Chapter 24
“Allan!” Ms. Padilla stood to shake his hand, warm and professional, completely unaware of or unfazed by the fact that this was the same room she’d handed him his exit paperwork in less than seven weeks ago. “So glad you could make it. You’re looking well.”
“Thank you,” Allan said, sitting where he was directed, noting with distant, clinical interest that his hands weren’t shaking this time.
The pitch, when it came, was polished, generous, and exactly as advertised.
Director, Regional Operations. A team of twelve.
A salary that made Tita Gemma’s whole kitchen budget look like a rounding error.
Full benefits, a car allowance, and a corner desk with an actual window this time, as if that detail alone was meant to erase everything that had happened in this room weeks ago.
“We made a mistake letting you go,” the regional director said, midway through, leaning forward with practiced sincerity. “Someone with your instincts and your ground-level experience, we need that kind of thinking at the leadership table.”
Allan listened to all of it. Really listened, something he hadn’t let himself do two weeks ago, hiding behind the ticket booth answering emails in secret. He let the number sit in the room. Let the title sit there too. Waited to feel the old relief, the old proof-of-worth adrenaline.
It didn’t come.
What came instead, unbidden, was the mural, two small painted figures under a storm, hand in hand, unafraid. Cora’s voice: alive first. Robby’s voice, steadier now than it had any right to be after everything: I want you to be honest with yourself.
There was a half-second, before he opened his mouth, where the old instinct rose up anyway.
Swallow the question. Don’t make it harder for someone with more seniority than you.
Hiya, he thought, recognizing it now for exactly what it was, a full room away from Tita Becky’s kitchen table.
He let it rise. Then, for maybe the first time in his life, he didn’t obey it.
“Can I ask something,” Allan said, when the director paused for water. “If I accept this, what happens to your current teams in the regional field offices? The people taking on roles like mine before, who don’t get absorbed the way I’m being absorbed now?”
The director blinked, recalibrating. “That’s, a separate conversation, honestly. Different budget line.”
“You said you need ground-level thinking at the leadership table,” Allan said. “But the ground level, doesn’t that stay the same? It’s like, I’m just one person, brought up into a Director title, but the structure that burned me out in the first place, is that still there?”
“We’re always improving our—”
“That’s not a question meant to make things hard for you,” Allan said, and found, surprised, that he meant it plainly, without the old bitterness. “I’m asking because I actually need to know before I decide.”
The room went quiet in a way conference rooms rarely did: no one, evidently, had expected the meeting to turn into an actual conversation.
He thought about the version of himself who’d sat in this exact seat seven weeks ago, calmly resigning, calmly walking away, and how much of that calm, in hindsight, had actually been panic wearing a very convincing disguise.
He thought about the version of himself who’d almost taken this offer without telling anyone, hiding behind a ticket booth, mistaking a number for proof of a life well lived.
And he thought about a wall, half-painted, two thousand kilometers away, waiting for him to finish it.
The director tried once more, sliding a folder across the table just like Ms. Padilla had slid the performance plan seven weeks ago, except this one was glossier, heavier, and clearly meant to impress rather than wound.
“Take the weekend,” she said. “Talk it over with your family. This is a significant opportunity, Allan. Not everyone gets a second chance at a role like this.”
Something about the phrase “second chance” landed strangely in the quiet of the conference room, close enough to the truth to almost tempt him into hearing it the way she meant it.
“I already have a second chance,” Allan said slowly, half to her, half working it out loud for himself.
“It’s just not this one. I already went looking, and I already found it, somewhere else, before this offer even came along.
The only thing I got wrong was thinking I had to turn this down first to know if the first one was real. ”
“I’m not sure I follow,” the director said, polite, professionally lost.
“You don’t really need to,” Allan said, not unkindly. “It’s personal.”
“Thank you for the offer,” Allan said finally, standing, and this time his voice didn’t shake at all. “But I won’t be accepting it.”
Ms. Padilla’s face did a valiant, professional job of hiding her surprise. “Can I ask why? We really do think this could be a great fit—”
“It’s not the right fit for where my life is right now,” Allan said. “I have something else I’m building, and it needs all of me. I hope you understand.”
He shook their hands on the way out, genuinely without rancor this time, no old grudge left to nurse, no need to prove anything to a room that had, in the end, just been a room, full of people doing their jobs just like he used to do his.
Outside, Manila’s noise hit him full force, jeepneys, construction, someone’s karaoke bleeding out of a nearby carinderia, and he stood there a moment on the sidewalk, letting it wash over him without the old ache of belonging that used to come with it.
He called Robby the second he found a quiet enough corner.
“How’d it go?” Robby answered, tension audible even through the static.
“I turned it down,” Allan said, and felt the words settle into something solid and true the second they left his mouth. “I don’t need that anymore, Robby. I know that now.”
There was a beat of silence on the other end, relief, Allan guessed, or maybe just the particular quiet of someone who’d been holding his breath for a week and finally let it go.
“You sure?” Robby asked, careful, giving him every chance to take it back.
“Sure,” Allan said. “I’m coming home for good. I’ll tell you everything once I’m there. But I wanted you to know right away: I turned it down, and I don’t regret it, not even a little.”
“Home is not a prize you win by being successful,” Robby said, quiet, and Allan recognized it. “You were right back then. You’re still right.”
“When did I say that to you?”
“You didn’t,” Robby admitted. “I read it in your sketchbook when I was helping you get back up on the scaffolding. Sorry, it just happened.”
“You’ve been reading my sketchbook.”
“Just once,” Robby said, entirely unashamed. “Turns out you’ve got some good lines in there. Might use one for the mural.”
“I hate you,” Allan said, laughing, the first real, unguarded laugh he’d managed since landing.
“I love you too,” Robby said, easy, like it cost him nothing at all to say it now, and Allan realized, standing on a noisy Manila sidewalk two thousand kilometers from home, that it was the first time either of them had said it plainly, without a joke to hide behind.
“Remember the two systems,” Allan said, “from the ridge? You never actually told me which one we turned out to be.”
“I know which one,” Robby said.
“Yeah?”
“We merged. Weeks ago. I just didn’t want to say it before you did, in case it scared you off.” A beat, and Allan could hear him almost smiling through the static. “Too late to drift apart now, Allan. You’re stuck being half a storm system with me.”
“Say that again when I’m actually there,” Allan said, throat tight. “I want to see your face when you do.”
“I’ll say it,” Robby promised. “Over and over, if I have to. Just come home.”
“I’m coming home,” Allan said, and meant it in every sense the word could hold.