Chapter Three
Dalisay Ramos is a hopeless romantic. When it comes to matters of the heart, she trusts hers with everything she has. Twenty-six years on this earth has taught her that love is the most important thing in the universe. It binds everything together, keeps the world spinning. Without love of family, friends, and neighbors, what else is there? Dalisay is sure that true love is real, and it’s what makes the world worth living in.
The only problem is, she hasn’t had much luck in the love department. Her love life, much like IKEA’s winding showrooms, is a labyrinth—full of twisting turns and distractions along the way.
“How about this one?” Dalisay’s twin Nicole asks, standing in front of yet another bookcase. This one is made of wood—or the fiberboard that passes for wood in this part of the world—but would the black paint match? Dalisay tries to picture it, carefully taking in the furniture with a critical eye.
When they were moving abroad, Dalisay packed up her whole life into a shipping container. In transit, one of her two bookcases had snapped in half, and finding a replacement that matched her old one now feels almost impossible. The styles offered in America are totally different than the ones in the Philippines. Even though she’s the only one who will see it, she cares a lot about the aesthetics of the things around her. She likes organizing her jewelry in neat boxes on her vanity, arranging the books on her shelves by authors’ last names, and sorting her writing into rainbow-colored folders on her computer. Form meets function. Dalisay’s thoughts aren’t so loud when things are aesthetically pleasing. Nicole might call her anal retentive, a neat freak, but what’s so wrong with wanting things to look nice? It makes her happy.
“Hmm,” she says, drumming her fingers on her chin in thought. “Maybe.”
Nicole looks at the name tag and laughs. “I swear, IKEA just smashes keys at this point when naming things.” She looks at Dalisay again, sees the indecision written all over her face, and slaps her hands to her sides and groans. “Oh, come on, Dalisay! It’s just a bookcase! Pick one!”
“I can’t just ‘pick one.’ It has to feel right.”
“I’m going to strangle you.”
Dalisay could remind her that it was her choice to tag along to Emeryville, but Dalisay is more grateful for the company than annoyed, though she wouldn’t share that with Nicole. It comes with the territory of being sisters.
But Nicole doesn’t understand. Nicole’s bookshelf is a rickety one they found in someone’s garbage, Dalisay noted at the time, for a reason. It’s barely holding together. One stiff breeze could knock it over. Dalisay wishes she could be as chill about anything as Nicole is.
“It’s not like you’re making a life-or-death decision,” Nicole says.
“I don’t want to regret it later.”
“It’s. A. Book. Case.” Nicole claps with every syllable. It’s always been this way between the two of them, Dalisay the one to take her time making decisions while Nicole tries to shake some sense into her. Growing up, Nicole was the one to fling herself headfirst into the metaphorical pool that is life, while Dalisay dipped her toe into the shallow end to see if the water was too warm or too cold and then decided to read under a tree if it wasn’t just right.
She’s careful and considerate, personality traits that seem to be a never-ending topic weaponized against her. She’s the good girl, the one who never steps out of line, who does as she’s told. Which is why it was satisfying as hell to reject that American guy on her first day at the new job. She’d meant to tell Nicole earlier, to see if the doctors and nurses at her hospital were as forward as apparently travel writers are.
“So yesterday at work, this hot American dude asked me out,” Dalisay says, as she slides her hand across the smooth wood. “We had literally just met.”
Nicole’s eyes go wide, desperate for a change in subject from IKEA furniture. “And?”
“I told him no.”
Nicole squeezes her eyes closed, making a disappointed sound. “I knew you’d say that.”
“What! I was flattered, sure, but it’s so bold! He put me on the spot.”
“That’s just how Americans are. They see what they want, and they go for it. Did you tell him about the Five Stages?”
“No,” she says, running her hand along the edge of another bookcase. “I didn’t see the need.”
“You should have said something. You can’t keep expecting people to be mind-readers.” Nicole sighs and throws herself onto a nearby couch, with one leg thrown over the back, and the other draped over the armrest, getting a little too comfortable on the model furniture. Dalisay half-expects Nicole to take off her scrubs and sprawl out like it’s movie night, just as she does at home. There’s no way anyone, even a stranger, could confuse the two of them despite being identical.
“What’s this guy’s name?” Nicole asks.
“Why, so you can hunt him down?”
“Maybe.”
Dalisay would pay money to see that happen, even though Nicole is all bark. “Evan Saatchi,” she says, then adds, shrugging, “Besides, I was thinking about the list …”
Nicole bursts into laughter and opens her mouth to start singing.
“Don’t you dare!” Dalisay exclaims, but she’s laughing too.
“Handsome and sweet,” Nicole chants, pumping her hands like a cheerleader with pom-poms. “And he likes to read—”
“Stop!” Dalisay cries, trying and failing to plaster her hand over Nicole’s mouth.
“Modest, respectful, can’t be neglectful—”
Dalisay successfully clamps her hand over Nicole’s lips, silencing her. “I know! I know! Shut up!”
When she was in middle school, Dalisay crafted a list in her journal meticulously detailing the perfect guy she would marry. She hasn’t seen the journal in years; it probably got lost somewhere in the chaos of going to university, then her father’s death, then moving to San Francisco, but Dalisay still knows the first few entries by heart.
The heading on the lined page, detailed in bubbly flowers, read: Dalisay’s True Love List
When she caught her working on it one day, Nicole teased Dalisay relentlessly for it. She even made up that annoyingly catchy song that the whole family ended up singing for years. As they grew older, and Dalisay’s list grew longer, Nicole said that no guy would be able to meet all her criteria, but maybe, Dalisay thought, that was the point. She knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t going to settle for less. That was the hopeless part of being a hopeless romantic. Besides, the one time she didn’t follow her list, she’d had her heart broken. His name was Luke, and they were nineteen and dumb and she thought she was in love. If it hadn’t been for her older brother Daniel, it could have ended a lot worse than it did.
To be fair, though, based on first impressions, Evan didn’t seem at all like the mistake that was Luke. Unlike Luke, Evan has a certain steadiness about him, a kind of gentleness that makes her feel comfortable and quick to laugh, which makes her feel steady too. Luke barely made her laugh, which should have been a red flag from the start.
Just thinking about Evan still makes her heart race. The way he smiled at her, the sound of his voice, the way he simply looked at her … If she were more like Nicole, maybe she wouldn’t have shot him down so quickly, but a little voice in the back of her head—one that sounded a lot like her father’s—reminded her: remember where you come from.
Tradition, for someone like Dalisay, is in her blood. Literally. It’s as important to her as it is to the air she breathes. And the Five Stages is the kind of tradition that Dalisay has always wanted to experience. It reminds her that even though she is separated by time from her ancestors, they took the same journey she will in finding true love. It’s like something out of the epic romances or a fairy tale from her grandmother’s books. All that, plus it’s downright romantic.
That’s how her parents met. Dalisay loved listening to her father tell the story about how he had to win her mother’s heart. It seemed like something out of a fairy tale, straight from the pages Dalisay devoured throughout her childhood. Even when the cancer progressed, and he couldn’t sit up in bed, her father would recount how much he loved her mother. Dalisay wanted that too. She wanted the kind of love that lasted. Even after you were gone.
And when her dad died, it was important for her not to be a burden on her mother. She had to be the older daughter, the example, the responsible and mature one who would be helpful to her family. She’s set in her ways, sometimes to her own detriment, for the sake of everyone else. Her love life had to take a back seat.
Perhaps she is a little picky, but then again, she wants to be sure she won’t make a mistake. Not again.
But now that she’s thinking about it, Evan exceeded that first criteria in her list. He wasn’t just handsome, he was downright hot. But a proper, respectable Filipino girl such as Dalisay should stamp down that warmth in her belly and distract herself by any means necessary.
She lifts her hand from Nicole’s mouth, certain she won’t be singing any more about that dumb list, and says, “I want to look at the flurbagerb again.”
Defeated, Nicole groans in her patented Nicole-is-exhausted-and-done-with-today way as they navigate to another showroom.
“Daisy, Americans don’t know about the Five Stages,” Nicole says, posting up on yet another couch and pulling blankets and pillows around herself to get cozy. People stare at her because she looks like she might just take a nap. Dalisay knows she really might.
“Unless you’re looking to date a Filipino guy, which Mom would be over the moon about, you’re sort of setting everyone up for failure.”
“I don’t want a Filipino guy. I just want … someone who gets it. I want someone who’s serious, who doesn’t want to hook up and leave.” But saying it out loud feels like an excuse.
“You won’t know unless you give them a chance,” Nicole says. “The only way to find out for sure if he’s that kind of guy is to actually, you know, go on a date. Throw that list away and live a little.”
“Is that an American thing?”
“It’s a dating thing. Period.”
“How do you know so much about dating?” Dalisay asks her perpetually single sister, raising a teasing eyebrow.
Nicole slumps back into the couch. Of course Nicole shuts her down, putting on her haughty, know-it-all face. “It’s common sense.”
Dalisay laughs and scrunches up her nose. “You’re right. Enlighten me, dating guru.”
Nicole moves to kick her thigh but misses as Dalisay swings her hips, making her swipe at nothing but air. “Rude! You have a pattern. The moment anyone remotely interesting comes into your life, you find every reason not to go for it.”
“That’s not true!”
“Oh yeah?” Nicole says it like a challenge. “Tell me you don’t always take the safe road, play disinterested because you’ve set your expectations so high that they’re impossible for anyone to achieve, and therefore you prove yourself right by default.”
“I don’t!” It doesn’t even sound convincing to Dalisay’s own ear, but she tries to smile anyway.
“What about that guy at church? The one with the tattoos.”
“He kept calling me sweetheart.”
“Fine, but what about the other one who asked to buy you a chai latte last month?”
“He snapped his fingers at the barista to get her attention. Big turnoff.”
“Okay, yeah, fuck that guy. But you hardly give anyone a chance!”
Nicole’s only half-right. It’s not just that. She’s terrified that if anything goes right in her life, something equally terrible will come soon after. The same week she got the job at Weisure, her dad was diagnosed with cancer. It’s a flawed way of thinking, Dalisay knows, but she can’t help it. Everything comes in pairs: one good thing happens, and a bad thing is just waiting around the corner. When her father died, it was a stark reminder that good things were temporary. There are a lot of reasons why she’s been single all these years.
Their parents were adamant that none of them were to start dating unless they had gotten a college degree. Even though all three Ramos children—Dalisay, Nicole, and their older brother Daniel—have long since received their diplomas, none of them has dated much. But this lecture is rich coming from Nicole. She never showed any interest in anyone in Manila. She comes off as a little intense, perhaps too intense, for prospective suitors. Her wicked sense of humor and cleverness sometimes turn people off. Dalisay and Nicole are total opposites when it comes to personality, but they talk about everything. Maybe it’s a twin thing, maybe just a sister thing, maybe both, but Nicole always calls her out on her bullshit, whether Dalisay is ready to hear it or not.
“Who knows, if I keep my list, maybe I could find the perfect guy,” Dalisay says.
Nicole snorts in doubt. “Perfect guy. Yeah, right. No one is perfect.”
Dalisay doubts that. There must be someone in this world who is perfect, at least perfect for her. She just has to find him.
When she first laid eyes on Evan, she felt something shift, thrum, vibrate inside herself, like someone had rung a bell behind her chest. Those dark curls, the line of his nose, the way shadows played on the grooves of his pale neck … She digs her fingernails into the crook of her elbow and takes a shuddering breath to ground herself. While, yes, she can admit she finds Evan attractive, she has to keep it together. She’s worked too hard for this new job to throw it all away for some guy. They work together for crying out loud.
“I’m in no rush to date,” Dalisay says. “When I find the one, I’ll know.”
But Nicole isn’t listening. She’s staring up at the ceiling, one hand tucked behind her head, her gaze distant.
Dalisay nudges her, snapping Nicole out of her daze. “What?”
“I’m serious,” Dalisay says. “I don’t want to get hurt.”
Falling in love with the wrong person hurts, but falling in love with the right person and then losing them will hurt more. She wants to be careful because it’s the only thing she can control. A heart is a fragile thing to play with, so why is being careful with it such a bad thing?
“Right. I know,” says Nicole. “But that’s part of life.” That’s as good as Dalisay’s going to get.
But Dalisay squints at her. Something’s off. It’s not simply exhaustion from a long day at the hospital—there’s something else dragging the corners of her sister’s lips down, making her eyelids heavy, slumping her shoulders. Nicole is staring at the ceiling again.
“What’s wrong?” Dalisay asks.
Nicole sits up and says, “Nothing,” before abruptly getting up. “I’m going to get some Swedish meatballs. Come get me when you finally make up your mind!”
Nicole disappears, leaving Dalisay standing alone in a mock living room.
Dalisay keeps looking at the flurba-whatever bookcase, and the longer she looks at it, the more she realizes that maybe yes, it could work, that even if the shade of stain on the wood is a skosh too light and the height is too tall, it would suit the rest of the decor in her bedroom nicely.
Okay, maybe Nicole has an iota of a point. Dalisay is her own worst enemy. She really does play it safe with life in general. It’s called a comfort zone for a reason! It’s safe, secure, home. No one actually wants to be in a discomfort zone. But she has to admit, she might be playing it too safe.
Honestly, what’s the worst that could have happened if she’d let Evan take her out for coffee? A lot, actually, now that she thinks about it—
She rolls her eyes at herself and has to physically shake the thought out of her head. This is what she always does: catastrophizes, makes mountains out of mole hills, finds every excuse not to do something. And all this time, according to Nicole, it’s been holding her back. She’s never put herself out there for fear of disappointing her family, or making them ashamed of her, or calling forth the wrath of the universe. And maybe that’s her problem.
Maybe it’s not too late to change all that. She could prove to Nicole—no, prove to herself—that she’s not stuck in her comfort zone, that she’s not afraid of life.
It’s not too late for second chances.
The next day, as thanks for dragging Nicole through IKEA, the kindest, most sisterly thing Dalisay can think to do is surprise her with some comforts of home that she got at Unimart: a couple sticks of karioka, sea salt and vinegar Pik-Niks, and a ride home after her shift.
With the bribes ready, Dalisay sits in her car across the street from the main entrance to Kaiser Permanente, her hands tight on the steering wheel. After all this time, being near hospitals still sets her muscles on edge, like she needs to run somewhere far away from here.
A pit hollows out in her stomach. It’s times like these, when she’s by herself with only her spiraling thoughts for company, that she starts to feel like she’s really, truly alone. She starts sorting the loose change in the cup holder to distract herself, but it only marginally helps.
She misses Manila. Mostly for what was left behind. Or rather, who. Life wasn’t the same after her dad died. But she was born and raised in Manila. It’s her home. She grew up writing her first stories in artista notebooks with her celebrity crushes’ faces on the covers, playing patintero in the street with her neighbors until the streetlights flickered on and they were all called home for dinner, or walking with Nicole to get ice cream with sprinkles after school. The food, the TV, the smells, the clothes—all of it they left behind.
Dalisay was the one person in the family who didn’t want to move in the first place.
When her older brother Daniel secured a spot at Stanford for his doctorate, her mom said it would be a wise move for everyone to go too, that it was a good opportunity for change. Everyone would stick together, including their grandmother on their father’s side. Lola is almost ninety and leaving her alone in the Philippines was out of the question. Despite not being blood related, their mom insisted. “Family stays together,” she said. They would all take care of her, just like she cared for her son. No one disagreed.
Her father had only been dead for three months but packing up the house and moving to America without him felt wrong, like they were abandoning him somehow. He used to tell them America was a land of opportunity, that it was a place they could thrive. But how could any of them thrive without him?
Dalisay had been terrified. She would have to start her whole life over. What if she didn’t make any friends? What if she couldn’t find a job? What if she hated it? But she never told her mom about her anxiety. It took them a whole year to organize, and in all that time, she never spoke up about it once. It’s Dalisay’s weakness; she would rather die than be a burden to someone else.
The only person she told was Nicole, who of course kept it a secret, but assured her that so long as they were together, they could get through anything.
Six months on and that promise still holds up. Dalisay knows she’s scared of change, but she couldn’t have gotten through it if it wasn’t for Nicole. While Dalisay may be choosy with who she loves romantically, she’s not choosy when it comes to family. She would do anything for them.
Across the street, the sliding glass doors of the hospital open and Dalisay spots Nicole. She’s about to honk the horn to get her attention when she notices Nicole is holding hands with someone. Not just someone—a woman.
Dalisay doesn’t recognize her. She’s tall, with curls of auburn hair, and she wears scrubs just like Nicole. They look like they’re taking a stroll through the park, laughing and smiling, and it takes Dalisay a second to realize that Nicole hasn’t looked this happy in years. She’s practically glowing.
Like dancers at a ball, Nicole pulls the woman toward her, smiling slyly, and swoops her in for a kiss.
It’s like something out of a movie, and all Dalisay can do is watch, shocked.
They pull apart, smiling and looking deeply into each other’s eyes before going their separate ways, glancing back at each other one last time.
It appears that love has found one of the perpetually single sisters after all.