His phone rings, and he holds it up to his ear and mutters, “Hi, Nikki, what’s up? Listen, I’m in the middle of something right now. I’ll call you later, okay? All right. Bye.” He hangs up and I study his face, searching for any sign of remorse. There is none.
“You should have said ‘I’m at the end of something,’ not ‘I’m in the middle of something.’ You don’t want Nikki to think you’re rejecting her, do you?” I don’t know why I’m angry. I don’t want to be angry. Anger, more than any other emotion, makes you lose control—I can’t afford to lose control right now. When I walk away from this café today, I won’t be a blubbering emotional wreck. I will be in charge of myself, the way I should be. I take a sip of my now-lukewarm latte. It is bitter and bland at the same time, and it seems to have lost its original flavor—it tasted different an hour ago. I want to spit it back out; I want to demand a refund.
“How many times do I have to tell you?” he asks. “There is nothing going on between me and Nikki. We went through the internship together, and now we’re going to be co-workers because she managed to impress my dad. It doesn’t have to mean anything more than that.”
But it does. Because Nikki is gorgeous and smart and talented. When I met her for the first time, she flashed me a friendly smile and said, “It’s great to finally meet you, Mandy. I’ve heard so much about you.” What exactly has she heard about me, and how many hours did she have to spend with my boyfriend to get this information? And how come Tristan never bothered to mention her before; why does she know “so much” about me while I have no ammunition against her whatsoever? I instantly disliked her.
This dislike quickly developed into something much more destructive, and eventually, I found myself weaving images of them together every time I sat at this table alone. In my head, they were holding hands, ducking into a dark theater, watching the sunset from the privacy of a parked car. In my head, they were blissfully unaware of the passing of time—seconds and minutes and hours flew by as long as they were spent with each other. In my head, he was so enamored with her that in his heart, his love for her displaced his love for me.
“It must have meant something when you invited her to your family dinner last night,” I say.
“I didn’t invite her,” he says. “My dad did.”
“That’s funny, I don’t recall anyone inviting me.”
“You had your own plans for dinner with your parents,” he tells me exasperatedly. “I couldn’t ask you to ditch them for me. Nikki had nobody to celebrate with. You know how her family situation is.” Yes, poor little rich girl Nikki, with her mommy traveling all over Asia as a no-longer-super-supermodel, desperately clinging to her dwindling glory, and her daddy living the bachelor’s life back here in Manila, going out with one twenty-something still-super-supermodel after another.
When I don’t speak, he says, “Don’t accuse me of cheating on you, Mandy. I have never cheated on you.” He doesn’t follow it up with, And I never will.
I say, “Don’t make me feel like it’s my fault I’m doubting you.”
“I never gave you a reason to doubt me.”
“You never gave me a reason to believe you, either.”
I can see the wheels in his head turning, trying to come up with a way to refute what I just said. He wants to pinpoint a specific instance and say, “Look, this is where I fought for you. Hard,” in the same way that I want to be able to say, “Look, this is where I fought for you. Harder and better.” We stay silent for a very long time, searching our memories for a sign that we did everything we could, that we weren’t giving up for nothing. But all we see are scattered changes, the gradual decline over the past year—we don’t know how we got here. This moment crept up on us while we were studying for final exams and composing cover letters and writing our resumés and looking forward to the future. And now this moment is here, shoving the past and the present right in front of us, and we must acknowledge it if we don’t want to risk putting our future on hold.
4
Last week, I failed my first job interview. When I walked out of the office, my toes pushing painfully against the tips of my shoes, sweat running down the back of my legs underneath my dark grey slacks, I knew. When I stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the ground floor, I knew that the sinking feeling inside me had nothing to do with the calculated falling of that concrete and steel box. I saw the look on the interviewer’s face when I told him I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do yet—I just needed work experience, something to keep me occupied while I tried to figure it all out. I understood what his tone meant when he said, “We’ll get in touch with you,” without mentioning when and how; I understood what his firm grip meant as we shook hands.
I knew, so I called Tristan and asked him to meet me for lunch. “Stay there,” he told me. “I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes.” I sat on the couch in the lobby and waited. And waited. And waited. I walked over to the vending machine, fumbled for change in my purse, and unwrapped a pack of crackers with my shaking hands. I stuffed everything into my mouth in less than a minute—I had been too frazzled to eat breakfast, and it was already two-thirty. At ten minutes past three, his car pulled up in front of the building, and he opened the window and waved at me cheerfully. He was holding up a sandwich and a plastic bottle of orange juice for me. As I moved closer, I noticed the corners of his mouth were smeared with yellow—mustard, maybe, or curry sauce. He was smiling.
He reminds me now, “I gave you your yellow daisies,” and I reply, “Yes, you did, three years ago.” He feels the weight of this statement, the disappointment in my stare, and says, “I don’t even know why you’re so mad at me. I’m not doing anything to you.”
I look at him and see that he has come empty-handed, with no envelopes or documents of his own. We agreed to spend this day discussing potential jobs for me and alternative ones for him. We agreed he would keep his options open, that he wouldn’t automatically accept the position his father has conveniently laid out for him. I look at him stirring his coffee, avoiding my eyes, and realize that he’s right: he’s not doing anything to me. Because none of this—his new girl, his new friends, his brand new life, bright and shiny with breezy possibility—has anything at all to do with me.
Two years from now, we will sit across from each other in this exact same spot, and he will finally say, “I’m sorry I was always late,” to which I will just shrug in response. He will be happy, having resigned from his dad’s company and having been offered a job in Singapore, where he will be living independently. He will be single, having survived a split with Nikki, and he will swear to me that we were over before they started seeing each other. By then, it wouldn’t matter.
He will be on time, and I will come in a few minutes late, breathless and apologetic. I will be happy, too, with a flourishing writing career and a homey bookstore for children and teenagers about to start running. I will invite him to the opening, and he will thank me and promise to be there. I will be dating a sweet guy who never keeps me waiting. Life will be wonderful.
Two years from now, we will both be right where we want to be. And I will want to ask him this: “If we had remained within each other’s realities—if only we were strong and patient enough; if we tried a bit harder, stayed a bit longer, grew up a bit faster, blocked off the pain a bit better—when we finally got our ducks in a row, do you think it would have worked out between us?” I will want to ask him this, but I won’t get the chance to, because he will lean in for a hug and his chin will linger awkwardly on my shoulder for a few seconds. I will not want to ruin the tenderness of it all with words, but I will have to pull away, explaining that I have an appointment to catch. He will repeat, “I’m sorry I was always late,” and I will smile and tell him, “I think the problem is that you came too early.” And we will both know that when we walk away from each other, we will not regret having loved one another, once upon a time.
But at this moment, this love—our love—is twistin
g and turning and inevitably taking the shape of hate, and we must do something to make it stop, keep it in place, protect it until it is safe enough to bring out into the open again. At this moment, we are young and we are fresh, and there is still so much, too much, that needs to be done.
We raise our cups to our lips at the same time, and as our eyes meet over the stained white rims, reflecting the faint light from the oblivious outside world, we understand.
TIMEOUT
1
My brother tells me I should stop dating all these losers.
He says this with his quiet, commanding confidence, stating it like a fact, the way he tells me to stop buying pirated DVDs, and stop going on crash diets, and stop spending too much money on books I don’t even have time to read and high-heeled shoes I’m not even graceful enough to walk in. He says this in a way that makes me feel ashamed of myself, like I should have known better. Charles is eighteen and a college sophomore, seven years younger than me.
He tells me to stop dating all these losers, and holds a hand up to silence me when I protest that I am not dating them, that these guys are just my friends, and that, no, they are not losers, they’re just confused and having a hard time finding themselves. He looks at me like I am crazy or in denial, whichever’s worse, and maybe I am. He tells me to stop making excuses, and I begin to protest again but realize that yes, making excuses is exactly what I’ve been doing all along.
Jack, my best friend since puberty, is probably the person I make the most excuses for. We are Jack and Jill, literally, and we go up every hill together, even when I have far better things to do than come tumbling after him. We were seatmates in grade seven, and I let him copy off my test papers because he was cute; his skin was smooth when all the other boys had acne, and he had long lashes and a dimple on his left cheek. And then we became best friends, and his cuteness stopped being a factor, the way a very pretty girl becomes normal when you get to talk to her up close, see her pores beneath her makeup, and maybe notice that her eyebrows need grooming. But something else took over—he had the ability to make me feel distinctly important. His charm lies in his helplessness, and over the years, we have developed a mutual need for each other: I rescue him from whatever mishap he finds himself entangled in (a project he has to cram, a breakup, a crashed laptop or a conked out phone, an ex’s party he has no date for), and he allows me to be the hero, showers me with gratitude, and promises to make it up to me. Which, of course, he never does.
Next on the list is Kevin, the king of grand gestures, who thinks surprises and home-cooked dinners and chocolate fountains and shiny things all wrapped up in fancy paper can distract me from the times he forgets to call, or texts me a message for another girl. There’s Aaron, a college blockmate, whose idea of a date is letting me tag along to an evening of canned sisig and Gin-Pom with his male buddies. There’s also Sean, who lies about everything from his age (he told me he was twenty-three but eventually admitted he was twenty), to his smoking (he says he hasn’t touched a stick in years but I catch a whiff of cigarettes every time he leans in for a hug), to his curfew (he says he’s too old for one but always has an excuse to leave before twelve).
And then there’s Robbie. I met him on a blind date two years ago, while we were both reeling from a breakup. We talked about our exes, compared notes, complained about the unfairness of it all. Occasionally, he’d call and invite me to “hang out”—catch a late movie or go for a round of drinks. We always went dutch; he never offered otherwise. On nights when we’d stumble back to the nearly-deserted parking lot after downing our Jagermeister shots in record time, our shoulders would brush against each other, or he’d put an arm around my waist to steady me, and I’d imagine something there—a spark, a connection, a sign that there could be something more. But on the way home, neither of us would speak, and the silence and the darkness and the fact that we were both considerably drunk and emotionally vulnerable would mean nothing to him.
Still, I glare at Charles and say, “Who are you, my father?” And he tells me, “Don’t flatter yourself too much. Dad doesn’t care about your love life half as much as I do.” He is right about this. Since he got fired from his teaching position last year (he wrote a short story for the special faculty issue of the university’s literary portfolio and “accidentally” forgot to cite his “inspiration”; five paragraphs were lifted, word for word, off a Japanese professor’s online journal), our father has been too busy being a bum to care about anyone. He has game shows to watch, and deep-fried food to consume, and bottles of beer to drown himself in. His two children will just have to stay out of the way.
I ask, “Then why do you care?” He answers, “Because nobody else will.” He is right about this, too. Our mother has been too engrossed attending to our father and making sure he doesn’t get into any more trouble. My friends are preoccupied with their high-powered careers, with jobs that require them to wear blazers and pencil skirts to work and allow them to travel abroad every month and/or show off a flashy new gadget every other week. My co-teachers at Centerstage Preschool are all happy with their responsible, mature husbands, and as Bridget Jones’s Smug Married observation goes, may judge me for constantly collecting irresponsible, immature anti-husbands without coming close to selecting. My students, obviously, are at least a decade too young to understand.
“But what do I have to gain by not dating?” I ask him. I seriously want to know—if giving up dating has some sort of hidden benefit that could possibly change my life, then I would be willing to be completely single in a heartbeat.
“What do you have to lose?” Charles replies. I am annoyed. He is always doing this, answering my valid questions with rhetorical ones, the way wise old mentors (like Dumbledore, or Yoda) often do when they are subtly trying to prove that you are being a birdbrain. I want to point out that he is seven years younger than me, and that when we were little, I dressed him in frilly pink lace frocks and called him Charlene, with his consent. But then he’d probably just stand up so he could tower intimidatingly over me, or push up his sleeves to show off his unmistakably masculine muscles.
“Ha, ha,” I say, though I didn’t think it was funny at all. He reminds me that he’d be leaving for our tita’s house in Bohol for the summer, and that he wouldn’t be around to watch over me. He says this like I require watching over, and I don’t know when he stopped seeing me as a big sister and started seeing me as this passive, pathetic person.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll give it a try. No dates for one month.”
“Three,” he declares. “Might as well aim high.”
“Are you crazy?” I shake my head. “No way. Six weeks.”
“Seven.”
“Six and a half?”
“Two months.” He holds my gaze. “I dare you.”
I blink. “Okay. Two months. But if I die an old maid, alone and lonely and angry at the world, I hope it will be clear to you that it will have been entirely your fault.”
He nods. “No problem.” He is wrong, of course. There are, in fact, many present and pending problems, but perhaps neither of us needs to be reminded right now.
2
“So I have news,” I tell Jack. He dunks a huge piece of his ham and cheese sandwich into his coffee and stuffs it into his mouth. I make a face and look around at the almost empty café. Sometimes I wonder if this place is invisible, if Jack and I, along with a handful of other people, are the only ones who can see it. Sometimes I wonder if this secret shop is the only real thing we have left in common.
“Shoot,” he says.
“I’m taking a timeout from dating. For the entire summer.”
“What are you, five?” he asks. “You teach preschool, but you’re not in preschool, Jill. You don’t need a timeout.”
“Yes, I do,” I insist.
“Says who? Charles? Why are you even listening to him? He’s in college.” He says this like it’s a bad thing. “All he has on his mind are the three Bs: basketball, booze, and boo
bs.”
“Hey,” I say, trying not to sound defensive. “Charles happens to make a lot of sense. And I always tell my students, if you’re not ready to do something yet, like listen to a story or pick up your toys, you take a timeout. Maybe I’m not ready to continue all this pointless dating.”
Jack laughs. “Dude, you know I love you, but you’re acting really weird right now.”
I look at him. “Jack. Seriously. How many times have I been supportive of you, even when you were totally being an idiot?”
The answer, and he knows this very well, is many, many times. I know this isn’t exactly fair—I shouldn’t expect him to be as patient and generous with me as I am with him. It’s not his fault I’m always sympathetic and available and willing to run to his side. But surprisingly, he shrugs, giving in. “Okay. You have my full support.” And then, after a five-second pause: “Are you sure this is going to work?”
“No,” I tell him. “But I can’t not try.”
Guys are so easy to drive out of your life, especially when their interest in you has mostly been sustained by your blind, naive, hopelessly hopeful interest in them. Kevin, Aaron, and Sean weren’t difficult to get rid of at all—it only took a couple of instances of I can’t have dinner, and maybe one Sorry, I’m busy. If anything, I guess they disappeared on their own; their absence has been waiting to happen for a long time, postponed by my persistent belief that they could change, or that they could love me, or that they were just keeping their feelings hidden beneath the surface, waiting to be discovered and nurtured.
Robbie was a bit trickier. He wanted to know why I couldn’t meet up with him, why I was busy. He asked whether I was avoiding him, and seemed to take offense at my unavailability. So I had to tell him the truth: that I wasn’t dating anymore, that it was no longer just a stupid dare from my brother. I had to tell him that I liked having more time for myself, more time to sit and write and think, and less time being kept on my toes, always wanting to impress. I had to tell him, “I can’t keep settling for the way you make me feel.” I meant you as in boys in general, boys who never ask me out properly for proper dates and think it’s okay to leave me hanging while they go and “find themselves” or “figure it all out.” But he probably understood it as you as in him, specifically, because he sounded hurt when he asked, “Why, how do I make you feel?” Small and second-rate and insignificant, I thought, but didn’t say it out loud. Eventually, he disappeared, too.
Table for Two Page 2
