Thirteen
THIRTEEN
T he worst thing about leaving paradise was how gray everything seemed after. The airport, for example, was quite literally gray. Smog from traffic was gray, as were all the concrete roads that led back home. Something about all of that just highlighted the “back to reality” feeling. Or more accurately sometimes, “Welcome back to the hellmouth.”
It was strange to think that just hours before that, Mara was standing in perfect white sand, watching crystal blue waters, perfectly sunny blue skies and eating Cocomo from a half-cut coconut fruit. Hayy, she missed it already. Life just wasn’t always fair that way. No matter how happy she had been in Boracay, there was always a day she had to come back.
She’d snuck back to her room on the day of the wedding at an ungodly hour of the morning. So ungodly she thought witches were cackling as she reentered her room. But even as Mara lay in bed, she couldn’t fall asleep, her mind whirling about what she’d done, about Jay moving away, about what she felt. Whatever it was she felt, because she still wasn’t sure. She sent a message to her group chat with her sisters, calling an SOS.
Need to talk about life. Calling an emergency council when I get back.
And because Mabel was only twenty-five, she was still up at said ungodly hour and texted back. Roger, boss. Wouldn’t want to do it half-hazardly.
The next morning, Mara woke up with no idea what time it was. When she checked her messages, they included a DM from Ate Irene saying they should meet up in Manila when they were both free, and a message from Jay.
You left. Sent several hours ago. Probably when he woke up to find her gone. A couple of hours later, he messaged again. Can’t stop thinking about last night. I need to see you again.
The gasp Mara made caught in her throat, and it became a hiccup. But she couldn’t quite find the right words to send back to him, so she decided not to respond and get on with her last day on the beach.
By that afternoon she was sitting in the lobby of her hotel, looking out at the sea while nursing a bowl of the Cocomo Coco Loco with Mango. The dessert was coconut ice cream made with coconut milk, served with toasted pinipig, ripe mango cubes and coconut meat. It was served in a half-cut fresh coconut, which meant you could carve out the meat with a spoon after you ate all the ice cream.
Days at the beach moved like gently melting butter—slow and decadent. Mara’s thoughts felt that way, too. Whenever she tried to sum up what had transpired, parse how she felt, or understand why she was already missing something that wasn’t hers, her mind would wander somewhere else. She didn’t know if it was because she was overwhelmed, overthinking, or just utterly distracted by the beach. The waves were calming, and knowing its rhythms was a thought that occupied her and made her feel a sense of calm.
That was when Perry showed up. It was always a feat for a guy to look like he smelled good in a country where the sun was your relentless friend. But Perry managed the even more difficult feat of looking like he smelled good while at the beach.
He wasn’t sweating at all, the heat leaving nothing but a light, healthy sheen on his skin, and a bit of redness on the tops of his cheeks to make him more approachable. He seemed delighted to see her, and Mara had to admit it made her already melting brain melt a little more. It was always nice when someone was happy to see you.
“Mara!” he said, coming up to her. “I thought you left with the rest of the wedding party.”
“And leave the beach too soon?” she asked, shaking her head. “No way.”
“I wouldn’t want to leave the beach too soon, either.” He grinned and took off his sunglasses. And somewhere in this world, a chorus of children sang out a glorious, “Hallelujah.” Perry really was the whole package, and a very impressive one, too. “May I?” He indicated the rest of the bench beside Mara.
“Sure.” She scooted to the side to give him room, and there was just enough for him to sit with one leg over the other. But she could still feel the warmth of his thigh pressing against hers. Or maybe it was his hand. “I was supposed to be here to not think.”
“How is that going for you?” he asked, his fingers firmly clasped around his knee.
“Very badly,” she admitted, scooping up the last of her ice cream while digging in to the fresh coconut for more meat. “Too many questions, and I can’t focus long enough to answer.”
“Maybe you just need a friend?” Perry asked, and Mara had the distinct impression that by friend, he hadn’t meant friend, at all. Maybe someone who cared a little differently than a friend would. “I’m a really good listener. My preschool teacher wrote that in my report card and everything.”
“A written first account.” Mara laughed. “My preschool teacher called me an achiever, which is maybe a kind way to say that I was bossy and domineering.”
“Some people like to be bossed around and domineered.” Perry seemed to speak from a wealth of experience, and he just had that aura that told you that he knew exactly what he was talking about. It radiated from him, like a heavenly vibe of responsibility and good boy behavior. Huh. David was right. He was exactly the kind of guy she wanted for herself. The kind of guy she hoped would one day look at her and think, wow.
“Maybe,” Mara echoed, looking at Perry like he’d just announced that he would like to be able to scale up the side of a building one day. It was strange how open he was about his intentions, and Mara didn’t mind so much that he was. “Or maybe I’m just old.”
“I like to call that protecting your peace.”
“Are you in marketing?” Mara asked, tucking one leg under the other so she could lean back against the wall and finish her mango. “You are really good at spinning things.”
“That sounds bad.” Perry pouted. Cute.
“No, I mean you’re good at making things sound better,” Mara corrected herself. “You’re straightforward and real, but not rude. Sometimes I forget that you can do one without being the other.” She sighed and put her now empty coconut between them. “Although you have to be careful. A girl could fall for you without you meaning it.”
“Sometimes falling for someone is just falling for someone.” Perry shrugged. “Doesn’t have to have anything to do with the person you’re falling for. It is not your mission to tell them your feelings.”
“So what’s the mission? If it’s not telling them?”
“It’s feeling the way you feel, and deciding if you’re going to do something about it. Are you going to stand by what you feel? Are you going to ask them if you have permission to do something about it?” He wasn’t looking at her when he was speaking, and Mara wasn’t really, either. She was more focused on what he was saying, on the way he made it sound so easy.
“I like to think that multiple things can be true at the same time,” he continued, without missing a beat. “For example. While it’s true that I approached you for art reasons, it’s also true that I’ve wanted to ask you out to dinner since I recognized you at that reception.”
Mara’s heart caught in her chest. At that particular moment it was hard to decide if her surprise was kilig related, or just the recognition that this was the first time anyone had asked her out on a date. Both things could be true, but they couldn’t be more different, too.
“Me?” she asked, which was ridiculous and pabebe. Of course, her. But why her?
“Yeah.” Perry chuckled like he was challenging her incredulousness. “I’ve heard from both David and Alex all the reasons why they think we would be a good match, and I happened to agree. I think you’re funny and smart, and it matters to me that you and I have a basic agreement on politics.”
“Oh, totally.” Because that was half the battle, most days.
“I also think you’re gorgeous. So I think asking you out to dinner is the least I can do to get to know you better, and it’s a good way as any to start a love story.”
Oh, he was sweet. Very sweet, and Mara appreciated that he wasn’t shy about telling her what he wanted out of her. It was really that easy, she supposed, to put your heart out there for another person to take.
“That’s me doing something about how I feel, by the way,” Perry pointed out. “Dinner is usually a good way to start.”
“It really is,” Mara agreed.
* * *
“That’s it?” Marina asked, as Mabel’s jaw dropped in disbelief at the end of Mara’s story. “Dinner is a good start? Did you say yes? How did you feel about it? Do you like him? What about the deal with the gallery?”
“What about Jay!” Mabel made it sound like that was the more urgent matter. “Mom already keeps calling him son-in-law whenever we bring it up!”
Mara did not even know that it was a thing that was brought up so often. She had no doubt her parents had some notion of what had transpired with her and Jay in Boracay—their family was too small for any kind of secret to be kept—but her parents were usually all about the broad strokes. Malayo naman sa bituka, their dad always said. But for her mom to have such an affectionate pet name was new.
“Mom already has a son-in-law,” Mara pointed out, pursing her lips in the actual son-in-law’s direction. “That guy.”
“Yes, I’m guy,” David agreed, stirring noodles into his sauce like he was making his own version of a dry pot. Marina looked slightly horrified at what her husband was doing. “Also just for the record, I’m here in my capacity as a 10 percent owner of Wildflower. I have no biases in who you should go out on a date with, Mara. Even if Perry literally asked you. And offered to get you to try out floral art, which is something you’ve always wanted to do.”
“Very unbiased, hon.” Marina laughed, shaking her head.
“Well, I vote for Jay,” Mabel huffed. She crossed her arms in exasperation. “I think Ate is only considering Perry because he’s there. Jay makes her all blushy and happy.”
“You haven’t even seen me with Perry!”
“Also Jay is literally moving to Hong Kong, Mabel,” Marina added, stirring vegetables into the spicy soup. “Honestly, the man is amazing at getting in his own way. Just like you, Ate.”
Mara sighed and wiped off the steam from her glasses for the third time that evening. The emergency conference with her mother and sisters happened as soon as she arrived at the house. Her father had greeted her at the door, welcomed her home and listened to Mara’s complaints about being hungry and wanting dinner. About a minute later, Marina barged into the house, saw Mara watching reels on the couch and said, “Get in, loser. We’re going to therapy.”
Which was how Mara ended up at a hot pot restaurant, the kind where you couldn’t name the restaurant if you tried and simply knew it as “that place, you know the one.” Everything was unlimited, you mixed your own sauce and didn’t feel like a complete meal without a can of Wo Long Kat. It was comforting and reliable, a literal hot soup to balm her jagged feelings. But it was also perfect, because you needed to eat slow, which gave her time to think about what she wanted to say.
“So?” Mabel was incensed. “He’s still here. He can change his plans, if Ate asked him to!”
“She’s not going to ask him to.” Marina shook her head. “That would kind of be unfair.”
“It would.” Mara sighed, dipping her meat in her sauce. She liked her shabu shabu sauce with a lot of garlic, soy sauce and satay. By the end of her meal she would dump all her sauce in a bowl of noodles and broth, and it would be glorious. “Even if I did want to change our situation in any way—” she didn’t miss the way her sisters glanced at each other, a reaction to a secret conversation they probably had in the car on the way to pick her up “—he’s decided to leave already.”
“Decisions can be changed,” Mabel argued, shrugging like she was talking about the weather. “He’s still here. The parameters can change all the time.”
But the thing was, Mara had never liked it when the parameters changed. Things needed to make sense, which was why she’d thrived in school. What they never tell you about life after was that the world was as senselessly changeable as life itself. She didn’t like the idea of changing Jay’s, just because, what, she felt something for him?
“He told me upfront when we met that he wasn’t interested in a relationship,” Mara pointed out to convince her sisters it was pointless…but really it was more to remind herself that Jay had been explicitly clear with her since the beginning. Just as much as Perry was clear that he wanted to give whatever it was that could be between them a shot. “In fact our entire not-dating arrangement hinged around not being in a relationship.”
“So what were you doing the whole time you were in Boracay?” Marina asked. “Hanging out with each other, being each other’s plus-ones, spending time together?”
“Sounds like a relationship to me,” Mabel singsonged, popping a whole cheese ball into her mouth.
“You could always…” Marina began.
“Tell him how I feel?” Mara asked, and her voice squeaked at the notion. She didn’t even know how to begin to tell him. She didn’t have Perry’s smoothness or his willingness to put himself out there. Telling Jay how she felt—not that she knew what she felt yet, exactly, because she wasn’t in love, probably—seemed like such an imposition on him. It didn’t seem fair to him, for her to use the way she felt as a way to make him stay.
And what if he stayed because of her feelings, and she turned out to be wrong? Or if he stayed because of how she felt and realized he didn’t feel the same? What if they got married because he’d already made the sacrifice of staying anyway, bahala na, and they never talked about this?
She could picture it suddenly. Both of them sixty years old and waking up in bed next to someone they no longer recognized. Could picture them fighting, their anger and all the words they don’t say out loud filling rooms. Could picture herself ranting to her kids, so much that her eldest would literally run away to Boracay just so she didn’t have to play marriage counselor. Anxiety filled Mara like all the noodles and veg and balls in their hot pot, bubbling over.
The wooden chopstick in her hand snapped. Her three dinner companions jumped at the sound and gaped at her.
“Anyway,” Mara said finally, releasing the anxiety in a long, long exhale. She took a deep, fortifying sip of her Wo Long Kat. “I need to talk to Jay. This can’t go on.”
As much as she didn’t want to be ruled by things that weren’t real, she had to admit that there was a reason she was picturing these fantasy scenarios. Much bravery was required, and she didn’t think she’d built enough of those stores yet. Love was a leap, love was being brave, love was taking a chance. But Mara had never been one to do any of those things. Not without some indication that she had some chance of success.
Mara could not read the look that was exchanged between her younger sisters. She didn’t really know if she wanted to.