Mario just gave him an unconvinced look and asked, “How long?”
Chris looked up at the ceiling and exhaled, “Two years.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. Don’t say anything, okay.”
“I think it’s time you started dating again, dude. This is way worse than when you kept jumping from one girl to the next.” Mario looked concerned.
Chris took one more look at the sketch that was halfway in his backpack—all that was sticking out was his drawing of Katie. Her smile, the happiness in her eyes, her long, wavy hair that always smelled of strawberries. And he nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.”
IT WAS AS if Chris had forgotten how to ask a girl out. He had been so used to it in high school that he didn’t even have to think about it, it just seemed to happen. And it felt like there were girls everywhere. Now, sure, they were around—in class, in his org, even on the basketball court watching them play, but it was as if he had this invisible force field around him that repelled them or at the very least sent out wave signals to leave him alone.
“I know for a fact that Janice likes you and she’s been trying to figure out how to ask you out,” Mario had confided a few days later while they were shooting hoops in the school court.
“Janice, the one who is in almost all my classes?” Chris remembered thinking how weird it was that this one girl just happened to be everywhere he went. He assumed it was because they had the same schedule. But he also noticed that she always ended up as his group mate. He thought it was just a coincidence, but now that Mario mentioned it, it kind of made sense.
“Yeah. She’s cute.” Mario passed him the ball.
As Chris dribbled up to the hoop and stopped to shoot, he tried to remember what Janice looked like. He agreed she was cute, he just never really thought of her that way. As the ball sailed up in the air, hit the ring, and bounced off, he made a face. Looked like a bad sign. Oh, hell, who cared? He’d play it by ear when he saw her later in class. She was bound to be in one of them.
But when he saw her later that day in dream class, one of their electives, he couldn’t muster the courage. Besides, he felt as if it were too contrived. That wasn’t how he wanted it to be. Wasn’t his style. Shrugging, he turned to his seatmate Celine. They were supposed to be comparing dreams again. It frustrated Chris a little bit how he couldn’t remember all of his dreams, just a few snippets. Celine, on the other hand, seemed to remember everything the second she closed her eyes. Her dreams morphed into different scenes about five times and each time was more exciting than the last.
She was telling him about the huge helicopter that was trying to shoot down her dog (a Golden Retriever) and how she was valiantly protecting him with nothing else but her lithe body. “Celine, I’m sorry, but you couldn’t exactly expect to save him that way, now could you?” Chris snorted. He loved to tease her because she was so passionate about everything—especially her dreams.
Celine narrowed her eyes and gave him an impatient look. “That’s your problem, Chris. You don’t remember your dreams because you’re trying too hard. Or… you aren’t trying hard enough!”
Chris gave her an amused smile. “I think it’s more of the second one.”
“Well, you obviously have to! What can we get from this: you were in school playing basketball with a girl who turns into smoke?” She shook his dream notebook at him. “And this journal has hardly anything in it!” She leafed through it in distaste.
Chris raised his eyebrows at her. “Well you need another notebook because yours is almost full! Quite the overachiever, aren’t we?”
Celine gave him a huge smile. “Well, I know for a fact that I’m getting an A in this class. And I’ve already learned so much about what my subconscious is trying to tell me. Can you say that for yourself?” When she threw him a haughty look, something inside Chris snapped. All of a sudden, he noticed how Celine’s lips were a soft shade of pink, and that her jet-black hair that fell just above her shoulders framed her pretty face perfectly.
“No, I don’t think so.” He smiled at her, wondering why it took him so long to notice just how attractive his seatmate was. “I should put more effort into school.”
She gave him a dubious look. “You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?”
“I wouldn’t mind considering it anyway.” Chris laughed. “Hey, I’m starving. Do you have a class after this? Let’s get a burger outside of school.” That was easy. Not contrived at all. It also felt comfortably familiar.
It was Celine’s turn to raise her perfectly shaped eyebrows. “Are you asking me out, Chris?”
He shrugged with a smile. “Maybe.”
She grinned and nodded. “I say you are.”
A BURGER LED to frozen yogurt, which strangely enough, led to ice cream. The frozen desserts were Celine’s idea. Her weakness, she claimed. Chris enjoyed listening to her talk about all the different things she was into at school. She was part of a theater org and was in The Sound of Music as Liesl the eldest daughter (he promised to watch her on opening night), she was also on the school newspaper staff as the horoscope writer (she was a psychology major and said all she needed to do was study the personalities of her friends who were born under the different astrological signs and she could easily make predictions about what they would do next), and she was with Katie in one of the school’s political orgs. Katie was currently their batch representative and Celine helped out during her campaign last school year. She thought Katie had excellent ideas and was great at executing them too.
Chris felt a little pain in his chest when Celine brought up his best friend. He didn’t want to be reminded of her now, just when he was actually having fun with another girl and not thinking of Katie for once. When Celine paused in her praises of Katie to have a bit more of her Belgian chocolate ice cream, Chris saw his chance to take the discussion elsewhere. “So if you were to give me a prediction, what would it be?”
Celine licked her still pink lips (He guessed the color was natural and not brought on by lip gloss. Interesting.) and took a deep breath. “Well,” she began, putting her spoon down and looking at him for a few minutes. Chris found himself blushing under her scrutiny. This made her grin widen. “I’d say, you were once living in the dark and paid no heed to the messages of the universe. But after a fortuitous encounter, you will open yourself to the wonders of your bright, happy future.” Then she leaned forward and said, “And I also foresee lots of college plays in this bright future. Maybe even coming out in one of them?”
Chris felt a familiar anxiety sneaking over him. It was at this point when he usually plotted his escape route and moved on to the next girl, hoping she wouldn’t bring up any talk of their future together. But then again, the fear wasn’t as debilitating as it used to be. He found he could actually fight it. As he looked at Celine’s inviting smile, he realized he might actually enjoy spending more time with her. They had lots of fun in dream class this semester, and he could look forward to more days like that. He laughed and said, “You wish!” Then added, “But I agree that I should heed the messages of the universe from now on. And one of them is to ask you if you’re free to catch a movie tomorrow night.”
Celine nodded. “Smart boy.”
SEVERAL WEEKS LATER, as he was dressing for Celine’s opening night, Chris couldn’t find the shirt he had set aside to wear. He ran down the stairs calling out for Manang Cora, thinking she probably thought it was dirty and took it with her to the laundry room, when he heard the doorbell ring. He opened the door to find Katie standing there in a short floral dress, aqua wedges, and a bouquet of roses. His heart stopped. Had she finally come to her senses and realized she had had enough of Andrew and this was her romantic gesture to show Chris that she thought they were meant to be together? He wouldn’t put that past her. But then again, it felt a bit too much to hope for. Waiting for her to explain herself, he already knew what he was going to sketch that night before he went to bed. The vision of Katie holding a bunch of roses was too
heartwarming for him to pass up.
“Check them out! I knew you wouldn’t think of getting Celine roses, so I got you a bouquet to give her when she takes her curtain call.” Katie thrust them at him, a huge smile on her face.
Chris dumbly took the roses from her and stepped aside so she could enter. Without waiting for him to answer, Katie took one look at him and frowned. “Why aren’t you dressed yet? Don’t tell me you’re going in that ratty shirt!”
Chris put the flowers down on the dining table and turned to Katie, who was looking at him expectantly. “Thanks, Kate. I didn’t even think of this.”
She did a little curtsy. “I knew you wouldn’t. Roses are Celine’s favorite flower. She wanted to decorate the junior dance with red roses and I told her it wasn’t a Valentine’s Day dance.”
“But this might give her the impression that—” Chris began miserably. Things had been going very well with Celine. They had even been on a double date with Katie and Andrew. Chris had tagged along on enough of their dates to know how to bottle up his feelings around them, and it was great having Celine there to distract him. But after that date, he knew that the distraction wasn’t enough. He still found himself sketching Katie when he got home. He had tried drawing Celine, but he always ended up making her hair longer and wavier, putting in the freckles and the dimple, and before he knew it, she wasn’t Celine anymore. She was the girl his hand couldn’t stop sketching, as if it had a mind of its own.
Katie put her hands on her hips. “Chris! It’s been what, three years since you’ve been out with a girl. Don’t tell me it’s still the same?”
Chris groaned and ran up the stairs. To hell with the shirt he had picked out earlier. He could just put on any old thing. Besides, he didn’t want Celine to think there was a future with him when he was so hopelessly in love with the girl who was berating him at that very moment. Dressing up too nicely might make her think he was trying hard to impress her. Yeah right, and the roses wouldn’t? Katie followed him up and sat on his bed while he rummaged through his closet.
“I don’t know, Kate. I’m trying,” came his muffled voice.
Katie rolled her eyes, kicked off her shoes, and lay back on one of the propped up pillows. “Well, try harder. Celine is great. And I know that if you give it time, you’ll see that.”
That would only work if you weren’t around, Chris wanted to say as he tried to decide between a red plaid button down and a plain denim one. Either way, he didn’t think it made a difference. He had wanted to wear the blue and white stripes, which was probably all mixed in with the rest of the laundry by now—unreachable. Just like the girl on his bed. He shook his head. He should get a couch in his room so she could sit on that. It was too painful to have her perched so comfortably on his bed like she belonged there. And in his heart, he knew she did belong there. But he seemed to be the only one who could see that.
Then he heard a rustling of papers. “Uh, Chris?”
His blood froze. He had left his sketches on the bed right before he decided it was time to dress up. There was no way out of this.
He slowly turned to face Katie even if all he wanted to do was crawl into his closet and stay there forever—or until she told him that it was okay because she had a secret stash of sketches of him too. But Katie didn’t draw. She got Chris to do all her illustrations for her. She was looking at his most recent sketches. They weren’t even finished yet. But it was quite clear who his favorite subject was. The drawing she held in her hands was of her at the junior dance… with her arms around him as they danced beneath the floating balloons that hung from the ceiling. His eyes were closed and he held her tight. Andrew and Celine, of course, were nowhere to be found.
He saw her slowly put it on her lap as she reached for the next one. It was the same one he had been working on in theology class. The same one that had given his secret away to Mario. He was polishing it up. For what, he didn’t know. He just knew that when he worked on his sketches, the ache in his heart wasn’t as bitter, wasn’t as painful.
He just stood there, watching her, barely breathing. Knowing that his life was going to change yet again and there was nothing he could do about it. When he was younger, he had accidentally dropped a glass on the floor and he knew it was going to shatter, but no matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to catch it. He watched it bounce then break into what seemed like a hundred pieces. He felt like he was watching the same thing happen to their friendship and he was just as powerless to stop it. “Kate…” he croaked, his voice sounding gravelly.
When she looked up, her eyes were filled with tears. “Chris,” she whispered, the tears falling down her cheeks.
He sank down to the floor and put his head in between his hands. He couldn’t stand to see her cry because of him. He’d seen her cry dozens of times, but it was never because of him. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“No, I… I…” She took a shaky breath. “I had no idea. I don’t even know…”
“It’s okay, Kate. You don’t have to say anything.” He couldn’t look at her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?!” All of a sudden, her voice changed and she sounded angry. This was it. This was what Chris had been steeling his heart against when he heard the pages rustling. “How long have you kept this from me?! Chris! Answer me! Look at me, for heaven’s sake!”
Chris nervously looked up at her, a numbness washing over him.
“Well?”
“You don’t have to be angry, Kate,” he mumbled.
“Of course I do! My best friend keeps a secret like this from me and all this time I’ve been hurting him—how do you think that makes me feel, Chris?” She was sobbing now and wiping the tears away with the back of her hand, not caring how she looked. And why should she? Even while she was crying, she was still adorable, still beautiful. Curse his biased heart.
“I didn’t want to ruin our friendship.” He cringed at how cliché that sounded. “And you’re with Andrew. He’s great. You’re happy with him.”
“Of course he’s great!” she yelled through her tears. “And of course I’m happy with him! Why are you ruining everything?”
Chris scrambled up and tried to put his arms around her. It was instinct. It was what he always did whenever she was angry and crying. But this time, instead of sinking against him and sobbing into his shirt, she shoved him away. “It was all going so well, and you just ruined it!” Before he could reply, she ran out the door, slamming it behind her. He looked down at his bed and noticed she had taken the sketches with her. He slowly sat down, closed his eyes, and for the first time in his life, prayed really hard for a magic wand that could undo the past hour. Or better yet, the past three years.
KATIE DIDN’T GO to the opening night. Andrew showed up saying she wasn’t feeling well. Chris felt lower than he had ever felt in his life. It was even worse than when Iris had broken his heart. Back then, he had Katie to lean on and let him know that everything was going to be okay. But who did you turn to when you lost your best friend? He was probably being melodramatic, but he didn’t think things were ever going to be the same again. This was exactly what he was afraid of. This was why he had kept it inside for three years.
While the play was going on, he couldn’t concentrate. He kept thinking about what Katie had said—that he had ruined everything. He could imagine what life was going to be like from now on. Katie and Andrew were probably going to hang out on their own, leaving their friends to him. But of course Megan and Inca weren’t going to stand for it and they’d naturally want to stay with Katie. So that just meant he was the one who had to go. It was going to be easy enough. Katie had complained before that whenever he went into a basketball obsession such as wanting to perfect a shot or jump, she hardly saw him. All he had to do was hang out at the courts more often.
When Celine came onstage in a white dress with a demure hoop skirt, she looked incredibly sweet singing that she was sixteen going on seventeen, innocent as a rose. Chris forced himself to focus on her.
She was the reason they were there after all. The reason he was seated next to Andrew, wanting to apologize to him and punch him in the face at the same time. “She’s great, Chris,” Andrew leaned closer to him and said. “You’ve found a keeper right there.”
Instead of acknowledging what he had said, Chris asked, “So I hear you and Katie are planning to get married after college?” He didn’t know if the bitterness was clear in his voice or not, but he didn’t really care. He’d already ruined the friendship he cared about. He couldn’t care less about Andrew. At least not at that moment.
Andrew laughed easily. “Didn’t Katie explain it to you? We were just talking about how it should be part of our future plans. I mean, I want to go to med school and I won’t have time to get married yet. But I guess I brought it up because I want to make sure she stays by my side, you know what I mean?”
Chris nodded mutely, unable to focus on Celine anymore. He knew exactly what Andrew meant. He had believed Katie was the one constant thing he had in his life—till today.
“I was worried that if she doesn’t know I want to marry her, she might start wondering what my deal is once all the toxicity of med school begins. I have a pretty good idea it’s going to be one step above hell,” Andrew confided, seeming to lose interest in the play as well.
That was exactly what Chris hated about Andrew. He was such a nice guy. He would never have pined for someone else’s girlfriend. He would have moved on or something noble like that. But then again, a nagging thought kept popping up in his brain insisting that Katie was truly and rightfully his—she had always been. If only Andrew hadn’t gotten to her first. If only she had stayed home from the beach that summer and not met him. But he was being unfair again. Andrew had fallen in love with her first and she clearly loved him. And that was that. As Celine and the senior who played Maria started singing about raindrops on roses, Chris reached a decision. It wasn’t one he was happy with, but he decided that if he were to make a list of his favorite things, his friendship with Katie would definitely top that list. And if he had to force himself to let her go, then so be it.
Only A Kiss Page 7
