Chapter Six
In the middle of the pantry aisle at Cal-Mart, Dalisay stares at the canister of table salt in her hand, her mind firmly back in that kitchen at Overnight. She can’t stop thinking about seeing Evan in that soaked shirt.
She knew something had happened from the way Maggie hurried into the kitchen in a panic, grabbing all the paper towels before leaving again, but Dalisay didn’t quite know the … extent of it, not until Evan walked in looking like Mr. Darcy climbing out of that lake. A coffee-filled lake, for the purposes of this scenario. The way Evan’s wet button-down clung to his body was hardly better than if he were naked. She could see everything. How solid his pecs are, how narrow his waist is compared to his shoulders; she could even count his abs.
It left nothing to the imagination.
But he looked so embarrassed, and she feels like a creep for having stared for so long, even if it was only for a second. If their roles were reversed, she would have been mortified.
She almost doesn’t hear Nicole as she rides up on the grocery cart, braking hard with her sneaker to come to a stop right next to her.
“Dalisay? Hello? Did you hear me?” asks Nicole.
Dalisay starts. “What?”
“I asked if you knew where Mama is.”
“Oh, um, deli, I think?” Dalisay puts the salt in the cart.
“You okay?” Nicole peers at Dalisay with a skeptical eye.
“Yep!” Dalisay grabs the front of the cart while Nicole balances on the back, riding it as usual. Dalisay’s determined not to let the sight of Evan’s perfectly adequate torso become a core memory, but sheer willpower alone doesn’t seem like it’s enough to erase it. She can’t stop thinking about him.
After she got home from work, she decided to join Nicole and their mom to buy all the ingredients for Lola’s famous oxtail soup, kare kare, that she’s making this weekend.
Cal-Mart is like most American grocery stores, sprawling with wide aisles and bright displays. The first time Dalisay set foot in one, she was shocked by how big it was. If deciding between two bookcases in IKEA wasn’t frustrating enough, the overwhelming array of choices between six different brands selling the same tomatoes, or cheese, or milk was almost paralyzing at first. She got used to it, of course, but she wasn’t expecting culture shock at a grocery store for God’s sake.
“So how’s it going with you and Big Brown Eyes?” Nicole asks, stopping the cart at the tower of mangos. She squeezes one and holds it up to her nose. “He pass step two?”
Dalisay blushes. “Evan?” How is it she can get so flustered even saying his name?
“Who else?” Nicole tosses a couple mangos into the cart and moves on to the cartons of strawberries. Ever since Nicole met Evan that day at the birthday party, she’s been teasing Dalisay about how so her type Evan is, despite Dalisay’s protests that it isn’t like that at all, that it’s all for a bet.
“Stage two was sort of a dud. The first day he gave me balloons—”
Nicole barks out a laugh.
“He ended the week strong, though. He got me a candle that smelled like books.” She didn’t mention the note he’d written. It’s still in her purse.
“So is he moving on to stage three?”
Dalisay idly organizes the disheveled rows of blueberry cartons, giving her hands something to do. “I don’t know.”
“What’s there not to know about? I’m starting to think you’re chickening out …”
“I am not!”
“Well then, don’t you think you’re being a little unfair? He went through stage two. I think that means he passed.”
Dalisay narrows her eyes. “You just want to hear what he does for stage three.”
A devilish smile spreads across Nicole’s lips. “Maybe I do. I want to see how he does. I like him.”
That, coming from Nicole, is a lot.
Dalisay smiles and puts some blueberries into the cart, and they make their way toward the back of the store. “I’m going to check on Mom,” Dalisay says, and Nicole splits off to keep shopping.
When Dalisay gets to the deli, she watches helplessly as her mom cuts in front of a man already standing there, his arms folded firmly across his chest.
Dalisay rushes over and puts a hand on her elbow. “Mom, you can’t cut here.”
Her mom looks around like it just occurred to her what she did. “Oh! Well, then.” She turns back and continues ordering from the person behind the deli counter.
Heat rushes up Dalisay’s cheeks as she apologizes to the man for her. “I’m sorry. She’ll be quick.”
The man glares at her, obviously miffed, and Dalisay can only give him an apologetic smile.
As if disproving Dalisay’s point, her mother whips out a piece of paper and peers through the glasses perched on the end of her nose at the long list of sliced meats and cheese. Thankfully, another person appears behind the counter to help the man. When her mom is finally done, Dalisay steers her away from there before she can cause any more social slights. In Manila, it was common for older women to cut the line. Old habits die hard. “I’m sure he didn’t mind. Besides,” she says, and gestures with her wrist in a cast, “I should go first because I’m injured.”
Last week, her mom tripped and fell on an uneven patch of sidewalk while taking a walk around the block and fractured her wrist. Yet another cultural shock coming to America—after the hospital visit, getting the bill later was a real blow. It cost thousands of dollars, even with insurance. Everything in America is so much capital-M More.
It’s no use arguing with her mother, especially about something as trivial as line etiquette, so Dalisay takes the deli items from her mom’s hands, and they meet up with Nicole again in the cereal aisle. Nicole is checking her phone and smiling and only notices them coming when they’re a few feet away.
“Who are you texting?” Dalisay asks as she puts the items in the cart, but Nicole slips her phone back into her jeans.
“No one. Just work.”
Nicole’s cheeks are pink, and her eyes are bright, so Dalisay is pretty sure it’s not “just work” but she says nothing.
Together, they follow their mom through the rest of the store, but someone catches her eye, making Dalisay’s heart leap before she does a double take. Evan.
Except, no. He has the same dark hair, the same broad shoulders, but it’s not him. Dalisay’s heart sinks a little as she watches the stranger, who actually doesn’t look like Evan at all, pick up a giant pack of toilet paper and head to the front registers.
This isn’t the first time she’s thought she spotted Evan outside of work, and every time it happens it feels like her heart is going to leap out of her chest. Last week, it was when she was at Pinky’s game store.
She’s not sure why, but the idea of seeing him out in the wild, as it were, feels like a secret she needs to keep from her mom. If her mom found out Evan was doing the stages for a bet, and not with any intention of actually dating, she would throw a fit. It’s the kind of cultural ritual that is supposed to be sacred, not something to play around with. Dalisay knows more than most that playing with hearts is a dangerous game, and she also knows that it’s hypocritical of her to treat the Five Stages so carelessly, but what she and Evan have isn’t real, so it can’t count.
And yet, she’d be kidding herself if she wasn’t a little disappointed that she didn’t see Evan just now. She can’t seem to get him out of her mind.
While the truth might upset her mother, she wonders if her father would have felt the same way. He was always the more playful one of her parents, the one who saw humor in life, who would have been curious to see if a guy like Evan would even try, for the fun of it. She can almost hear his laugh if he were still here, and—with a jolt—she wishes he could have been around to meet Evan. What would he have thought about him? Would he have liked that Evan is smart? That he’s not going back on his word? That he makes her laugh?
“You never answered my question earlier,” Nicole says, stealing the cart back while Dalisay isn’t paying attention. “About if he’s going to move on to stage three.”
Dalisay considers it a moment, then she pulls out her phone.
Unknown Number:
Congratulations, Mr. Saatchi. You’re moving on to stage three. ;)
Me:
Dalisay?
Unknown Number:
Bingo.
Me:
Who gave you my number?
Dalisay Ramos:
I have my ways. Mwah-ha-ha. >:)
Me:
Never took you for the type to still use … what are these called? (It was Pinky, wasn’t it.)
Dalisay Ramos:
Emoticons, duh. It’s a superior art form. You wouldn’t understand. (Yes.) Coffee stain come out?
Me:
All clear. What’s stage three theme
Me:
then*?
Dalisay Ramos:
And ruin the surprise?
Me:
I’m quaking in my boots.
Dalisay Ramos:
0:-3
Me:
Is that an angel face?
Dalisay Ramos :
hehe ;3
Me:
:-p
Evan’s heart hammers in his throat as he stares at the tongue-sticking-out emoticon before hitting send. Is that coming off flirty? He deletes it and opts for a safer exaggerated frown face. :-c
But in his haste, he hits the “x” instead and on autopilot his thumb hits send.
Me:
:-x
He stares in terror as an accidental kissy face text stares back at him. This is ten times worse.
Three dots appear next to Dalisay’s name, then disappear. They don’t appear again after another second. What is she thinking? Did she just assume—?
“Shit.” Evan starts typing again, heart hammering, making the edit.
Me:
:-c*
Dalisay Ramos :
See, this is why you have so many spelling errors. :-p
At The Basement for D that means it’s tapsilog for breakfast, and she can already smell the garlic fried rice. That snaps her back to reality.
She checks her phone. There’s a missed text from Pinky last night, something about a girls’ day, but Dalisay is too wound up to pay attention to the details. She can still feel Evan’s breath on her neck, and she stands up so abruptly that, if he were actually here, she would have smashed his nose.
In the shower, she lets the hot water pour over her face and forces herself to take deep, calming breaths, but the thought of him follows her. What would Evan’s hands feel like for real? The stubble on his cheeks? The softness of his lips?
“It doesn’t mean anything!”
She must have said that out loud, though, because Nicole bangs on the door. “What?”
“Nothing!” Dalisay calls back, sputtering on shower water.
“Hurry up! Breakfast’s getting cold!”
Dalisay sighs and drowns herself in the shower once more. There’s only one way she can snap out of this.
She wrenches the shower knob to the right and the instant change from hot to freezing cold water makes her yelp, and she forgets all about Evan Saatchi.
The next day, Evan meets up with JM at a dance studio owned by their old college friend Yoon-gi in Central Market. JM texted everyone he knew who might have space for them to practice, and Yoon-gi delivered. His studio, Dance on Main, specializes in teaching K-pop dance classes for all ages, and he has some rehearsal rooms with huge mirrors and sound systems.
When Yoon-gi was young, his parents enrolled him in a K-pop trainee boot camp in Seoul where he learned everything from dancing, to singing, to speaking Korean. While their dreams of him becoming a star were short-lived, Yoon-gi was easily the best performer in their undergraduate class, showcasing his own choreography at every talent show and parents’ weekend. After he graduated with a BS in business admin, he opened his own studio, and while they still live in the same city, Evan hasn’t seen him since they walked across the stage at graduation.
But the second JM and Evan walk in the door, Yoon-gi rushes for Evan and drapes an arm across his shoulders, guiding him through the lobby toward the dance rooms as if no time’s passed at all. “Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in!”
Yoon-gi is a slender, Korean American man with a flop of shining black hair and a face that kind of reminds Evan of a fox with sharp eyes and a sly smile.
“JM told me everything! Who’s the lucky guy or gal?” Yoon-gi says, teeth sparkling as he smiles.
Who doesn’t know at this point? Evan thinks and smiles. “It’s not that serious.”
“Not that serious? You’re doing the Five Stages! That’s serious!”
“It’s a bet,” says JM.
Yoon-gi swivels his head to look at him. “A bet! No one goes this far for a bet.” Not everyone is as serious a bettor as Evan. “Whatever you need, my friend, I am at your disposal. You just owe me dinner. A big dinner. Lobster.”
JM shoulders his duffel bag. “Two lobsters, even.”
Yoon-gi points a knowing finger at JM, then wraps his arm around him next, barraging him with questions about Pinky and what he’s been up to, while Yoon-gi leads them to one of the dance rooms. Upon entering, Evan feels out of place in his basketball shorts and T-shirt. A crowd of slender, fit dancers are finishing up practicing in front of a large mirror, their sneakers thumping on the polished wooden floor in sync to a bass-heavy K-pop song. They’re all women in their thirties of all ethnicities and they move with confidence and strength. He knows just by looking at them that they’ve been dancing for years.
The song ends and everyone claps and cheers for a job well done.
A dark-skinned Asian woman at the front pauses the music from the speakers. She seems like the instructor for the group as she turns around and addresses them all. “Good work, ladies! Excellent job! Same time next week. Don’t forget to stretch and hydrate.” When the group moves to gather their things, she looks over at the three of them. To Yoon-gi she asks, “Need the room?”
“Take your time, Mari. My friend here is going to be practicing a song to woo the love of his life,” says Yoon-gi, gesturing to Evan.
Evan refrains from snorting incredulously. No one seems to understand.
While the group packs up and Yoon-gi and JM set up the audio system, Mari says to Evan, “You look nervous.”
Evan tilts his head, casually. “What makes you say that?”
Mari smiles with tight lips and scans him. “Let me guess—The Serenade.”
“How’d you know?”
“My boyfriend did it for me way back in the day. He had that same look. Deer in headlights.”
Evan’s smile gives him away, but he lets out a breathy laugh. “It’s not what you think.”
“No?” she says, grinning. “You wouldn’t be so nervous if you didn’t care.”
Evan’s about to protest, but music blares from the speakers, and Yoon-gi and JM scramble to turn it down. The shock of it sets Evan off kilter, and he struggles to find the right way to explain why he’s here, but it gets scrambled on the way from his brain to his mouth.
Yes, he’s still drawn to Dalisay, but it’s not like he’s in love with her.
But Mari just smiles at him knowingly, like she’s already got him figured out. Before she leaves, she says, “An old stage trick to get over your nerves is to imagine that your audience is naked. It helps. Especially when your audience is a gorgeous girl of your dreams.” She winks at him and exchanges a few words with Yoon-gi before she too leaves, giving them the entire space to practice and leaving Evan feeling exposed.
He can’t help it. Dalisay, naked, pops into his mind. How smooth her skin would feel, how good she would smell when he presses his nose against the slope of her neck, how soft her breasts would be in his palms—
The song starts up again, this time much quieter, and it snaps Evan back into himself. He can’t help that he’s physically attracted to her, but fantasizing about Dalisay won’t do him any good. Mari is wrong. She doesn’t know the situation at all. Dalisay isn’t interested in him. He can’t let his own feelings get in the way.
He forces himself to think of anything else that can redirect the blood flow back into the rest of his body. Basketball. Airplane tray tables. How they make stop signs.
“What song are we doing?” Evan asks a little too loudly.
“ ‘Maharani’ by Alamat,” says JM. “They’re a Filipino boy band.”
“Ooh,” says Yoon-gi as he stretches his hamstrings and rolls out his shoulders. “I don’t know that one. Now it’ll be three lobsters.”
“You’re doing it with us?” asks Evan hopefully.
“Look, I’ve got the voice of an angel, but I’m only here for backup. We gotta make it a good show. You’re the face of the group.”
“We’ll take it slow,” says JM. “The choreography is basic, but there’s a lot of moving parts.”
JM shows them what to do, reminding Evan that he is going to have to learn the dance as well as the Tagalog lyrics. It’s as hard as it sounds, but Evan will try his best. He’s in too deep to give up without a fight.
The sky is starting to darken, but it doesn’t close the farmers market on Fulton, just around the corner from the Asian Art Museum. Dalisay and Pinky slowly make their way down rows of white tents, taking in the sights and smells. It was Pinky’s idea for the two of them to grab something to eat before heading inside, and it seems like everyone else has had the same idea since the market is bustling with crowds of people carrying tote bags full of produce. The smell of fresh-baked bread settles nicely in the afternoon air and reminds Dalisay of going to palengke, the public markets in Manila, with her grandmother, Lola, where she would pick the firmest fruit and help carry bags of fish home for dinner. The only difference is that here in San Francisco, it’s a lot quieter. Dalisay wonders if it’s because of the promise of rain.
Dalisay loves the rain. It always makes her feel giddy with something … she can’t quite explain. During the rainy season in Manila, one of her favorite memories is of coming back from school, her uniform soaking wet, only to change into comfy dry clothes and bury herself in bed with a good book. Rain means warm blankets and stories. Rain means home.
She tips her head toward the sky and is about to ask Pinky if she checked the forecast, but Pinky is furiously texting away on her phone.
“What’s going on?” Dalisay asks.
Pinky starts and looks up, cheeks flushed. It takes her a moment too long to come up with something. “JM. Just giving him updates!”
Dalisay smiles, leaning in. “About what?”
Before Dalisay can see the screen, Pinky cries “Oh, look! Pickles!” and bounds to the stand lined with huge glass jars full of them. She buys them each a pickle, failing to answer Dalisay’s question, but Dalisay won’t let her get away that easily.
“If this is about The Serenade …”
“Who said anything about a serenade?”
Dalisay gives her a look.
Relenting, Pinky takes a deep breath and rolls her eyes. “Okay. Fine. Yes, Evan is waiting for you outside the museum right now—” Dalisay bursts into laughter. “He’s worked really hard for this! The least we can do is make an appearance.”
Dalisay cackles. This is absolutely the point at which she expected Evan to back out. She can’t believe he’s attempting The Serenade! He’s proving a lot tougher than she thought. But Pinky looks at Dalisay with large, hopeful eyes and Dalisay can’t resist.
“If you say so. And here I was hoping that you honestly wanted to see the shipwrecks and Japanese tattoo exhibit just for fun.”
“Oh, I still want to see that! But our pre-museum entertainment awaits.”
Dalisay lets Pinky drag her through the market and they walk toward the museum entrance. “If nothing else,” Pinky says, “we can get a video of it and use it for blackmail later.”
When they round the corner, Dalisay hides her laughter behind her hand.
“There they are!” Pinky says, squeezing her other hand tightly.
Indeed, there they are.
The music sounds tinny coming from a small portable speaker by one of the bronze lion statues near the entrance as Evan, JM, and another man—Yoon-gi, a college friend, according to Pinky—start to dance in sync with each other and wearing matching barongs, traditional long-sleeved white shirts from the Philippines, each embroidered with white leaf patterns.
Dalisay covers her mouth to keep herself from dissolving into giggles and holds in a snort. She recognizes the song, but she’s well beyond her boy band days. She used to dance and sing with Nicole in their room in Manila, loud enough that Daniel would storm in and tell them to keep it down.
This song had to have been either JM’s or Pinky’s doing. Heat rises in her cheeks, and it’s not because of flattery. Evan sways his hips and swings his arms to the choreography, singing along to the tune, and Dalisay can’t tell if she wants to make him stop for his own sake or hers.
To make matters worse, the sky opens up. At first it’s a single drop, then another, until it’s a downpour. In seconds, everyone is drenched. The guys’ thin white barongs instantly become transparent, but the trio stick to the routine.
A group has gathered to watch and Dalisay realizes some aren’t strangers. They cheer Evan on by name, hooting and hollering like it’s a sporting event, and a separate group of teenagers films everything on their phones, but still Evan doesn’t break eye contact with Dalisay as he sings to the song in Tagalog, a language he obviously doesn’t know. When she looks back, she sees his eyes burn with a spark that ignites something in her chest.
Perhaps because it’s raining, or maybe because she’s had a nice day so far, or because the imprints of that sex dream still linger on the outskirts of her thoughts, but her heart actually skips for a moment.
It’s like Evan’s looking only at her, trying to say everything he wants to with his body, with his eyes, and—damn him—her smile grows wider. But she presses her fingers to her lips harder.
When the song ends, Evan is totally soaked. She can see his chest through his shirt and can’t help but stare as he strikes a finishing pose. If it were anyone else, what Evan is doing might be cheesy and a little ridiculous, but her smile falls as she stares at him, her breath trapped in her chest, as she’s overwhelmed by something akin to walking up to the edge of a cliff. It’s scary but exhilarating and it makes her feel a little crazy to even entertain the idea that she could jump, because right now she feels like she could fly.
Oh, she thinks. Oh no.
She’s into him. Like, really into him.
Desire washes through her like a giant wave, exactly as in her sex dream. The same swirling tension in her gut, the gooey wobble of her knees, the pulse pounding in her ears … She could march right up to him, rip his sopping wet shirt off, and kiss him—
It takes superhuman strength to stay right where she is.
Evan rakes his hand through his wet hair and gives her a boyish grin. “Hey,” he says to her.
All at once, the spell is broken. What was she thinking? Heat creeps up her face. She’s being ridiculous and totally embarrassing herself. Get a grip, girl! she thinks.
“So? Did I pass stage three?” Evan asks, a little breathless.
Dalisay’s eyelids flutter as she remembers to breathe too. She has to restrain herself from looking at his chest, visible through his wet shirt, just like that day in the office. For some reason, she’s shivering. She blames the rain.
“Your Tagalog is terrible,” she says. Then, innuendo unintended, she takes a huge bite of her farmers market pickle.
At work, Dalisay acts as if The Serenade never happened, but Evan finds that he can’t keep his eyes off her, especially during their collaboration meeting. She also seems to sense that he can’t stop looking, because she keeps glancing up from her laptop, and Evan tries his best to focus on his own screen while being aware of her every movement. It’s like they’re circling the last seat in a round of musical chairs, waiting for the other one to be caught on their heels. Being alone in the same room with her is making him fidgety.
To her credit, Dalisay hasn’t edited his articles since that one time, but he’s been taking care to read and reread his work, knowing full well that she might be reading it too. Either she’s taken pity on him or his writing’s gotten cleaner. He finds himself wanting to impress her and is paying more attention to his style, something he finds both aggravating and confusing. Why does he care what she thinks so much?
“Good job the other day,” she says, not looking up from her laptop, typing away with lightning speed. It makes him look up from his own computer, shocked that she brought it up.
“The Serenade?”
She raises her eyebrows, then drags her eyes up to meet his. His heart thumps in his throat. “It was adequate enough. Your performance would make any other girl swoon.”
Any other? He remembers the way her face fell when he finished the song, the way she stared at him, and he thought he was done for. Hope blooms hot in his chest.
“I can’t wait for stage four,” she says and smiles wickedly.
That smile sticks with him like glue.