Done texting, he set his phone down between us. “Not sure what it is, really, but one date I brought to a group dinner actually said after that she didn’t want to hang out with my friends anymore.”
“Shit. What did Geraldine do?”
“I’m not sure. She didn’t even want to admit it, but I got Geraldine’s name out of her at least. It didn’t work out with her eventually.”
“Obviously.”
He laughed. “Obviously.”
“Thad texted.” It was out before I knew it.
“Just now? And?”
“Nothing. Just asking me how I am.”
Damon rolled his eyes. “Are you enjoying this?”
“Enjoying what?”
“How he obviously wants to get into your pants even more, now that he can’t.”
“You think that?” As horrible and mean as Damon’s statement was, I didn’t exactly rush to deny it.
“And you’re enjoying it.”
I sighed. “Maybe a little. But we were friends. This was how we talked when we were friendly.”
“This was how you talked when you were friends who wanted to fuck.” Damon pushed himself off the couch and tossed the magazine back on the rack in front of him. “But hey, if you get something out of it…”
“Let’s invite them to the musical,” I said. “Him and his wife. She’s into that. He’ll go because she’ll want to. When is it?”
“Friday night.”
“Yeah. Right? We’ll be together, and Geraldine and Thad will cry bitter, bitter tears.”
Damon was about to say something else, probably something with more profanity, but then my mother called us into the dining room. I saw him smile at her, the kind of smile you give your girlfriend’s mother, and say politely that we were heading right out. He reached for my hand and pulled me up from the couch, and into what could have looked like an embrace.
“You can invite them. We’ll do what you want,” he said, his voice low. “This is what you want?”
I nodded. “Bitter tears. I want them to cry bitter tears, Damon.”
Chapter 12
On nights I didn’t spend sleeping over at Damon’s place, and that was still the majority of days, I endured the metro and its gazillion people on the way to and from work. I was working for a cool enough company that I didn’t need to clock in at a certain time, but I did want to be at work before noon, and still tried to make it home before the streets emptied, and the monsters and criminals came out looking for targets.
The reasonable next step was to find a place near the office. I could afford it, if I didn’t mind sharing the space, or if I made do with the tiniest one I could find. I knew I should seriously consider it; the beating I was giving my body on the commute each day (two and a half hours on average, combined) was going to wear me down eventually. But I was used to it, because I had always lived in that house in that isolated little village. It took an insane amount of time to get to civilization, no matter where I needed to go.
Which was one reason why staying over at Damon’s was so easy to say yes to now, even on a work day. I mean, it had all my morning ritual stuff. Anything else I didn’t have and needed, I could get across the street. I’d actually sit down with him and have breakfast like a normal person, instead of rushing out and getting by on takeout coffee. Then I’d have a ride, and be dropped off right at my building.
When I thought about this sometimes I’d feel a stab of guilt, and hear thoughts in Manang Julie’s voice about how I shouldn’t use people.
We weren’t that, Damon and I, but I could see why someone else would think so. We didn’t exactly set a precedent of good, socially acceptable behavior.
Still, that did make me stand at the godawful shuttle line with purpose, as if enduring this inconvenience was a statement. No, I didn’t need to sleep over at Damon’s every time. This thirty-minute wait for an hour-long cramped ride, the bumpy tricycle ride that would follow, and then the ten-minute walk after that, was easy. I could do this. There was a lot to do anyway, during this epic waste of time. Like check Twitter. Reply to my creative director’s email. Pay my bills through the nifty app.
I didn’t need anything to make it easier.
“Andrea?”
The rules of the shuttle line: Keep to yourself. Stay in your personal bubble, and don’t step too close to the others, unless you want to get raged on right when everyone just wants to go home. I recognized most people in this line at this time by now, but I never talked to them, and they didn’t talk to me.
But this was a voice that was from another part of my life, not the shuttle line.
“Thad,” I said, pulling the earbud out, interrupting my new playlist. “What are you doing here?”
My shuttle stop was across the street from a mall, and that was where he pointed. “Had a meeting, and was walking back to my car. Do you need a ride?”
I shook my head. “I’m good.”
Thad stepped back and observed my place in line. There were over a dozen people ahead of me; even if a shuttle came right this minute, I probably wouldn’t be able to get a seat.
“Come on,” Thad said. “I’ve already had dinner. Will just drive you home. It’s not out of the way.”
He didn’t have to say that. My home was out of everyone’s way.
But...fine.
I stepped out of my place and started walking with Thad.
My friend Thad.
***
Every guy I had ever cared about had been ridiculously good-looking. I hate to make it about how someone looks, but “every guy I cared about” had been someone I asked out. So there had to have been that connection first, eye to face, before I got to know him more and liked what I learned.
Thad was a little different in that he may have actually grown up not knowing he was handsome. Imagining him as a model or actor would have been a stretch, but he was always the most good-looking guy in any room. There was no vanity in the way he dressed, acted, did his hair. He lured you in with a smile and great conversation, and that was how he got me, eventually.
I know that it’s easy to root for the friends who fall in love. The companionship is there. You can imagine being old and wrinkled together, debating politics, current events, what to have for breakfast. It was legitimately scary for me to even attempt anything with Thad because when we were good together, it already felt like we were us. Committed.
And now we were nothing.
Thad was making an effort, and I enjoyed his restrained desperation a lot more than I should.
“Your sister used to line up there,” he was saying, as we began our first car ride together since that weekend. “That shuttle terminal. I’d see her when I had meetings here. You’re not moving out of your place?”
I shook my head. “I’m still thinking about it.”
It was a different car. At some point Thad had upgraded, and this one wasn’t just new, but felt all different. No mints underneath the music player. No receipts tucked into every nook and cranny. Bigger car, roomier interiors, feminine knickknacks here and there, none that were mine.
I pushed my back against the seat, Naomi’s seat, and took a deep breath.
“How are you, Thad?” I asked.
It was out of nowhere. He was talking about something else entirely, and had to stop to check if I was asking what he really thought I was asking.
“Andrea,” he said, and his voice dropped that facade of casual. “Thank you for trying to forgive me.”
Shit. But I haven’t. I’m not.
“I still feel guilty about how I talked to you. I was an ass. I thought I was explaining something that we’d both want, but...I don’t know. Did I? You disappeared.”
I swallowed my feelings. Something we’d both want...He thought I wanted a one-night stand. With my friend. Because that was what I did? I went out with guys. Sometimes I slept with them. They didn’t become my boyfriends, not all of them.
There were two ways I could play this.
Say exactly what he wanted me to say—that he was a weekend curiosity and nothing more, congratulations on married life, he dodged a bullet by settling down with someone else because there was nothing but drama ahead with me.
Or I could tell the truth. Because I wanted him to feel it.
“Thad, I’m sorry I didn’t go to your wedding,” I said. “I couldn’t because at the time, I loved you. And not just as a friend, whatever you think ‘love as a friend’ means. When we spent that weekend together I was in love with you, and I was heartbroken when you didn’t want to see me again in that way anymore. So I couldn’t go to your wedding. Or continue to hang out with you and your wife right after.”
Oh wow. That felt good.
If I wanted him to be saddened I must have gotten my wish. His face was...he was stricken. In pain. Close to tears. And we were just on Ayala Avenue and probably had more than an hour of this car ride to go.
“I did love you too,” Thad said.
“Then why?”
“Because I thought you were going to leave me,” he said. “You were never someone’s girlfriend for longer than a few months.”
I shrugged. “I don’t stay if I don’t want to anymore.”
“I didn’t want to be that guy,” Thad said. “I didn’t want to be the guy who’d be your ex two months later. I told you this, Andrea. That was going to fuck me up.”
I remembered this, sharply, like it was happening again. “I said you weren’t going to be.”
“How can we know that? I didn’t. But you know me. I was going to want you to work it out with me, even if you didn’t want me anymore.”
Based on what, his two past relationships that lasted more than a year? The ones that ended bitterly, with fighting, with “working it out” only to quit in the end? It gave him the experience of twice failing, in my opinion.
And I didn’t just forget about him, as it turned out. As recent as my sister’s wedding, I was bitter about his.
“The point is, Thad, you were wrong. I loved you a lot longer than you thought I would, even after you broke my heart. But that’s it, and it’s in the past. You needed me to forgive you for what?”
He let out a ragged breath. “I don’t even know anymore.”
Bet he was wishing he hadn’t offered me a ride. This was too heavy for a Tuesday night.
“But...you’re happy?” he said. “With him.”
What kind of answer do you want? I wondered. That I’m all right, and you didn’t damage me that badly? Or that I love you still, and this handsome man is only around so I can save face?
Whatever. Let’s just go with the truth again.
“I really like Damon,” I said. “He’s great. I think it helps that he didn’t know me from before. He doesn’t make dangerous assumptions about me and what he thinks I’ll do.”
“Am I wrong then? Would you and I have worked? You insist I’m not just a one-night stand to you, Andrea, but I wouldn’t have settled for one month or one year.”
Fuck that. I didn’t know. I would have tried, though.
He denied me the chance to even try, and that was why I was angry. For so long.
“It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “You did things. I did things. This is arguing over nothing. Are you happy though? You found someone who said she’d be with you always, and means it. How’s that working out for you?”
I made it sound like a dare. His look was, in response, almost a glare.
“It’s good,” Thad said. “We’re good.”
Were they? I searched his face, trying to look for signs of him lying, pretending, covering something up. I used to be able to tell. But lying about the old things, like “I was on my way but there was an accident along EDSA I promise,” was different from this. This had stakes. This actually meant something. Admitting he wasn’t happy, right here and now, was a truth bomb.
“You’re happy?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Well then. Want to watch a musical with us? Bring Naomi, of course. She loves that kind of thing, right?”
Chapter 13
Thad was happy. I was happy. We were all disgustingly happy bunnies. And we were going to prove it.
“You are insanely handsome right now,” I told Damon, after that final crosswalk. We walked that Friday after work in our nice clothes, ready for our night at the theater. “More than usual. It’s actually hard to look at you.”
I didn’t have to bend the truth, even a little. The word “perfection” popped into my head the moment I first laid eyes on him. It was a wedding, and everyone brought their A game to a wedding. Obviously this night was one of those times too, because he knew what this was about.
And Geraldine’s going to be here.
Was that jealousy? Shit. Served me right though.
But that wasn’t what this was about.
“You like this shirt, is what that means,” Damon said, pulling me up to the sidewalk and turning me around. “You said it looked great the first time you saw it.”
Did I? Right, but not on him. The blue button-down shirt caught my eye when I was looking at his clothes closet one time. I touched it, and remembered the fabric feeling lush. Now I touched the fabric of the shirt again, pushing toward his abs. “Is it tailored?”
He shook his head.
I growled a little. “It looks like it was wrapped around your body and then sewed on. It’s perfect. It makes me want you out of it now.”
And that was exactly what I was thinking, too.
His response was to pull me up into a kiss, one that had too much tongue for outdoor sidewalk action. When he finally let me go we were both laughing, the kind that lingered for a while as we walked together.
The theater was inside a mall and as we went in past the guards at the entrance, I felt myself tense up. Ready for battle. If Damon was doing the same I didn’t notice, because nothing changed in the way he had an arm around my waist, and how he pulled me toward him, as if telling me I should relax.
An escalator up, and we were at the foyer of the theater area.
Geraldine was already there. She looked like she was claiming tickets from a reception area. She looked long and lean in all black, a tailored outfit I was sure of it, down to the perfect hems of her pants.
Then it was his turn. I felt Damon react, the tiniest bit, by taking a breath that I could hear. I snuggled into him, remembering that I had to play a role too. When we set this up we kept talking about me, what Damon would do, what Thad would see...but there was this too.
“You okay?” I whispered.
“Of course,” Damon said. “Game on.”
I wondered if he was as honest with me as I felt I could be with him. He never said he still wanted her, but he didn’t have to. I understood why he would. But why wouldn’t he just say so?
Game on, then.
***
“Malt balls?”
“No, thank you.”
Of course not. No added sugar for Geraldine Javier.
This was my idea, wasn’t it? God, save me from my genius. Maybe my sister was right.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way, but somehow Thad and Damon were somewhere else, and Shayla was running late. It was only ten minutes maximum, but while we waited at the foyer for the show to start, I managed to get myself alone with Geraldine and Naomi.
The silence was thick, and deliberate. From the way they looked each other over, the polite but tight smiles, it was obvious that they judged, and mutually thought “no way.” I was left there with the feeble connection to both, not that I wanted to use it.
But I wasn’t afraid of a little awkwardness. It was why I bought a pack of chocolate malt balls from the theater’s snack bar and started popping them into my mouth. Right in front of them, and even offered to share.
“So what do you do again, Naomi?” I asked. “I’m sorry if you told me and I forgot.”
“Marketing,” she said. “I used to work with Thad.”
Right. How they met
. Weeks after he had decided he was done with me, she started working in his office, and that was their beginning. I could tell that she wasn’t yet as comfortable with me as she was with the others. I doubt that Thad told her our history, so the unease was just her intuition. She should trust it more; it was dead right. I had loved her husband, and he had loved me. So very recently.
Awkward.
“I need to go to the rest room,” Naomi said, giving up on this charade after a few minutes of civil conversation.
That left me with Geraldine, and my malt balls.
She had been on her phone throughout my talk with Naomi, but now I had her attention. “It’s nice to see you again,” she said.
Her hair was up in a ponytail. Not an ordinary ponytail; a lock of her hair was wound around the ponytail holder, so it was hidden. As if her hair went up and twisted around like that without help, like magic.
“Thanks for getting us the tickets,” I answered.
“Oh, it’s no problem. Dames and I do this a lot,” Geraldine said, dropping that nickname again, establishing where she had been before me. “How are Julie and Anton?”
“They’re great. In love like bunnies.”
“That’s so good to hear. I was always rooting for Anton, you know,” she said. “It’s great that he found someone he considers the one. I thought it was sad, the way he had nobody for so long.”
Now, wait one second. It wasn’t that Anton “had nobody.” I didn’t know everything about their relationship but it was silly to assume that this guy who had a busy life and all these friends was a sad lonely soul waiting for someone to rescue him. He sure didn’t act like that. My sister wouldn’t have wanted herself described that way either.
But Geraldine was now talking about something else, and I didn’t get to come up with a way to set her straight. Something about the musical, that their friend was producing.
“She’s into this, always producing plays and musicals. It’s why we get to watch all the time. Dames is a good sport and lets himself get dragged along. He never takes his girls to the theater though.”
What You Wanted Page 7
