But Chrissy is practically pushing me to go and demand an explanation, and I guess I do want to hear whatever excuse Jaime manages to come up with. I walk towards them, steeling myself for a confrontation I’m not even sure I should be taking a risk for.
Rule number 7:
Know where it all ends.
“Hello, Jaime,” I say. Jaime glances tentatively at Olivia, trying to gauge her reaction to my greeting, but she is looking across the room, waving at someone. She says, “I’ll be right back,” both to me and to Jaime, but she says it to him with a quick but possessive kiss on the lips, and to me with a sneer that tells me I am not someone she considers a threat. She leaves me alone with Jaime, and this unnerves me because I don’t want to be the kind of girl you can feel secure leaving your boyfriend with just like that—I want to be the girl your boyfriend dated and never quite forgot, the girl your boyfriend can’t seem to completely get over.
“Hi,” he says, digging his hands into his pockets and shuffling his feet. He looks like he isn’t ready to have this conversation with me, and I almost feel sorry for him.
“So,” I start. “You and Olivia?”
He nods. “I wanted to tell you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t think you’d care.” He looks at me, as if to remind me that I was the one who wanted to stop dating, who wanted to “just be friends,” who wanted to cut short whatever we had. He is trying to cover up the fact that he is here with Olivia with the fact that I could have been the one who led him right back to her, and from an entirely objective point of view, he was right: this is my fault, and I have no right at all to be hurt.
But that doesn’t change the fact that he is here with Olivia, and that I am hurt. He probably realizes this, because he touches my arm and asks me, “You want to talk outside?”
“Olivia will be looking for you,” I tell him.
“We won’t be gone long,” he says. He opens the door and steps out, and I follow him. Outside, the ground is damp and the windshields of cars have traces of raindrops on them—remnants of the heavy downpour a few hours ago. A group of scruffy-looking artists loiters on the sidewalk, smoking, their bursts of laughter puncturing the quiet evening air. Jaime and I stand close to each other, our arms across our chests and avoiding each other’s eyes, letting the seconds and minutes go by before we decide to speak.
“I think you should—,” we say at the same time. Despite myself, I smile. “You first,” I tell him.
“No, you first,” he insists.
I take a deep breath, gathering my thoughts. “I think you should seriously re-consider your relationship with Olivia. I mean, I know you think you guys belong together because you keep finding ways to get back together. But maybe it’s the other way around, maybe you are completely wrong for each other because you also keep breaking up. There must be a reason why it’s always happening, right?” I am trying to convince both him and myself that this is true, because either one of us believing this would make all the difference in the world. I am doing this because if he and Olivia don’t belong with each other, then perhaps this is a sign that WE do. I am admitting to myself, at this moment, that I did not come up to him to ask for an explanation—I came up to him to act on the remote possibility that I might be able to win him back.
“But she loves me,” he says. The way he says it is so simple and sure, like it has always been the truth and will always be the truth. I try to see things from his perspective: Olivia is someone he has history with, someone who has known him forever, someone who always makes her way back into his life somehow. She will accept him with open arms no matter how many times he screws things up, no matter how many times they leave each other for someone else. Olivia’s presence in his life is persistent and permanent; and maybe to him, this is enough to discount all their incompatibilities, all the little things that make them stop working.
“I know,” I say. And I do. It is not hard to see that no matter what I tell him, in his mind, Olivia will always be the girl who will need him the most, and everyone else will just be peripheral. It is not hard to see that she will always be The One For Him, and I will always just be part of “everyone else.” It is not hard to see that when he tells Olivia he loves her, she probably says I love you, too, and not, I can’t.
It is not hard to see that this can all be traced back to me, to that moment when I refused to give us a chance. It is not hard to see that the opportunity was right there, too obvious to be missed. It is not hard to see that we did feel something special for each other. It is not hard to see that, if I truly wanted to, I could have turned our emotions into an actual decision. It is not hard to see that I had a choice, and I chose to let us just pass each other by.
Because there is always a choice. We make hundreds of choices every single day; every moment is a choice—wake up or sleep for five more minutes, sit down for breakfast or skip it, slow down or speed up, listen in class or daydream, study or procrastinate, take an active risk or leave it all to fate. I made a choice to let Jaime get away, and he made a choice to go back to her. I could have made the choice that would have made him stay, but I didn’t.
“Your turn,” I tell him. “You think I should what?”
“No, never mind,” he says.
“No, really, tell me. I want to hear it.”
“Okay,” he says. “I think you should just forget about everything that happened.”
Ouch. Although he did have a point—really, what else is there to do?
“I’m sorry,” he continues. “You and Anna probably think I’m this huge jerk.”
“What I don’t get,” I say, “Is why you have to drag other people into the picture. Fine, you and Olivia have your weird on-off thing going on. But why do you always have to have another girl immediately after her? Are you just trying to make her jealous? Because that would be really fucked up.”
“No,” he says. “I’m not trying to make her jealous. I don’t know, Rickie, I think every time I start something with someone, I always want to believe it would work. And I try my best to make it work, I swear. But it never does.”
“Did you believe it would work with me?” I ask.
“Of course,” he replies. “I felt something for you, and I know you felt something for me, too. But you didn’t want to acknowledge it. Maybe you didn’t want it to be just you and me, maybe you wanted to explore your other options. And I understand how that feels. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t be so attached to Olivia. If it were up to me, I would have found someone else a long time ago. I don’t like being tied down to her like this, but...”
“She loves you,” I finish for him. It seems we can’t quite reiterate this reality enough.
“She does,” he says. “And I guess I love her for it.” I want to believe that he says this reluctantly and apologetically, but he doesn’t.
“We should go back in,” I tell him. You should go back to her.
There is always a choice. And he chooses Olivia, every single time. It occurs to me that this very moment is a choice. We can stay out here, talking, pausing to breathe the cold evening air in as the world spins on around us. We can even take off, right now, leave everything and everyone behind for a few hours. We can make a choice; we can make this choice, together.
He nods. “We should. And Rickie?”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t mean to call you cheap.” “It’s okay,” I say. “I mean, of course it’s not okay, ‘cause you shouldn’t go around calling people cheap, but just... it’s over. And you’re right, let’s just forget about everything.”
He takes a step toward me and hugs me. It feels like a very long time before he pulls away, although I’m sure it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. We walk towards the entrance to the bar, and he smiles sadly, his face showing the slightest tinge of hesitation, before he opens the door for me.
When Bryan drops me off at two AM, a car is parked outside our house, and I recognize it as T
immy’s. Lexi steps out from the passenger side, and Timmy drives away. She texted me at twelve-thirty to ask where I was, and I replied with a pilosopo “Out.” She makes her way toward me now, looking murderous. “Hi, Lexi!” Bryan calls out, and she gives him a forced smile and says in a formal voice that shows how she is not amused, “Thanks for bringing Ericka home. Goodnight, Bryan.” Bryan shrugs, calls out a goodbye to me, and speeds off.
“How were you planning to get in?” she asks me. “You don’t have keys, remember?” Well, now I remember—Mom and Dad took them from me so I wouldn’t be able to sneak in after curfew.
“I don’t know, I’ll ring the bell,” I say.
“And wake up Mom and Dad in the process?” she asks. “Sometimes I wonder if your selfishness comes naturally, or if you actually have to work on it. Timmy and I have been parked here for almost half an hour, waiting for you.”
“Really?” I retort. “You were waiting? Not making out inside the car?”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” she snaps. And then she notices my bloodshot eyes and the way I am sniffling and asks, “Hey, what happened tonight? Are you okay?”
“No,” I reply curtly.
She doesn’t ask why. Instead, she takes out her keys and opens the gate and the front door as carefully as she can. We trudge up the stairs towards our bedrooms quietly. Before I close my door, she hugs me awkwardly. “It’ll be okay,” she whispers, and for a moment there, I actually believe her. But you know how when you’re upset and trying to hold back the tears, a hug from someone is the last straw, the very thing that will make you cry (or in my case, cry again—I was bawling the entire ride home)? I didn’t want to cry in front of her. “It’ll be okay,” she tells me again. I pull away abruptly and say, “Yeah, well, whatever,” before locking my bedroom door behind me and leaving her alone in the dark hallway.
Rule number 8:
Be open to finding yourself.
Lexi hands me a garbage bag and I stuff in my half-eaten burger and the almost full plastic cup of Coke whose straw I have been chewing on for the last fifteen minutes. She gives me a weird look. “You’re done? Why are you not eating anything?” she asks me.
“Because I don’t feel like eating,” I mutter. I put my headphones back on to drown out her questions and continue staring out the window. It is the next morning, and my family and I are on our way to my tito’s rest house in Baguio to celebrate Lexi’s birthday weekend. We do this every year, and I have never been a fan of this tradition because I know it wasn’t created for me (my birthdays are usually just celebrated with dinner at a fancy resto in Manila). I woke up at the crack of dawn to the sound of my mom’s voice telling me to pack my stuff and get dressed. I had forgotten about Lexi’s birthday, and I sat up disoriented and more than a bit irritated at being disturbed from my peaceful slumber. “Can’t I stay home?” I asked my mom. “I’m really, really tired.” But she pulled my covers off me and declared, “No,” and that was that.
Despite the headphones pressed to my ears, I can still hear Mom and Dad singing along to some seventies hit on the radio, with Lexi trying to join in but completely ruining the song. I grunt and push my forehead to the window, willing the car to spit me out on the road so I could be spared of witnessing this family bonding that does not include me. Lexi taps me on the shoulder to offer me chocolate, then mints, then water, and every time, I just glare at her and go back to observing the passing scenery. I am so not in the mood for any of this.
“We’re here!” Lexi announces after more than an hour, all perky and sunshine-y. She grabs her bag and leaps out of the car. I almost expect her to start doing cartwheels across the lawn. Tito Tony comes out to greet us, and she runs toward him like she hasn’t seen him in a decade. There is such a thing as too much enthusiasm, and what she’s doing right here is a perfect example. I follow her to the room we always share when we visit, wondering if I can get away with pretending to take a short nap, then “accidentally” sleeping the whole day away. The idea of burying myself under a soft, thick blanket and not facing the world until I am ready (or fifty—whichever comes first) strikes me as very appealing right now.
“What’s wrong with you?” Lexi asks, unpacking her clothes and hanging them up in the closet. I hate her for not stopping at “what’s wrong” and for choosing to add “with you.” It implies that whatever’s bothering me is based purely on internal factors, and therefore my own fault. I lie on the bed, close my eyes, and don’t answer. She pokes my foot repeatedly. “Aww, Ericka, did you have a fight with a boy?”
“Shut up, Lexi,” I hiss. I wish she would just take the hint and leave me alone. She doesn’t need me to make her birthday happy anyway—she can celebrate with the rest of the world. I wish she would just realize what a giant struggle it is to be her sister, especially when she is meddling and acting all motherly. “Talk to me, Ericka,” she says.
“Go away,” I growl, my eyes still closed.
“Okay, suit yourself,” she says. I am surprised that she has given up so easily—I thought she’d continue prying and I’d get to shoot back with a weary, resigned I don’t have time for this right now. Lexi does not like being left out of other people’s lives. When we were kids, she had such a hard time grasping the idea of privacy, and when I’d tell her I had a secret crush on a boy in school, she’d jump on my bed and say “Who is it?” over and over again until I gave in and revealed the boy’s name. One of our worst fights ever was when she snuck into my room, picked the lock on my journal, and read my entries. I caught her in the act, and tackled her so hard she had bruises all over her body for weeks. Lexi likes making herself feel important, and imposing her unsolicited opinions and advice on other people is her way of doing so. I feel her shuffling around the room, then I hear the door open and close, and the sound of her footsteps fading away. Finally, I think.
I get away with staying inside the bedroom until past noon, which gives me more than enough time to lie there and stare at the ceiling. My dad comes up to tell me lunch is ready, and I would have pretended not to hear him if it weren’t for the fact that he is the only person in our family who actually scares me (which is probably why he was the one sent up to get me). I mumble, “I’ll be down in a minute,” and he says, “Hurry up.”
My head feels like it weighs a ton, but I manage to stand up and stagger towards the mirror. I study my reflection: my hair looks like it hasn’t come into contact with a brush in years, I have puffy eyes and dark circles under them from lack of sleep, my lips are pale and chapped, the skin on my cheeks is dry and peeling, and there is a zit on my chin waiting to erupt. I look like a mess, which is exactly how I feel. I wrestle my hair into a ponytail, decide I don’t have enough energy to whip out concealer, lip balm, or pimple treatment, and make my way downstairs.
Lexi is doing her Entertain the Grown-Ups act, and my parents and Tito Tony are hanging on to her every word and laughing after her every sentence. I take my seat, making sure the legs of the chair scrape the floor loudly enough to make them wince. I reach for the plate of smoked barbecue ribs and the bowl of rice without saying excuse me, and Mom looks like she wants to scold me but chooses to ignore me instead, probably to keep the atmosphere bright and positive for her precious daughter’s special day.
Tito Tony asks, “So, Alexa, where’s your boyfriend?”
“Oh,” Lexi blushes. “No, no, I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Why?” Tito Tony asks. Why are relatives always asking this? It’s either Are you gaining weight, or Where’s your boyfriend, or Isn’t that dress too short? Is there a fixed list of embarrassing, unnecessary questions they are required to ask during family gatherings, or are those really all the things they need to know about us? There are people my age who are expert schmoozers, and who would easily maneuver their way through all those questions. And until this moment, I have always thought of Lexi as an expert schmoozer. But she turns even redder and stammers, “I don’t know, Tito. It’s...complicated.”
&n
bsp; “Naku, ‘it’s complicated’ ka dyan,” he says. “Ano ‘to, Facebook? You know, Alexa, that’s the problem with your generation. Back in our time, it was either you were together or you weren’t. Walang mga ganyang ‘it’s complicated.’ Baka pinapaasa ka lang niyan. Be careful.” This mouthful comes from someone who is already forty years old and financially stable but does not want to settle down yet.
If this speech were directed towards me, I would have denied that there was a boy. But Lexi is too honest and too open, and she replies, “No, we’re just friends.”
“Just friends, huh?” Tito Tony says. “Mahirap ‘yan.” And then he goes on and on about labels and definitions and how kids these days aren’t as particular about the technicalities and formalities of relationships as they should be. He goes on and on about how you shouldn’t even be flirting with someone unless you can imagine a future with that person (yeah, because when you meet someone cute, you automatically pick out baby names in your head, don’t you?). He is emphasizing that we are dumbing down the concept of love and romance, when I suddenly feel the urge to butt in, just to assert that I also have something to say about this topic: “Friends lang talaga sila, Tito. The guy has a girlfriend kasi.”
The room falls silent, and Lexi just looks at me speechlessly. Finally, she excuses herself, leaving her plate half-full, and runs upstairs. Tito Tony chuckles. “Looks like you hit a nerve there, Ericka,” he says, and I know I should be gloating about getting back at Lexi, but my throat is tight and parched, and I cannot seem to swallow my food. I push my plate away and excuse myself as well.
As expected, Lexi has locked me out. I pound on the door. “Let me in,” I call to her. No response. Sensing I should swallow my pride, I say, “I’m sorry, Lexi. I didn’t mean to say that.”
Every Girl's Guide to Flings (Every Girls Guide) Page 6
