Fairy Tale Fail
Mina V. Esguerra
Smashwords Edition
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © Mina V. Esguerra, 2010
Contact the author:
[email protected]
minavesguerra.com
Cover for this edition designed by Tania Arpa
FAIRY TALE FAIL
Mina V. Esguerra
For my superfriends, who set the bar a tiny bit higher every time.
Chapter 1
That point in a relationship when you realize that instead of "happily ever after," you're apparently just a few paragraphs below "once upon a time"? It sucks.
Sorry I couldn't be more eloquent than that, but the big reveal came to me on a rainy Saturday morning. I woke up excited for my planned food trip to Tagaytay with my boyfriend Don, only mildly concerned by the rain pouring in sheets outside my window. Then I got the text, becoming all too familiar already.
Ellie, rain is bad. Tagaytay next time instead?
I held my breath and counted to five. One: It's raining. Two: What good would an outdoor restaurant with a view of Taal Lake be if it's raining? Three: Tagaytay is cold enough as it is. Why bother with cold and wet? Four: I need sleep anyway. Five: I have so many DVDs to catch up on.
Then I texted my boyfriend: Sure, no problem. See you on Monday. Love you.
So far, my six-month-old relationship with tall, handsome, and all-around good guy Don Padilla was not what the fairy tales led me to believe. I wasn't exactly an all-around good girl, but I thought that a guy like him would be the perfect stabilizing force for someone like me. I was always restless – wanting to travel, wanting excitement, wanting to change my hair.
Free Ellie, was what my college friends jokingly called me. The only reason why I managed to stick to one course at the time was because Communication Arts allowed me to try so many things. To this day, though, five years in the work force, I still wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing. My hair now was past my shoulders and slightly wavy, and I worked in Marketing – but all of this could change. I still didn't feel like things were perfectly in place, and I was just waiting for my savings to recover so I could go on a trip again. The last one I went on was Hong Kong with my sister. Maybe Bangkok next? I was already anticipating the next airline ticket sale.
Don, on the other hand, was the very definition of "steady." He was a slave to his routine, and he had plotted his career in the office from his first day there. I thought we would be perfect together: I'd inspire him to loosen up a bit, and he'd tell me how exactly to be an adult.
Why wasn't it perfect yet? I was getting impatient.
Of course, I had never told anyone that. Our common friends assumed that we weren't (couldn't be!) having problems. One of them went as far as to say that she was envious of how we got together, and she only wished the same for herself.
I sighed before retreating under my blanket. Be careful what you wish for.
***
Contrary to what some people thought, I wasn't obsessed with being a fairy tale princess. I was a movie buff, firstly, and I had a minor in Film back in college. For one of my classes, though, I did some research on how fairy tale motifs influenced modern movies, and I was really affected by it. During that phase in my life I had short, almost spiky hair like Winona Ryder in Reality Bites, but even as my hair changed the fairy tale fascination didn't go away.
Every story had some sort of fairy tale template. Even mine.
Don and I worked in the same office, a large financial services firm in Makati, Metro Manila's biggest business district. I started in their Marketing department two years ago, and became fast friends with my teammate Charisse.
She had been in the company for years and had a barkada there already, about a dozen guys and girls, all from the eighteenth floor too. I was with them when I learned that too much vodka gave me a rash, that I got sleepy after Bailey's, and that after five drinks I remembered most of my childhood Bisaya.
Don was part of that group. He was a tall, imposing, cocky-looking guy, and sort of stood as the group's kuya. At least, that was the impression I got. He seemed very… I don't know… important.
At first, I didn't like him. It was hard enough to adjust to being new in the office and in a barkada, and he wasn't making it easier. He didn't make an effort to talk to me, unlike the others. He made sure to stay out of my way, even when I was the closest person to him in the room.
"He's kind of aloof that way. If you want to get to know him, approach him first," Charisse explained.
So I did. But on my own time. It just annoyed me that I was receiving a warm welcome from the others, but not from him. What the hell, right? After a while, I just gave up. I didn't care anymore if he talked to me or not. I pretended that we were already friends, and rode along when people teased him about things.
Then one time – I probably went too far. I forgot what I said (I had a bad habit of not being able to filter my thoughts), but it was something about his vanity because he liked to go to the gym a lot.
Whoa, wrong thing to say to someone who barely even acknowledged my existence! He glared at me and avoided me even more, if that was possible. And then, the next day, he walked up to my desk at work.
"Coffee break?" he offered.
Throughout our twenty-minute trip to the cafeteria and back, he didn't mention my comment about his gym habit at all. But he did start talking to me. For some reason, the same candor that offended him the night before became funny, because in no time we were laughing about my observations of our other friends, and people in the office.
Charisse? Was like Regina George from Mean Girls (only because she was quite the Alpha Female, not because she was awful). My boss? Totally reminded me of a young Janice Dickinson from America's Next Top Model. Don's boss? Alan Rickman as Severus Snape. That last one got to him, and he was laughing so hard he coughed out coffee.
From there it became easier to know him. Apparently the tough, arrogant exterior was just that – a shell. Underneath was a layer of classic Good Guy. And I liked Good Guys. They made sure you got home okay. And they called, and held doors open for you. Parents liked them too.
Don acted like a kuya because he was a responsible person. Always a good worker, never broke the rules, and expected integrity from the people he worked with. Also very family-oriented, and religious, and sensitive, didn't drink (he had a one-bottle-per-night rule), didn't smoke… it was as if I handed him a checklist of things my mom would want in my future boyfriend.
Imagine a really long romance novel set in high school, with entire chapters just devoted to talking and getting to know so much about each other. That was us! And I actually enjoyed it. I believed that the best relationships started from friendship. Surely it was better to get to know a guy first, be his friend, and find out all the dirt so I could at least make an informed decision.
I couldn't tell if he liked me, though, because he was always there for the other girls in the group. I mean, he was there for everyone. But then I got my answer when during an out-of-town trip to
Pansol in Laguna, we ended up alone together on the rest house's second floor balcony and managed to admit that we were attracted to each other.
"I'm not sure if we should act on it," Don said. "Because you're a really good friend. I don't want to lose this."
This was a friendship that, though only a few months long, was actually something I already thought I couldn't do without. I said things that made him laugh. He made sure I got home all right after our barkada went out. We didn't work together all the time but he'd drop by and ask me to coffee almost every day, like clockwork because he was a creature of habit, and I looked forward to it.
But I was being typical Ellie Manuel. Restless. Ready for the next step, always.
"But… why limit ourselves when we could be so much better? I think it's worth risking," I said, playing the part of the romantic.
Maybe it was the lighting. We were half in shadows on that balcony, half in the bright lights from the pool area. He touched the ends of my hair, already long by then, and gently twirled them around his fingertips.
"Were you always this beautiful?" he said, and then he kissed me, and the decision was made for both of us.
So tell me. Aloof and arrogant guy gets over himself and reveals his other side – sensitive, caring and responsible. How is that not Beauty and the Beast?
***
I knew I shouldn't complain, but I just thought that a relationship with a guy I had such a great time with as friends would be… easier.
Instead, we spent so much time "working" on it.
Did I change? Did he? So why did I feel like I had to set an appointment if I wanted more time with him? Why did I feel like he was canceling too many of our dates, with only the slightest provocation?
Sure, it really was raining like crazy out there. But that didn't explain the time he was "too tired" to go with me to Mall of Asia, or having a "busy week" to have dinner with me on a random Wednesday. Sorry, did I have to book him two weeks in advance or something? I thought I was the girlfriend.
Little things like this had been happening for the past six months, but it was only on that Saturday, when Tagaytay was canceled, that I finally accepted it. Something was wrong, and I wasn't even close to "happily ever after."
Chapter 2
"Rock Star, two o'clock," Charisse said discreetly.
"My two o'clock or yours?"
"Mine, duh."
I pretended to check the doorway of the cafeteria, expecting a friend maybe, but peeked at the guy we referred to as Rock Star. He was sitting a few tables down from us, having pork steak and salad greens. A girl we recognized was sitting in front of him.
"Did he see you?" Charisse pressed.
"No, I don't think so."
"He's having lunch with Sandra from Client Services," Charisse said casually, pretending not to look too. She was so good at that. "Is she his girlfriend now or something?"
His name wasn't really Rock Star, of course, but Lucas Haresco. He was one of our officemates, an assistant manager at the Wealth Management team up on the twenty-second floor. Charisse and I found him cute in that Office Celebrity kind of way – sure he worked in the same building, and the same company, but we weren't friends. Instead we nudged each other when we saw him nearby, commented on what he was wearing, and wondered about the girls we saw him with. He was our Office Crush.
What? Everyone had that.
Lucas got that code name because had the appearance of a guy forced into crisp shirts and ties to earn a living, but was really, like, a rock star when he clocked out. He always looked clean, and he smelled great, but his hair was a bit of a calculated mess.
Yes, I had a boyfriend, but this was how Charisse and I bonded – by talking about cute guys in our "area of responsibility." Which we didn't do as much of since I started going out with Don. I missed this, and I felt better about doing it again now that Don was being such an ass.
"So why haven't you really talked to Rock Star yet, Ellie?" Charisse asked. "We should have done this before when it was easier. I could have helped you."
I was already on smiling and nodding terms with Lucas. On my first week at work, on casual-wear Friday, I bought a sandwich from the cafeteria deli. He was behind me in the line, and he asked what I was having.
"Salmon and cream cheese," I said.
"Is it good?" he asked.
"When they do it right," I replied.
He wasn't wearing a tie that time (casual Friday), and a hint of a tattoo peeked from underneath the sleeve of his shirt. I wondered what it was, but was too shy to ask. I didn't know how else to talk to him after that, so I just ended up smiling at him as we saw each other in the halls. When I heard that he smoked, I almost took up the habit just to run into him outside. Almost, but didn't.
Why didn't I ever talk to him, my friend asked?
Once I got to know a bit more about Lucas, through office gossip we picked up here and there, he just seemed more and more like someone I couldn't be with. I couldn't even imagine being with someone who got that much attention. When word got out that he had a girlfriend, everyone hated her almost immediately. When they broke up, everyone knew about it. And then when months later the rumors started that Rock Star's Ex had given birth to a baby girl, even I felt bad for her.
"Um, let's recap," I said, rolling my eyes, "He's out of my league. He has a lovechild. Every time we've seen him have lunch here, he's with Sandra or some other pretty girl or alone, so it's intimidating to approach him in all cases. He's got three tattoos or something, which I won't be able to justify to my mother. And you found out he's agnostic, so how am I going to have my Catholic wedding? And he smokes."
"I don't think he does anymore."
"What? How?"
Charisse, who actually did smoke, shrugged. "I don't see him anymore. He had this routine. He would get coffee from the Starbucks, and then smoke outside. Smoke, sip, smoke, sip. Lately I've been seeing him buy the coffee but go back up the elevator, and not smoke."
"Since when?"
"Months." Then she gave me a look. "Does that change your mind about him?"
"No. Still so many reasons why we're too different. And out of my league, right?"
"Oh please. You are so much prettier than Sandra. But not that girl from Research though, she is seriously pretty."
And then we started giggling. "Plus, you know, I actually have a boyfriend. Your friend."
"What, you can't have new friends anymore?"
Charisse and I joked about this. She'd offer to ask Lucas for a light next time she found him smoking. She'd start small talk, and I should happen to go to the coffee shop – in full view of the smoking area – to say hello. She used to plan this before I got together with Don, and would occasionally remind me of it even after. I didn't know if this meant anything, if this was a subtle judgment of my relationship. Why was she encouraging me toward a harmless crush, right?
Wait a second – why was she encouraging me to get to know Rock Star again?
I didn't know her very long, but I had worked with Charisse for a few years. She was a natural leader, someone everyone gravitated around, especially the barkada. While she was a fun person, she wasn't carefree in the sense that she never planned things. Everything she did was deliberate.
The part of my brain tied to my self-doubt started tingling. It had gotten a lot of practice since my relationship started. "What's going on?" I asked. "Why do you want me to meet Rock Star again? Is something up with Don?"
"What? No," my friend said, but she answered a bit too quickly. "I mean, I don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"I just..." Charisse sighed. "Well, you were going to find out anyway. I heard that Don went out with the guys on Saturday. They played basketball or something."
This was, of course, the same day that he canceled a Tagaytay trip with me. My hands were probably shaking, and I pulled them down to my lap so Charisse wouldn't see. I could hear Don explaining already – but you agreed to cancel
, this was a sudden trip with the guys, the court was indoors anyway – all perfectly good reasons. But it didn't hide the fact that I had officially become the person he canceled on first. It wasn't fair.
The annoying thing was he wasn't even cheating on me. If he were, I could get mad and leave him. But no. He was just spending more time with our friends. Why should I get mad? It was exactly as it was when we were friends. It was like he didn't have a girlfriend.
Unconsciously I turned around again, and just happened to see Lucas get up from his table, tray in hand. He nodded at me and I was glad I remembered to smile.
Chapter 3
"Ready to go?" Don said.
It was a sunny, beautiful day but I wasn't feeling it. A cloud had been over my head for a while now, and I had been smiling extra just to try to shake it off. Not working.
The whole week after our canceled Tagaytay trip, Don managed to schedule meetings during our regular coffee break, and didn't make plans with me at all. I didn't know if I was going to see him all of the following week either, because we wouldn't have work from Thursday on – it was Holy Week.
Then I got a call from him on Palm Sunday. Did I want to go on a Visita Iglesia with him on Thursday?
Charisse was not at all religious and would blink if a guy asked her to go on something like that, but I found it sweet. The Visita Iglesia (church visits during Holy Week) was a family tradition for me; Don and I had that in common.
Also, did Don actually plan a day for us without my telling him to? I hoped it would be the thing that made things right again.
"Ready," I said, getting into the car.
I was just so glad that this was Don's idea. Recently, all our dates had been things I had suggested. Movies, friends' birthdays, road trips... it felt good to be involved in planning our weekend activities, but I never really found out what he wanted to do.
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