by Tara Frejas
Erin narrowed her eyes at him.
“Anyway, I felt like that was too impersonal.”
She rolled her eyes. “You are impossible.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll say hi after every show now,” he teased, waving the rolled-up copy of the Hanggang Ulap script he received at the workshop earlier. “I think you’d be perfect for the role of Hannah.”
A pause. Erin looked like she wanted to say something in reply, but she simply clicked her tongue and started toward him. For a second, he thought she was going to kick him out of the theatre when she grabbed him by the wrist, but it turned out she wanted to move on to the next phase of the tour.
Ramon already knew the second floor housed offices, but he’d only seen Mamu’s so far. Erin showed him the communal one which the PR, marketing, and production departments used.
Erin introduced Ramon to the staff members present and showed him the secret passageway to the tech booth located at the theatre balcony.
“Yeah, we shouldn’t touch anything here or Val will kill me,” Ramon heard Erin mumble when they sat in front of the console. “Anyway, this is the best seat in the house for me...unless you’re the technical director, of course. In which case—stress.”
“You spend a lot of time here?”
“Not all the time. Maybe a show or two in the middle of a run, when I have an alternate.” She drummed her fingers against the countertop. “I like observing things from here.”
“You like observing things, period.”
She turned her head toward him and grinned. “Point.”
“I’m surprised you don’t hang out on the catwalk.”
Her laughter filled the empty theatre, and consequently, Ramon’s defenseless little heart. These past few hours have melted away years of being apart from Erin, and he liked it. He liked it very much.
“You don’t think I tried?”
“I wouldn’t put it past you, to be honest.”
She grinned. “You know me so well.”
Three
Erin didn’t think she was staring at Ramon to the point of rudeness until he asked if he’d grown an extra head.
“I’m sorry. I’m still getting used to...this,” she laughed softly, hand motioning to his face, his shoulders…
He definitely put on a little weight, she thought, but it looked good on him. His shoulders looked broader and his arms looked muscular, stronger. And hello, stubble that tickled her skin when they brushed cheeks earlier! It’s nice to see you too.
Ramon jerked an eyebrow. “Me looking like a goon?”
“Oh, shush! You don’t look like a goon!” Erin quickly protested. She rested her chin on her palm. “You’re like a younger, leaner version of skinhead-era Channing Tatum now.”
“Mahiya ka, uy,” Ramon quipped, making her laugh.
It was a little past ten in the evening, and they were having a late dinner at a 7-11 a few hundred meters from the theatre building. Erin would have treated him to a nicer meal somewhere else, but the nearest restaurants were already closed. Instead, she bought cup noodles, siopao, and coffee for both of them. Ramon didn’t seem to mind.
“Just ask me what you want to know,” he finally said. “I’ll answer as honestly as I can.”
Erin slurped a bit of the seafood-flavored broth from her cup and eyed him warily for a few seconds. “You didn’t shave your head because of a break up, did you?”
It was Ramon’s turn to laugh, leaving Erin wondering for a second if the warm feeling in her stomach was because of the soup or the throaty timbre of his voice.
“My alopecia worsened after graduation,” he began. Steam rose from his cup of coffee when he took the lid off as he spoke. He opened two packets of powdered cream and poured it carefully into the black liquid until it became a nice shade of brown. He left the sugar packets untouched. “The bald spots got increasingly bigger and harder to hide, so I thought—might as well shave it all off.”
She got stuck on the term alopecia, reminded of the time Ramon told her about an auto-immune condition he had that caused his hair to fall off in clumps for no apparent reason. Back then, she failed to notice it because he had on a baseball cap every time she saw him on campus. Her curiosity was piqued, though, when some of their org mates called him “Poknat” behind his back. The childish nickname didn’t sit well with her, so she corrected them—subtly or otherwise—whenever they called him that.
She also recalled feeling alarmed that he might be dying, but he had been quick to fend off those fears. “It’s not contagious nor life-threatening,” he reassured her. “The doctor said it’s just that my white blood cells keep killing the hair follicles, so I might just have to live with the bald spots, possibly for the rest of my life.”
“Does that mean it hasn’t been cured?”
He shook his head. “It can’t be cured, only treated.”
“Oh.”
“There you go again!” Ramon laughed and pointed at her face. “That look on your face is just like that time you thought I was dying or something.”
Erin clicked her tongue. “I didn’t know what alopecia was, okay? I thought it was some kind of rare cancer!”
He shook his head and sighed. “I’ll say it again. It’s so nice to see you again, Erin.”
“Same. I didn’t even know how much I missed you until now.”
“Well,” he began, taking a packet of siopao sauce from her hands when she struggled to tear it open. “You’re going to get tired of my face from today.”
“Let’s see who gets tired first,” Erin said and waited for him to tear the packet open. She raised the siopao in front of him.
Ramon chuckled and squeezed the sauce packet, leaving a heart-shaped brown gloop on the surface of the pork-filled pastry. “I’m sure as hell it won’t be me.”
“Oh, right!” She took a quick bite off the bread and pulled her phone out. “I have to add you to the chat.”
“What chat?”
Erin opened a chat app and showed it to Ramon. “This chat,” she said, and went back to typing. He took his phone out as well, and was welcomed with a notification message—
Erin Javier added you to the LakambiniKEEDS chat room.
—followed by message notifications from Erin, Hiraya, Mark, and Jericho.
Hey guys, say hello to Ramon!
Hiya, babe! Welcome to our noisy little chat window!
Naku, Ramon. Say goodbye to productivity.
There’s always an option to mute, Mark.
Ramon looked up at Erin, confused. She smiled and went on to explain. “We’re a clingy sort of people. We like keeping each other up by talking about useless things.”
He blinked.
“I’m kidding...it’s a place where we talk about ideas. Sometimes chismis.”
More messages came in, and Erin watched as Ramon tried to keep up with the chat.
Hi Raf!
Who’s Raf?
I’ve decided to christen him with a nickname. Ramon sounds too old.
Erin laughed upon reading the message. “That’s Kai, she likes naming people. Things. Animals. You can choose to ignore the nickname, but I’m telling you—she’ll stick with it until you get used to it enough.”
“Kai is...?”
“Blue-green hair, pixie cut. She’s our wardrobe and make-up specialist. When she’s not acting, that is,” Erin replied and typed in a message:
But I like Ramon. Sounds like a character from a Mexican telenovela. HAHA.
“With a lot less hair,” Ramon pointed out.
“Type it in!”
He obliged, shaking his head. “Chat rooms are the bane of my existence.”
“Oh, get used to it. It’s fun!”
“If you say so!”
Four
Ramon arrived early at Teatro Lakambini the next day. As he waited for the doors to open, he decided to finish reading his Hanggang Ulap script while sitting on the building’s front steps.
The new Teatro Lakambini musical told the story of Aries and Hannah, a couple whose happy ever after gets threatened by the likelihood of death. After figuring in a car accident, Hannah ends up in a coma and fights for her life at the hospital. Her soul ascends to a limbo of clouds where she starts receiving letters from Aries in the form of paper planes. With the help of another cloud-dweller—a soldier named Marco—Hannah discovers that these paper planes are her only chance of going back home.
Engrossed, Ramon belatedly realized that a piece of paper had fallen out from between the pages. He picked it up and saw that it was an audition flyer.
Should I go for it? he thought, unsure if he was ready for something like this. He had performed in front of many different people in Singapore, but that was way different from a stage production.
“Thinking of auditioning?”
Erin’s voice startled him. The expression on his face must’ve looked hilarious, because a loud cackle followed, disrupting the morning quiet of the street.
“N-no!” He got up on his feet and dusted the backside of his jeans.
“All right, chill,” she said, raising both hands in the air. As she motioned for him to calm down, Ramon took in the vision of her in a salmon-colored dress that fell a little below the knees. Her shoulder-length hair, dyed a deep brown, looked even more beautiful swathed in sunlight. He couldn’t decide which was warmer—the sunshine or her smile.
“Gosh. I’ll remember not to pull pranks on you backstage,” Erin laughed.
A beat.
“Wait, I think that’s a great idea, actually.” She giggled.
He didn’t. Instead, he rolled up his script and stuffed it in the back pocket of his jeans.
“Ramon, is anything wrong?”
“No—what do you mean?”
“You seem tense.”
“Nothing—it’s...” He scratched his brow and then shoved both hands into his jeans pockets to try to keep himself from fidgeting. “Actually, yeah. I might want to audition,” he confessed.
The sound that came from Erin’s mouth sounded like a cross between a squeal and a shriek. Ramon cringed at the noise but felt energized by her excitement all the same.
“That’s great!” she exclaimed. She was…bouncing on her heels. Who does that? And why does she look so adorable doing it?
“Don’t expect too much.”
“Oh, shush!” Erin snapped, wrinkling her nose. The expression melted away, however, when she suddenly launched herself on him. Not expecting the abrupt move, Ramon let out an “oof!” and almost lost his footing. Good thing there was a wall a few steps behind him, against which he was able to prop himself up with one arm. “I’m so excited!”
“Hindi halata,” he deadpanned. He let his hand hover over her back for a second before deciding it was okay to hold her. It was only fair. She had two arms wrapped around him after all.
“I just have a good feeling about this, is all.” Later, she stepped away from the hug and caught sight of him fidgeting. “What’s wrong?”
Ramon shoved his hands into his pockets again. “Nothing?”
She raised her hands, palms up, in front of him. When Ramon did nothing but stare at them, Erin jerked an eyebrow up and moved her fingers, beckoning to him. “Give me your hands, Mr. Figueroa.”
Ramon pulled his hands out of his pockets and reluctantly did as he was told. As their skin came into contact, his ice-cold fingertips seemed to melt in the warmth of her palms. The feeling was comforting yet unsettling at the same time.
She smiled up at him with a hopeful twinkle in her eyes. “You’re going to do a great job at the auditions. I just know it.” Flashing him a wink, she added. “I’m going to make sure of it.”
“I’m not sure I like where this is going. But what the heck.”
Erin let out a giggle, squeezing his hands one last time before letting go. If he had been antsy about the mere thought of putting himself through one more audition, now he didn’t feel the need to keep his hands in his pockets anymore. He could, however, get used to the feel of Erin’s small hands in his, he thought.
“So we’re doing this together?” he asked, suddenly thrilled about the fact that he and Erin will be doing auditions again, like they did back in college.
A pause. “No, Ramon. I’m sorry.” Erin dropped her gaze, as though afraid he’d look into her eyes and find something out. “I’ll help you prepare for auditions, but I’ve decided to sit this one out.”
“But why?”
“If I tell you, you’re going to laugh at me.”
“You’re not the judge of that.”
Ramon decided not to press her when he saw she wasn’t comfortable telling him, but she spoke up anyway.
“I got burned out. Kinda.”
“Kinda?”
“It’s just that I’ve always been playing these romantic heroines on stage. Don’t get me wrong—I loved every single moment of it. I guess I’m just tired of being romanced only on stage. I thought I should take a break and…I don’t know, maybe explore the dating scene, meet new people.” She paused, as though waiting for him to react. “Am I making sense?”
The implications of Erin’s words derailed Ramon’s train of thought. Was he hearing this correctly? Erin was looking to explore the dating scene for a real-life romance?
God, this was all too much to take in.
“I’m not making sense,” she concluded when he was unable to come up with a reply.
“No, no…I’m sorry. I was processing that…information.”
“Because it doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it does. It’s just—I never thought of it that way.” He supposed it could get upsetting to always be one-half of a relationship put on for show. “Which part of that did you think I’d laugh at?”
She bit her lower lip. “Everything?”
Ramon shook his head, unsure why she thought he would laugh. If anything, her declaration made his heart race. Erin was his college crush, after all. He wanted to ask her out many times back then, but he always let any opportunity slip through his fingers.
Was he being given another chance?
“I think it makes perfect sense,” he said, nodding his head slowly as though convincing himself that this was indeed a good thing. “I’m not sure what Mamu and the others would think about it, but I don’t see anything wrong with what you want to do.”
“You don’t think my reasons are silly?”
“Not at all.”
Erin clicked her tongue and narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re not just saying that to make me feel better, are you?”
“And since when have I minced words with you?”
“True,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest. “You were very mean to me in college.”
“Me?”
“Mm-hmm. You yelled at me while you were teaching me how to do pirouettes.”
“Because you weren’t listening! I told you to spot your turns.”
She held an index finger up. “See, you’re doing it again!”
“I can’t believe you still remember that.”
“Sharp memory.” She tapped the pad of her index finger against her temple and grinned. “Remember?”
Of course. Her photographic memory was one of the reasons Erin learned things so quickly. She could memorize her lines after reading through the script a few times. She could recall a dance routine perfectly even after seeing it only once. Executing the routine was where she needed a lot of help, but Erin was a diligent pupil who simply didn’t quit.
He admired her a lot for that.
Ramon only nodded. “So…is that the only reason you’re suddenly taking a break?” he asked, going back to the subject.
“Yeah.”
“All right. Then…I guess I wish you luck.”
An exaggerated pout appeared on her lips, and then, “Awww! Why did I even doubt that you’d be on my side?” With a step forward, she linked her arm around Ramon’s and leaned her head against his s
houlder.
He let out a quiet laugh and tried to hide his surprise and delight at the intimate gesture. “You woman of little faith.”
* * *
Hi, Erin. So I was thinking about what you said—
Remember when you said you wanted to explore the dating scene?
Hey Erin, do you wanna hang out with me over the weekend?
Ramon deleted the last of his drafts and chucked his phone away on the bed. Asking Erin out through text seemed like a lame thing to do. They were friends. Surely he could muster up the courage to ask her in person.
“This is why you rehearse lines over and over again,” he remembered a senior actor from their college theatre group declare after one disastrous show. “So your mouths have no choice but to say them when stage fright suddenly cripples you.”
“So I was thinking about what you said.” Ramon’s voice bounced against the tiles as he stood in front of his bathroom mirror and rehearsed his lines. He schooled his expression into a more relaxed one, trained his voice to sound more casual. For the next ten minutes, he wrote a script in his head and uttered the words over and over again until they rolled off his tongue naturally.
“I’d love to take you out to dinner. What do you say?”
“Or we can see a musical, watch a movie.”
“I’ll pick you up around seven?”
Best case scenario: She says yes, they go out on a date and have a lot of fun.
He imagined Erin saying yes. He pictured that familiar, warm smile appearing on her face as she bounced on her heels and launched herself toward him in a hug.
Worst case scenario: She says no.
Ramon saw his own wistful smile fading at the thought. She’d be nice about it, maybe find a perfectly valid excuse to reject him. And there could be a lot. Hundreds, even, if she’s creative about it.
Because really, who was he kidding? He wasn’t the type Erin would be attracted to.
Wait, he told himself. Do you even know what Erin’s ideal type is?
Ramon turned the faucet on and let the sound of running water drown out his unhelpful thoughts before he could succumb to them. He splashed his face with cold water and took a deep breath. “Stop overthinking,” he told himself firmly. “Good things come in threes.”
