As happy as Sari was to see how excited her sister was, she couldn’t help but feel her heart break. Did she feel stuck because of Sari? Because of the house?
“And living on your own is going to help?” She asked, hating that she sounded so testy and mistrusting of her little sister. She tried to channel Selene on the day she asked if they wanted to take over the business, tried and miserably failed.
“I mean, I’m already twenty-six. If I don’t do it now, I don’t think I ever will, and—oh, please don’t be mad, Ate.”
Sari was trying to keep her own emotions in check, but that was a lot like saying she was trying to hold her organs up after they had been pulled out of her body.
“Ate?” Sam was giving Sari that look. That classic “I’m the bunso and my cuteness will make you submit” face that Sam always used on her sisters. “Are you...?”
“I’m fine,” Sari frowned, crossing her arms over her chest. “You want to move out to the farm?”
Sam nodded.
“And you know how to look after yourself, to get food, to clean up after Kylo?”
“Look at me, Ate. I’m not a child anymore. I can take care of myself.” Sam crossed her arms over her chest and huffed, which she had been doing since she was a child and was really annoyed. And Sari couldn’t unsee it. Sam at six years old, with dirt on her knees, scrapes and bumps every time she went out to play.
“Jollibee doesn’t deliver to that part of Lipa.”
Sam huffed, looking up at the ceiling to gather strength, and Sari immediately knew that she was crossing a line. Her sisters had always accused her that the more Sari was backed into a corner, the more vicious she became. It was a defense mechanism, one her grandmother used to tut and say she inherited from her mother. Her mother who had tried so hard to keep the family together, until one day she just...let go. It was hard to reconcile the woman who used to meticulously go through her daughters’ homework to the woman who was now #livingherbestlife somewhere else, even more so knowing that she and Sari shared the same character of lashing out.
So she took a break, tried to calm herself and remember that this wasn’t about her, or her mother. This was about Sam, and what she wanted, and as the older sister she had to be the one to keep it together. She could do that for her.
“Where are you going to live? There isn’t really a house in the farm.”
“Well, there’s Lola and Lolo’s old house,” she explained. “The one they lived in when they first got married. It’s pretty big, and it’s really beautiful still. Lolo planted bamboo trees outside, and maaliwalas siya. Mang Vic and I checked the water and electricity, they’re still good. It needs a bit of work, a lot of cleaning. But I want to move right away, so I’ll be in the new house by January. And could celebrate your birthday there, Ate, you would love it.”
“What is this really about?” Sari’s heart, which was already lodged in her stomach, twisted around and thrashed. The same angry emotion bubbled up in her, and she blurted out the question before properly considering her sister’s feelings. She was really bad at this.
“It’s...” Sam started, and Sari braced herself for impact. “I love living with you, Ate. I mean it. You bring out ice for Kylo in the summer, and I always have deodorant and shampoo on hand. But I want my own life. Make my own mistakes, forget my own deodorant, and everything that goes with it. I feel like I’ve relied on you and Ate Selene for too long. Now that you guys gave me the farm to take care of, I really want to take care of it. So I have to be there for that to happen.”
Immediately Sari envied her sister’s confidence in the answer. Here was her twenty-six-year-old Sampaguita, who knew exactly how to fill her own life, how to make her days better, and how to help the family. And whatever that life was, it didn’t include living with Sari.
So pardon her for feeling just a tad betrayed. She shook off the horrible feeling that was attempting to crush her. Sam walked around the counter and did what every good little sister did whenever they realized they had nothing else to say. She hugged her. A bone crushing hug, as if she was forcing Sari to forgive her, not to be mad anymore.
“I think it will be good for you too, Ate,” Sam reassured her, and Sari actually felt her sister petting the top of her head, like she was the younger one. “We’re still in the same city, technically, fifteen minutes away.”
“I know, but...”
“And you’ll finally have Kylo out of your way! Weren’t you always saying that the house is too small for him?”
“That’s true, but...”
“You prefer doing things yourself anyway, it’ll be easier when I’m not there. Plus, you’ll get to do all the things you want to do when you live alone!”
“Such as?” Sari asked incredulously.
“Walk around the living room naked? Bring a boy home? Walk around the kitchen naked?”
“I do not have a secret desire to walk around the house naked, thanks.” Sari shook her head, but couldn’t help but chuckle at her sister’s ridiculous suggestion.
The Tomases lived in a two-floor house in a narrow street two blocks from the Cathedral, and lived as bayan as the bayan could be. The land, and the house had been with the family for a long time, but it was a teeny tiny place compared to the size of the house in the farm, she was sure. It was small, and not incredibly private when the house next door could hear when you played music a little too loud, but it was manageable, and, Sari thought, the right size for the two of them.
“I dunno, Ate. Repression does that to a person. Closes up their vagina.”
“Oh God.”
“I’m just saying! It’s been three years. It’s getting all dusty down there.”
“Sampaguita Tomas,” So she was twenty-nine now, with no romantic prospects, and no plans for romantic prospects. The lack of a man wasn’t a big gap in Sari’s life, not when she had a vibrator and a healthy imagination to keep things...not dusty.
But she certainly wasn’t going to tell her sister that. “Ate Selene was right. You’re going to be the death of me.”
“Okay, but even Lola Rosario always said how much she relied on Lolo Marco when he was alive,” Sam pointed out, making Sari frown.
Lola Rosario was Sari’s namesake, and the person she always thought of as the one who had raised her and her sisters. When their father decided he was no longer interested in being a father, and her mother had nowhere else to go, Lola Rosario had taken in the three girls and showered them with as much love and affection as she could afford. Sari never met her grandfather, but Lola Rosario kept him alive with stories of her and Lolo Marco working to reopen Tomas Coffee Co., stories of how they ran it as a team, like their granddaughters did now.
“I thought that it was you and me,” Sari said, and she hated that her voice was so small when she did. Because never mind that moving in the middle of the holidays was a bad idea, never mind that Sari didn’t want to be alone in their house. Her younger sister was a force of nature who was always going to do what she wanted, even if her sisters didn’t agree.
“Hay, Ate,” Sam sighed, squeezing her again. “Don’t you want to fall in love with someone, have a family?”
We had a family, Sam. Look what happened to them, Sari wanted to say, but kept her mouth shut. There was no need to get into that with her sister, not now, and hopefully, not ever.
“I suppose there’s nothing I can do,” she finally said. Sam loosened her grip on her to look at her face.
“What do you mean,” she said.
“It means I can’t stop you,” Sari said almost grudgingly, when deep inside, she would have said yes to anything Sam asked, even if it meant her being left behind.
“Oh, Ate, thank you SO MUCH, I really—”
Whatever else she had to say was immediately cut off by music. Loud music, the kind that was belted out by neighbors on karaoke machines on the weekends
. Sari knew this song, too. Because who didn’t fall in love when they heard the boyband Christmas anthem of the early 2000s, “Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays”?
The manila paper that had been placed against the window, the one that separated the café from the blasted bakery next door was ripped off to reveal a shiny, gleaming, chrome and white kitchen, with huge machines that would not be out of place next to her big batch roaster. Whoever it was on the other side of the window had strung up twinkle lights, which were now casting a little glow in Sari’s space. From where she and Sam were standing, she could see open shelves with sprinkles with every size, shape and color, meticulously arranged like candy in a store.
Ohhh she hated Sunday Bakery. She felt her blood boiling under her skin, a little scowl on her face. She might have growled, because she saw Sam glance at her oddly and take a very wise step to the side.
And still, the music played like it was mocking her. Thanks to Sam’s announcements, Sari’s holidays were sure to be miserable, and now here was this happy, poppy song trying to hammer the point home.
“He’s dancing,” Sam said, as mesmerized as Sari as the sisters stared at the window. And just as Sari was about to ask what she meant, she saw him. A man was dancing in the shiny, gleaming kitchen with a kind of reckless abandon that was sure to end in disaster. He was singing too, hitting every note perfectly as he shimmied his shoulders, and threw his head back. Dark curls flew back with it, struggling for freedom under a bandana that was exactly the color of Sari’s espresso machine. His mouth was covered by a face mask, clearly the man needed it if he was planning on singing that loud the entire time he worked.
He did a spin, extended an arm, and just like that, a stick of butter and a heap of sugar went into a mixer. He was baking. How incredibly unprofessional. Not that Sari didn’t have a tendency to enjoy music while she worked, but this was one step above what was acceptable, surely?
With movements that looked professionally choreographed and a little bit of a shimmy, he added flour to the mixing bowl, some which flew up and billowed like the clouds from a witch’s cauldron.
Double, double, this guy is trouble.
See, this was why Sari preferred the men from romance novels. The men in her books were serious, and proper, and certainly didn’t dance while baking. Although, to be honest, she wouldn’t mind reading about a duke who made a mean blancmange. Just the other day, reading a hero who knew how to make roti and dal had her mouth watering. But this was a completely different situation altogether. The man was flagrantly happy, like he had the world on a string, even if he was being inconsiderately loud, just like the entire store had been the whole month they were in construction. The bass notes of the song were starting to pound in her skull.
“I’m going to talk to him,” she said, whipping off her apron, practically slamming it on the counter, making Sam jump in surprise. “Stay here.”
“Where else would I go?”
To the farm, and as far away from me as you could go, Sari thought darkly, walking to the fire escape they shared and closing the door behind her. The moment she did, the music dulled, and Sari knew that there was a teeny, tiny part of her that had needed to escape the room. She’d never had that need before, and she hated that Sam had been the cause.
But she was here, still boiling mad and annoyed at the store next door that had been a tiny thorn on her side for the last month, so she rapped the heel of her palm against the heavy metal door. The music played on. Sari growled and repeated the action. Still nothing.
Do I have to kick down this door? Sari wondered as she pounded again. Her head was swimming with anger and annoyance, and it all built up inside her already rollicking insides. The music’s volume lowered about three decibels, and Sari heard the fire escape door unlatch, then finally open.
She’d once read a book where someone had described any strong emotion—anger, sadness, melancholy—as waves. It came and receded, sometimes weak enough just to touch your toes, other times so strong it threatened to overwhelm you. But just because the emotion had abated didn’t mean it disappeared altogether, and that was exactly how Sari felt when she first laid eyes on her new neighbor.
The fancy Manila boy had a pretty face. It was all sharp angles and softened features, warm brown eyes and the kindest face Sari had ever come across in a human. He immediately pulled off the bandana, showing off a head full of big, bouncy curls. His entire face changed when he smiled, it lit up everything that came even a little bit too close. He had dimples and smile lines so deep he had to be younger than her. He looked like he had never been hurt, never experienced sadness or any kind of unhappiness, and needed protecting at all cost.
But then Sari heard the music again, and her anger came back in a huge wave, spilling over any kind of initial fondness she felt for him.
“Hi,” he yelled over the music like people knocked on his fire escape every day, and suddenly the entire world resumed its regular course, and music blasted from inside the kitchen. Sari hadn’t even been aware that it had stopped. “Can I help you?”
“Yes!” she managed to yell back. “You’re very loud!”
“Oh, thanks!”
“No, that’s not a good thing,” she exclaimed, shaking her head. “I’m Sari Tomas. I own Café Cecilia next door.”
“I know!”
He said it like being Sari Tomas was the most brilliant thing that he’d ever heard in his entire life, as if Sari being next door to him actually meant something. Sari’s frown returned in full force, even if she could hear her mother berating her that she would never find a man if she frowned like that.
“In case you haven’t noticed, we share a window,” she told him, momentarily distracted by the arm that was holding up the door. The baker had rolled his sleeves up at some point in the baking process, and veins and corded muscle tensed against the strain of the door. It was hard not to miss the darkened patches of skin that came from old burns, little scars and cuts from accidents past. Sari pretended not to see that. She was good at pretending that she didn’t see things, didn’t notice. And she’d had plenty of experience pretending not to see Sunday Bakery. “And you play your music way too loud. And your construction guys were loud too, and I sent complaints to Ate Nessie, but you never did anything about it, and why is this the first time I’ve ever seen you in the bakery?”
“Can I interest you in a dalandan muffin?” he yelled over the music.
“What?” she asked, completely caught off guard. Damn this guy, this baker, this, whatever his name was, who had wormed his way under her skin for the last month without actually showing his face, and now he was here and burrowing himself deeper. She hated it. Hated him, too.
“Well, not dalandan, it’s actually sinturis. I’d never heard of sinturis before, but it’s apparently a local variety. I got these from Blossom Farms in Bolbok,” he continued like he didn’t give much of a shit for Sari’s annoyance, or her quiet. “Have you ever been? It’s totally amazing, I was there for their pineapple planting the other day. They harvested sinturis recently, and they gave me a basket since I just moved in. I’m still tweaking the recipe, so it’s not going to be perfect, but anyway. Muffin?”
“Sari,” she corrected him behind gritted teeth. “Not muffin.”
“No,” he said, and the guy had the utter gall to chuckle like it was adorable that she could barely hear him over the sounds of “Araw-Araw”. Not a Christmas song, but a good one, still. “Do you want a muffin, Sari?”
He looked at her like he was fully expecting her to leap into his arms and say yes. And really, who would say no to a free muffin? It would go perfectly with the sweet jammy notes of the coffee already waiting for her in the lab.
But this was Sari’s territory, her space. She was already losing enough as it was, she was not going to let this man with the pretty brown eyes and taut muscles and annoyingly adorable smile invade her space without
her permission.
“Not interested!” she said, hoping she sounded equal parts firm and clear. “Turn down the music, I can hear it through our window!”
Oh, she was calling it our window now?
“Yeah, I was wondering about that too. Why do we have a window?”
“We share the same warehouse,” Sari sighed, unsure of why she was explaining all of this to him. Surely this was one of the reasons why he rented a space in the Laneways in the first place? Because it was cool, because it was a great use of old space, because it was a tourist destination?
The Laneways were what remained of an old row of warehouses in Lima, just on the edges of Lipa. From the Tomases’ house to the Laneways was a quick fifteen minutes if you passed through J.P. Laurel Highway, which Sari rarely did because she knew the traffic was always bad on a good day. The Luz family, who owned the warehouses, converted the best of them into rows of commercial space, each warehouse cut in half to accommodate two lessors, and a brick lane in the middle for customers to move around in. Kira Luz, who owned the chocolate shop, said that her family had gotten the idea from seeing an old beer factory in Taiwan that was converted into an art space.
In a country where public parks were synonymous to closed, air-conditioned malls, and every family enjoyed a nice stroll on the weekends, the Laneways, with their brick roads, bougainvillea-clad walls, cool spaces and ample parking, was unique, the kind of place that, hopefully, never went out of style.
“This is an old garage that had a second-floor office. I think we’re the only ones with second floors, too. The owners just cut everything up into rentable retail spaces.”
“Aaah, the Luzes, right?” he asked. “Everyone keeps telling me they’re like, a Big Deal here, no? This place is so...kakaiba. I mean, not too different. I’ve heard Lipa’s the closest you can get to being in Manila without actually going there.”
Sweet on You Page 3
