Chapter 12
Allan met Anna for the first time properly, not on the porch, but at the barangay health center, where he’d gone to help Robby haul in supplies for the coastal households and found the waiting area at a controlled simmer of chaos: a toddler mid-meltdown, an elderly man insisting, loudly, that he did not need his blood sugar checked “again,” and a health worker moving through all of it like weather that had learned patience.
She had the toddler settled inside four minutes flat, distracting him with a glove blown up into a makeshift balloon while she checked his temperature, and then, without missing a beat, turned to the elderly man and switched entirely into a different register, patient but immovable.
“Manong Sisoy, kung ayaw mong ipatingnan, sige, ‘wag. But I have to let Tita Ising know that you refused, and she will for sure call you tonight. We both know how that would go.”
The old man grumbled, weighed his options, and held out his hand.
“That,” Robby murmured to Allan, setting down a crate of bottled water, “is Anna. Ver’s fiancée. She’s terrifying. In the best way.”
“She just threatened him with a tita.”
“Works every time,” Robby said. “She’s the only person in this barangay Tita Ising is actually scared of.”
Anna caught them watching a few minutes later, once the waiting room had thinned out, and crossed over, peeling off a glove with the brisk efficiency of someone closing out one task before opening the next.
“You’re the famous Allan,” she said, sizing him up with the frank, assessing look of someone who had long ago lost patience for small talk. “Ver talks about you constantly. I was starting to think you were fictional.”
“I get that a lot, apparently,” Allan said. “Nice to meet you. Officially. Sorry it took three weeks.”
It turned out this had been overdue for a while.
In three weeks home, Allan had somehow still not properly met the woman his brother was marrying, and today, apparently, was the day that changed.
Robby had peeled off after the health center run to help Kapitan with something at the barangay hall, so it was just the two of them.
They ended up on the Reyes porch that afternoon once her shift ended, Anna arriving under the official pretext of a final dress fitting.
She still had the brisk, unhurried energy of someone who’d spent all day making decisions other people were too scared to make.
“Ver said you were busy falling back in love with your childhood crush,” Anna said, completely unfazed by his sputtering. “I told him, leave the boy alone, some things take time.”
“I—I did not fall—we’re not—it’s complicated.”
“It’s really not,” Anna said, cheerfully unhelpful, settling into the porch chair as if she belonged there. “I’ve seen the two of you working on that mural together. The way you look at him when you think he’s not looking? That’s not complicated; that’s a public declaration with a paintbrush.”
Allan gave up arguing and sat down across from her instead, deciding, on instinct, that he liked her.
“How did you two even meet?” he asked. “Ver never actually told me the whole story.”
“Barangay health center. Volunteer nurse from Daraga, and your brother volunteered to help in his company’s disaster relief project.
” Anna said. “There was a typhoon, he came by to deliver relief goods for the senior citizens, and then he waited around until my shift ended, just because he wanted to know my name. He didn’t leave for four hours, helping the volunteers, not that he needed to, but he didn’t want to look too obvious. ”
“That’s disgustingly on brand for this family,” Allan said. “Everyone here falls in love while doing disaster relief work. Is that a requirement?”
“Maybe,” Anna said, laughing. “Small population, small labor pool. Everyone’s already seen everyone else at their worst. Cuts out a lot of the guessing. You and Robby, exhibit A. It starts as work, and then—” she gestured vaguely at the general vicinity of Allan’s whole face “—that.”
“I refuse to comment further.”
“You don’t have to,” Anna pointed out. “It’s on the mural. Enough said.”
They talked for another hour, easy and unforced, Anna asking real questions about Manila, about the mural, about whether Allan planned to stay: questions that felt, unlike the BEBES’ interrogations, genuinely curious rather than gossip-hungry.
“Ver worries about you,” she said eventually, gentler now. “He says you used to always worry about whether you were enough. He wants you to know his family is already complete, no matter what happens to you, no matter what you decide. That’s not something that depends on your title or your salary.”
“You two have clearly been discussing me.”
“All the time,” Anna said, unashamed. “You’re about to be family, closer than before. Only makes sense that I’d know the whole background.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“Get used to it,” Anna shot back. “This is just how this barangay is. No privacy, way too much love. You already know that, right?”
“Jake told me the exact same thing, almost word for word.”
“Because it’s true,” Anna said, shrugging, already standing to go find Ver for the dress fitting she’d technically come here for. “Okay, let’s go. Before Manang Fely spins me around for three hours over one extra inch at the waist.”
She paused at the door, looking back at him with something warmer underneath the teasing.
“I’m glad I finally got to meet you too, Allan,” she said. “The family’s complete now. Tita Cora says that’s all she really ever wanted.”
Allan watched her go, something settling easily into place, one more person, it turned out, who’d been rooting for him long before he’d shown up to notice.