Chapter 22
The whole family insisted on seeing him off at the Virac airport, which was less an act of sentiment and more, Allan suspected, a coordinated surveillance operation to make sure he actually got on the plane.
“Eat properly in Manila,” Tita Gemma instructed, pressing a bag of homemade suman into his hands like emergency rations. “Not just fast food.”
“Don’t go trying to impress those Manila people,” Tita Yolanda added. “You’re already good-looking enough here. They’re the ones who should be impressing you.”
“Bring pasalubong or don’t come home,” Ver said, then, catching Cora’s look, amended quickly, “kidding. But okay, pasalubong.”
Cora hung back until last, the rest of the family already drifting toward the gate, and pulled him into a hug that lasted a beat longer than her usual brisk, efficient embraces.
“Remember what I told you,” she said into his shoulder. “Full heart. Whatever the decision.”
“Yes, Ma.”
“And call me when you land. Not just a text. A call.”
“Okay po.”
She pulled back, studying his face one more time with the old assessing frown, then, satisfied by whatever she found there, gave a single clipped nod, her highest available compliment, and let him go.
Robby was the last to say goodbye, standing a little apart from the noise of the family, hands in his pockets, doing a visibly poor job of looking casual about it.
“Three days,” Robby said.
“Three days,” Allan confirmed.
“Tell me when you—”
“Always,” Allan said, cutting off the same worry from a week ago before Robby had to voice it again. “I won’t disappear. Promise.”
Robby exhaled, some of the tension easing out of his shoulders, and closed the distance to kiss him, brief, public, entirely unbothered by the fact that half the BEBES were watching with open, delighted interest a few feet away.
“Take care,” Robby said. “And Allan: whatever you decide, it’s okay. I’ll say this one more time: I want you here, but I want you to be honest with yourself more than I want to be the reason you lie to yourself.”
“Noted, boss,” Allan said. Then, dropping the bit, quieter: “I’m not going there to promise anything. I’m going to find out.”
“Okay,” Robby said. “Go catch your flight.”
Allan boarded with Tita Gemma’s suman in one hand and his sketchbook in the other, and spent most of the short flight watching the island shrink beneath the clouds, then disappear completely, the ferry route he’d taken in reverse now, at thirty thousand feet, in seventy-five comfortable minutes instead of a grueling half-day crossing.
Manila, when it appeared below, looked exactly as it always had: vast, gray, glittering, indifferent, a city that had never once noticed him leaving and wouldn’t necessarily notice if he came back, either. The realization arrived without much drama, more like a fact settling into place.
He landed a little after noon, into humidity thicker than San Andres’, traffic louder than any typhoon, and a text from Ms. Padilla already waiting:
Looking forward to tomorrow, Allan! We’re so excited about this.
He read it twice, feeling nothing that resembled excitement back, and texted Robby instead:
Landed. Still alive. Miss you already, weird as that sounds after three hours.
The reply came fast:
ROBBY
Not weird. Miss you too. Take care. Eat something.
Smiling at his phone in the middle of the crowded arrivals hall, surrounded by strangers and placards and that particular chaos of a city that had once been the entire shape of his ambition, he felt something that he hadn’t felt in two weeks: steady.
Whatever happened tomorrow, he thought, at least he wasn’t hiding from it anymore.