Chapter 8
Robby’s house sat at the far edge of the barangay, past the chapel, close enough to the shoreline that Allan could hear the surf from the gate.
“I didn’t even know where you lived,” Allan admitted, following him up a short concrete path lined with potted calamansi trees. “Until literally today. Ten years, and I didn’t even have this basic information.”
“You never asked,” Robby said, though there was no accusation in it.
“You could have volunteered it.”
“You’re here now.”
The house was small and well-kept, its galvanized roof patched in three different shades of gray that told their own quiet history of storms survived.
A woman’s photograph sat on a shelf near the door, flowers fresh in a small glass beside it, the kind of upkeep that meant someone visited that shelf every single day without fail.
“My Nanay,” Robby said, following Allan’s gaze. “She died five years ago. A storm. A tree fell and hit the house while she was sleeping. I was working in another town at the time, two hours away. I didn’t make it in time.”
“Robby, I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”
“I know,” Robby said, before Allan could spiral into apology. “I’m not telling you this so you’ll feel sorry for me either. I’m telling you because I want you to know why this is my job.”
He sat on the porch step, and after a beat, Allan sat beside him, close enough that their knees touched.
“When I was a kid,” Robby went on, “some kind of disaster volunteer group passed through here before it was even called DRRM, just a warning, just the radio. No map. No plan for who leaves, who stays. We ran that night, Nanay, Tatay, me, in the dark, with no idea where was safe. We were lucky we made it. A lot of people didn’t.
” He looked out at the sea, calm now, undisturbed, giving no hint of what it could become.
“Then, years later, Nanay. Even after we’d learned, even with a better warning system, even with everything, a storm still took her.
Because not everything can be stopped by a plan.
Sometimes it’s just the wrong time, the wrong place. ”
“You built your whole career around not letting that happen to anyone else.”
“I tried,” Robby said. “I can’t say I’m always successful. There are still houses that get destroyed, people I don’t reach in time. But it’s better than when there was no plan at all.”
“It’s not just me, though,” Robby added, like he could hear the question before Allan asked it. “The committee, the captain, the engineer, the tanods. I just happen to be the one who shows up first and stays till the report’s done.”
“And your dad?”
“In Saudi,” Robby said. “OFW, since I was a kid. A few texts, a few calls, pasalubong whenever he gets the chance. We’re not that close, not because of any anger; it’s just, we’ve been far apart for so long, and it’s hard to get back that closeness when your whole childhood, his face was just a screen.
” He shrugged, the gesture carrying more grief than the words did.
“Ver, Tita Cora: they became my family here, while I was growing up. That’s probably why I’m so protective of your family too. ”
Allan thought, suddenly, of Ver’s easy insistence that Robby was “family, not just a friend”—how obvious that was now, how it had never been a figure of speech at all.
“You know,” Allan said, “I used to think your life was simple. Varsity star, lots of friends, no problems. I was wrong.”
“Everyone has their own struggles,” Robby said. “Some people are just better at hiding it.”
“You’re not hiding it now.”
“No,” Robby agreed. “Not with you, not anymore.”
“Was it ever a whole thing for you?” Allan asked before he could decide if it was too personal a question for a porch step. “Figuring out you liked guys too, I mean. On top of everything else.”
“Not really,” Robby said, easy, with no weight loaded into it at all.
“Liked a girl in third year. Liked you before that. Liked a guy from Virac one summer at a training camp when I was twenty-two.” He shrugged, like it genuinely hadn’t cost him much.
“Never felt like I had to pick a side to belong to. Guess I got lucky that way. Not much of a war to survive.” A beat, and something more careful crossed his face.
“Not everyone gets that. I know that now, more than I used to.”
It wasn’t said as comparison, and it didn’t sound like performance either, just a fact offered plainly, the way Robby offered most things that actually mattered. Allan filed it away anyway, one more small, unglamorous piece of him worth knowing.
Allan leaned his head against Robby’s shoulder, watching the tide come in slow and steady over the rocks below, and thought about how much of Robby’s steadiness, the careful, patient way he’d handled every hard conversation since the library, hadn’t come from nowhere.
It had come from precisely the kind of grief that could have made him harder and hadn’t.
“Let’s go inside,” Robby said eventually. “I have a photo of Nanay from when I was a kid, I want to show you. You still have a drawing of her in your head somewhere, you said, maybe you could put her in the mural. I want the whole barangay to see her, even though she’s been gone a long time.”
“I’d like that,” Allan said, and truly meant it, one more piece of Robby’s history he intended, from now on, to actually know.
Inside, over a small cup of instant coffee Robby insisted on making despite Allan’s protests, they went through an old photo album with a cracked plastic cover: Robby as a gap-toothed six-year-old on his mother’s hip, Robby at nine holding a fish nearly as big as he was, Robby at fifteen in a too-big varsity jersey, grinning at whoever held the camera with an ease Allan hadn’t gotten to see up close back then, too busy, at the time, being quietly, hopelessly in love from a safe distance.
“She was beautiful,” Allan said, looking at a photo of Robby’s mother laughing at something off-camera, a whole life visible in the crinkle of her eyes.
“I know,” Robby said, softly. “I’ll tell you about her, if you want. I don’t need to hide my grief anymore just to look strong.”
“I want to know all about her. And you,” Allan said. “Not just the easy parts.”
Robby looked at him for a long moment, searching, just as Allan had searched his face in the library days ago, and seemed to find, this time, exactly what he was looking for.
“Okay,” he said simply, and turned the page.