde stayed together until she moved away and tried to do long distance for a couple weeks. Even before Matilde left they both knew that the long distance thing wasn't going to work. Fina is the kind of person that needs a present partner. Fina isn't looking for love or romance these days as she is putting all her focus and energy into the cafe. It's been about 6 months since Matilde left for Paris and Fina threw herself into the business and her friends to cover up her heartbreak. She also works with Isidro most of the week and doesn't want him to worry about her seeing her so heartbroken. It took him a little bit to accept her, but now things are good between them. She treasures that he cares about her happiness in that way and tries to talk to her about the women she's talking to and women she goes on dates with. It's awkward to talk to your parents about that stuff but Isidro is so lovely for trying that she tries to shield him from the bad or upsetting aspects of her love life.