Still, that doesn’t mean I won’t even consider this. I ask you, “So, this guy, this ex-boyfriend of yours. How does he feel about you?”
“I think he really cares about me.”
“And how do you feel about him?”
You pause, but only for the briefest of seconds. “I’m still in love with him.”
“Then why did you leave in the first place?”
“I had to. But he hated me for it. Why couldn’t he have just understood I wasn’t ready?”
“Maybe he could respect that. But that didn’t change the fact that he loved you. Very much. That didn’t change the fact that you chose to walk away.”
“I was scared.”
“Everyone’s scared, Bettina.” I look her straight in the eye, daring her to blink or avoid my gaze. “But not everyone leaves.”
You shake your head at me sadly, and I immediately feel guilty—after everything you’ve put me through, I still cannot bring myself to hurt you. “Sorry,” I mutter. You shake your head again, this time to brush off my apology.
“Anyway, I talked to Eric last night,” you say. “He’s visiting for a couple of weeks, for his sister’s eighteenth birthday. I explained everything to him. I think he can forgive me.”
“Who’s Eric?”
“My ex-boyfriend.”
“Oh.”
You stare at me. “Oh? What does that mean?”
“I thought...” I thought what? I thought we were only speaking about it in the third person to be cute? I thought you were trying to get back together with me? I thought you were meeting up with me because you saw me last night and realized you’ve wanted me all this time?
Eric, the “brand-new boyfriend” from last night, was Swimming Champ, the ex who flew off to Switzerland to get away from you and your commitment issues, the one who wanted to marry you, the one you were heartbroken over when you first met me, the one I supposedly deleted out of the picture with the touch of a button. That’s why he seemed vaguely familiar.
You look even more embarrassed than I feel. “Lucas, come on. I wasn’t leading you on. I said I made a mistake with my ex. You and I, we were never... we were always just friends.”
“You think?” I snarl. I wish I weren’t so angry with you. I wish I could just shake my head and shake you out of my life.
You take my hand and my heart leaps to my throat. You tell me, “I know you think that nobody else will ever love me the way you can. I know you think you can love me so much more than he does.” I don’t like where this is going. I want to stop you from talking. You don’t really believe what you’re saying, do you? You know better, or at least you should. “But we’ve built a life together. I started loving him in high school, and I don’t think I ever stopped.”
But he was gone for months. He let you go. Doesn’t that discount everything else?
“I don’t want to start over from scratch,” you say. This registers in my mind as, “I don’t want to start over with you.”
“Just because he’s here doesn’t mean he came back for you,” I say. I hope this stings, I hope this makes you feel like you are dispensable and replaceable, unless you exhaust yourself by trying and trying and trying. I hope this makes you feel the way you make me feel.
“He might have,” you say. “We kept in touch the whole time; I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d want to protect me.” No, if I had known, I probably would have wanted to protect myself. “I’m following him to Switzerland. We’ll see how it goes from there. I’m here to say goodbye.”
Goodbye is a strange concept—if the person being left behind resents it and refuses to accept it, is it still goodbye, or simply a departure? I know now why you left. It wasn’t because of anything I said or did, or anything I didn’t say or didn’t do. It wasn’t my fault; perhaps, if I succumb to my unfailing instinct to be the bigger person, it wasn’t even yours, either. You left because I wasn’t a part of your past or your future—I was only a part of your present, and that wasn’t enough. You never saw me as anything else or anything more. You left because you could. And you’re leaving because you can.
I say, “I think you should go,” and this comes as a surprise to you. Your fingers, still grasping mine, carefully uncurl themselves until we are no longer touching. You nod, like you can comprehend that this meeting is not about your disclosure about you and Eric, but about me and this closure I am finally getting. You nod like you understand completely, and I’d like to believe you do.
As you stand up, I think, You are always finding ways to let me down. I am left with two empty cups and an empty chair and an empty silence—a silence that, if I fill up at the right time and in the right way, could result in something close to peace. You don’t look back. Minutes later, I get up, too.
If someone—a childhood friend, a college classmate—sees me now, coming out of this café with one hand in my pocket searching for my keys and the other shading my eyes against the harsh midday sun, he’d say he knew me, but maybe he wouldn’t quite remember how. He’d notice my hair is shorter, darker, and decide it suits me better. He’d see that I am dressed differently too, and it is a good different. I am not laughing, but he’d be able to tell that the way I smile has also changed. He wouldn’t be sure that I am perfectly happy—maybe I am, or maybe I’m not, or maybe I’m not yet—but he would say, with utter certainty, that I look like I am headed somewhere I am meant to be, towards somebody I am meant to be with. Behind me, the open door slowly swings shut, and stays closed until someone else comes along.
TABLE FOR TWO
1
Tonight is going to be a good night, or at least that’s what The Black Eyed Peas would like Mandy to believe. She isn’t the slightest bit convinced, at least not while she’s squished in the backseat of a black car between her cousin Gio and her friend Penny. Gio is Penny’s ex-boyfriend, and their unspoken tension reaches over Mandy and tries to grab at each other’s hair and clothes and throat. She wishes she could tell Penny to pull up her tube dress a bit—her lacey red bra is already peeking out, and her outfit has sped right past the boundary of sexy and straight into Slut City. She wishes she could tell Gio to stop talking about his new girlfriend Yas, who is, of course, gorgeous in a sophisticated, wholesome way Penny will never be. She wishes, more than anything, that she could go back in time and tell her college senior self that consoling a heartbroken Penny (then her seatmate in Theology class) by setting her up on a seemingly harmless date with Gio (who always made sure none of his strings were attached, and therefore made the perfect rebound guy) was a very, very bad idea. The driver cranks the stereo volume up, and Mandy wonders if this is his subtle way of helping ease her burden.
She is trying to remember why she even thought any good would come out of this night when her best friend Diane, completely plastered at nine-thirty PM, pipes up from the passenger seat, “You guys, thank you sooo much for bringing me to dinner tonight! This is the best birthday ever!”
“You’re welcome,” Mandy says, knowing this wasn’t anywhere close to being Diane’s best birthday ever—it was the five glasses of red wine talking, the five glasses of red wine she consumed with exactly three and a half pieces of ravioli in a span of two hours. Still, Mandy decides to humor her. “Why is this the best birthday ever?”
“Because! You’re all here! And I love you guys! To bits!” Diane yells, all those unnecessary exclamation points puncturing the air and temporarily replacing Gio and Penny’s animosity with amusement. Mandy can feel the tension deflating, and she wants Diane to keep filling the silence.
“Maybe we should stop for coffee first?” Mandy suggests. “And probably something to eat?”
“But I’m not sleepy!” Diane slurs. “Or hungry!”
“Yeah, but you’re like, really wasted,” Penny says.
“I’m not drunk!” Diane protests, whipping around to glare at Penny accusingly. “Tell her, Mandy! I’m not drunk! I’m not!”
“She’s not drunk,” Mandy tel
ls Penny, keeping a straight face. Gio snorts and presses his forehead to the window, his shoulders shaking.
“Why are you laughing, Gio?” Diane asks. “Do you think I’m funny? Do you like funny girls? You know, I bet Penny here is way funnier than Yas. You guys should get back together.”
“Oh, shut up,” Penny says, but she is smiling, almost pleasantly. She has been briefed about the situation: Earlier that night, after four glasses of wine, Diane turned to Mandy and said, “Hey, we should invite Penny to go clubbing with us later! I miss her! It’s been ages! We used to have so much fun in college!”
“But you already invited Gio, remember?” Mandy reminded her.
“Yeah, but Yas isn’t in town, so it won’t be weird!”
“Oh, trust me, it will be.”
Diane raised her hand to signal the waiter, who had been eavesdropping the whole time. He came over, looking thoroughly entertained. “Yes, Ma’am?”
Diane jabbed her finger at Mandy’s upper arm and told the waiter, “My best friend does not want me to have other friends! Is that selfish or what?!” The old couple at the other side of the restaurant turned to stare.
“That’s not true,” Mandy muttered, her cheeks burning.
Diane shoved her phone in Mandy’s face. “Call Penny, then! Tell her my car will be in front of her gate in ten minutes!”
“But we’re picking Gio up,” Mandy said. “He needs a ride, his car is in the shop.”
“So?!” Diane demanded. “What, you don’t think they can be in the same car? They’re grown-ups, Mandy! We all are!”
I’m not so sure about that, Mandy thought, but she took the phone and dialed Penny’s number anyway. Please don’t pick up, please be unavailable, please don’t say yes, she prayed, but Penny was eager to go out with them and even more eager to prove that she can be normal around Gio, never mind that a) after their first date, he dodged her hints and held off commitment for two years, b) he finally made things official three months ago but only managed to stay in the relationship for six weeks, c) he was spotted with someone new—some local celebrity whose career was going nowhere—the day after he broke up with her, and d) she probably wasn’t ready to hang out with him and was probably still at the stage where the only thing she wants to do is punch him in the face or dye all his preppy white polo shirts a scandalous shade of pink.
On Mandy’s right, Gio is still laughing; on her left, Penny is hissing, “Coffee! She needs coffee.”
“No coffee!” Diane interrupts. “I want to partayyy! Right now!” Mandy does not understand how she can possibly hear anything above the blaring music. Also, she does not understand how anyone, degree of intoxication notwithstanding, can pronounce party as partayyy.
“Okay,” Mandy says. “Party it is.”
2
Tonight is going to be a good night, or at least that’s what Lucas’s brother Franco would like him to believe. He isn’t the slightest bit convinced, at least not while Franco keeps blowing smoke in his face and checking out everything female within a fifteen-meter radius. It is ten PM, and the bar is starting to fill up with college students and twenty-somethings looking for great food, cheap drinks, and maybe someone adequately attractive to hook up with. Lucas and Franco have been sitting in a tiny corner booth since eight, and have already downed five beers each. Lucas thinks—knows—he’s had enough and is actually willing to call it a night regardless of how early it is. Franco wants to do tequila shots with a college girl (a freshman, presumably) who just walked in with her friends. “Come on, man,” Franco says. “I can’t go up to that chick alone. It’ll look sleazy. I need backup.”
“Oh, and it’s not sleazy to hit on someone who is not only jailbait, but could be a whole decade younger than you?” Lucas asks. Franco is twenty-seven, four and a half years older, and Lucas often wonders if it’s wrong to wish his older brother would set a better example than this. Lucas wonders if the problem is that he’s just not cool enough to keep up; for instance, tonight, he was planning to hole up in his room to finish writing a short story for a magazine, and Franco practically had to drag him out of the house.
“Lighten up,” Franco says. He is always telling Lucas to lighten up, and Lucas does not understand exactly what this means: does any form of debauchery count as lightening up, or is there a specific level one should be aiming for?
Lucas asks, “Aren’t you dating that girl you met here last week? Jenny? Ginny?”
“Janey,” Franco corrects. “Dating, yes. But casually. I’m not going to marry her.”
“I sure hope not. It would be kind of difficult to explain to your kids that you met their mother by getting her drunk and taking advantage of her.”
“I did not take advantage of her. She was sad. I was consoling her.”
“That’s what it’s called now? You should really stop consoling these girls.”
“Why?” Franco asks. “You should try it. That’s what makes me popular with the ladies.”
“No,” Lucas says. “That’s what makes you a man-whore.”
Franco regards Lucas with something close to pity. “Look at you. You’ve been a mess since Bettina ran off to Switzerland with her boyfriend. You used to be so much fun.”
“Seriously, Kuya,” Lucas says. “I’ve never been ‘so much fun.’ You should know.”
“Yeah, well, you used to be a bit more fun than this, my dear little brother,” Franco replies. “You work long hours at the office on weekdays, then you stay home on Friday and Saturday nights writing your stories. When you do leave the house, you bury your nose in a novel and park your butt in that deserted coffee shop for hours. You haven’t been on a date in a year—”
“Eleven months, technically,” Lucas interrupts.
“You haven’t been on a date in a year,” Franco repeats. “And you probably have a knitting set stashed in your room somewhere. Doesn’t being a...loner ever get exhausting?”
Lucas detects the pause before the word loner and thinks his brother should have gone right ahead and said loser, because that’s what most people thought he was anyway. But Lucas doesn’t care, because the way he saw it, falling in love and trying to make someone fall in love with you and working to stay in love and forcing yourself to fall out of love with someone who will never love you back is much, much more exhausting than being alone.
3
Mandy is sitting on a couch in a corner of the dark crowded club, sipping her Vanilla Rum carefully, trying to look like she’s having fun, or at least fitting in. Beside her, Gio knocks back one beer after another, taking breaks only to shovel forkfuls of lechon kawali into his mouth and make loud crunching noises audible over the headache-inducing hip-hop beat. Penny and Diane are dancing and laughing hysterically, and every two minutes, one of them announces to nobody in particular, “Ohmigod, I love this song!” Mandy catches a couple of guys eyeing Penny and Diane blatantly—they are tall and tan and scruffy in a way that looks calculated; they look like they drove red convertibles and went wakeboarding on weekends, and their arms are crossed in a manner that shows off their biceps beneath their tight shirts. They look like the kind of guys who always got what they wanted. Sure enough, the two guys—Mandy has nicknamed them Dude and Bro in her head—inch their way towards Penny and Diane to introduce themselves. Pretty soon, they are all dancing and laughing and shouting and touching, and Dude’s and Bro’s hands are everywhere. Mandy feels like throwing up, and she’s not even the one who’s been chugging alcohol all night long.
“Do something,” Mandy tells Gio.
“Why should I?” Gio asks, in between crunches. “They’re just dancing. Let them be. Better yet, join them. At least pretend you’re having a blast.”
“You’re useless,” Mandy says. Gio replies, “I know. Thank you.”
Mandy does not want to get up, go to the dance floor, and get to know Dude and Bro. She does not want to try to impress them with how pretty her smile is and how funny she can be, or with flirty small talk and a few s
uggestive comments. She does not want to try anything, but more importantly, she does not want to look like she’s trying. Her dad has made it clear that he does not want her making the first move on guys, no matter how small or subtle that move is. He told her, only once, but with enough purpose and force so that it is permanently etched in her memory, “I fell for your mom because she was absolutely not interested in me.” This, Mandy always hears at the back of her mind every time she is presented with a situation such as this one.
Diane comes over and drags her to her feet. The dancing seems to have sobered her up a bit, but she is grinning widely, too widely, and Mandy finds this suspicious. “One of the guys thinks you’re cute,” Diane informs her. “Penny called dibs on him, but I figure she’s just doing this to get a reaction out of Gio, so technically, he’s all yours.”
“Uh, no thanks,” Mandy says, trying to pull away. Diane digs her fingernails into Mandy’s wrist, refusing to let go. A two-minute tug-of-war ensues, until Penny, Dude, and Bro make their way towards them. Somehow, when the introductions have been made (she does not hear the guys’ real names) and everyone is seated, Mandy finds herself squished between Penny and Bro on the couch, and she does not know whether she prefers this to being squished between Penny and Gio in the backseat of the car. Diane and Dude are whispering and giggling on the other side of the couch, and Gio is pretending none of them exist.
Bro asks, “So, Mandy, what do you do?”
“You mean besides lurk in dark corners and will myself to be invisible?” Mandy says.
Bro takes this as flirting, and he grins at Mandy like he’s satisfied both with her for being so available and with himself for being so irresistible.
Table for Two Page 6
