Sweet on You

by Carla de Guzman

  Lily: Hi, can you text like a normal person? It’s not my fault you said it’s cold!! Dad still remembers that we don’t like Australia for Christmas because it’s hot! Also, can you please tell them you’re in Lipa already? The other day Mom was texting me to ask if you could buy her eucalyptus oil, and you can’t.

  Gabriel: Baka someone’s selling on Shopee or Lazada pretend I sent it to you. I can GCash it or something.

  Lily: I can’t believe I’m not the oldest in this family.

  Gabriel: U n me both.

  He felt bad for leaving his sisters stuck with having to lie like this, he really did. But Gabriel was old enough to know that he had to make something of himself, and he needed to do that not in Manila. His father would try to be way too involved, and Gabriel would always be on the defense, which only made things uncomfortable for the entire family. And while Lily and Daisy couldn’t understand why he needed to do this, they loved him enough to keep his secrets without question.

  It’s better this way, he thought whenever he found himself missing them. When he finally got the mall deal and left the Laneways, there would be nothing his father could say about it except, “good job.”

  Gabriel sighed and switched back to the family chat group to rectify his mistake, posting a photo of the lemon loaf he’d made this morning, making sure that there was nothing in the background to indicate specifics of his current location.

  Gabriel: Oh you know. Once you leave the PH everything else seems cold in comparison

  Lily: You can’t see, but I’m rolling my eyes.

  Gabriel: You cant see but I love yew baby sister

  Mommers: Hay naku. Those people are really making you work hard, @Gabriel. When are you coming home for Christmas?

  Gabriel swallowed thickly. In his brilliant plans to be home and not be home, he hadn’t even considered Christmas or any big holidays. He supposed he would have to go home at some point, but how?

  He didn’t have the answers yet. But with his father seen-zoning every message that came through, he knew he was going to have to come up with something. Something to talk about in the This Should Be The Gang group chat shared between him, Daisy and Lily. Yes, there were factions in the Capras family. Don’t tell the little kids.

  Gabriel: Wish u guys cld smell this lemon loaf!!!

  Mother: Looks goody! Miss you, anak!

  Gabriel: Miss you too, Mom! Kiiissss.

  Lily: Hay nako.

  Gabriel: You too, Lily. Kissssss.

  Mindy: I’m here too, hellooo???

  Gabriel: Didn’t see u there Minders. I don’t miss you.

  Mindy: Liar, you love meeee!

  Gabriel: Sige na, sige na. BYE NA.

  Then he put the group on Mute for the next twenty-four hours. When Gab had told his younger sister of his madcap plans, Daisy had put on her one-semester-of-Psych-101 hat and told him in no uncertain terms that running away to open a bakery to spite their father wasn’t going to fix his problems. That lying to his family about still being in Melbourne when he actually was back in the Philippines was a bad plan.

  He knew that. He wasn’t a total idiot, but he took things a little too far when his emotions ran high. His siblings always told him that he went too far when it came to these things, like the time he’d told the twins that they were adopted after they used his favorite shirts to paint in, and they believed him so well that they actually tried to run away to find their real family. Or that time he convinced Ivy that diarrhea was contagious and she’d refused to sit with the family for meals for three days straight until his parents figured it out.

  His finest moment had been when he swore to Daisy that he put sriracha in the red velvet Carmen’s Best ice cream, and she looked so utterly torn between believing him and not believing him that she actually started crying as she ate the ice cream and discovered that he hadn’t put sriracha into it at all.

  Just like you went a little too far with Sari and the flowers, his traitorous brain reminded him. He hadn’t seen head, tail or fin of his favorite barista in the last couple of days, despite her leaving some of the flowers in his doorway. What if what he thought was a gesture of thanks was actually a gesture of “no thanks”? And how was he supposed to clarify that when he never seemed to be able to catch her?

  In short, once again, Gabriel had gone too far, and now Sari was never going to talk to him. He was an idiot. An idiot who’d given an entire city’s worth of carnations and baby’s breath to a girl he liked. This was a prank war Gabriel was sure that he had just lost.

  It was the Christmas party tonight. There was no way they were going to miss that, and Gabriel could talk to her then.

  “What is that?” Gabriel asked Ransom, who was carrying a wet rag and a box of chalk in his hands. “Where are you going?”

  “Out to the chalkboard. Miss Sari left a little message for you this morning.” Ransom gave Gab an odd look, like he wasn’t sure how on earth he ended up employed by a guy like him.

  Hey, Gab wasn’t sure how either, but that didn’t matter so much right now, his heart was thumping in his chest as he made a mad dash to the chalkboard outside. The last time he’d looked at the thing was last week, when she wrote He’s Got Big Buns.

  Some part of him blamed that damn kiss in front of the marching band. That sudden, spontaneous, sweet, extra special first kiss that should’ve happened at the end of a first date, not in front of young, impressionable children and their guardians. If he were a good guy, he would’ve pulled her aside before doing anything like that. But he wasn’t a good guy. He was the guy who went a little too far.

  He ran so fast that he actually skidded on the brick floor outside, and caught himself before he face-planted the floor. He ended up face to face with the sign, written in Sari’s pretty script hand.

  If you were looking for a sign, this is it.

  Oh. Gabriel’s face felt a little hot. This is it. He didn’t screw it up. He felt like shouting and dancing. He felt like walking into that café next door and kissing Sari much better than a super random kiss in front of strangers.

  “I don’t get it,” Ransom said behind him, still holding the rag. “Is it a private joke? You’re in a good mood suddenly.”

  “Of course I am,” Gabriel said, still smiling, bringing out his phone to snap a picture. He needed to remember this. Needed to reciprocate somehow. Was skywriting too much, or just right?

  “Does it have something to do with your girl next door? Not that I think she belongs to you, or anything. Or that I know anything. Or that everyone thinks you’re together. Unless you are. Together, I mean.”

  Gabriel turned his head slowly to narrow his eyes at Ransom, who usually did not have a chismoso bone in his body. He was, however, Ate Nessie’s son, and very much a Mama’s Boy, and that instantly made him suspect.

  “I’m in a good mood because today is the Christmas party,” Gab said, slipping his phone back into the pocket of his apron and standing up to his full height. “Our first Christmas party.”

  “A little help here, please?” a voice behind them said, and both Ransom and Gab turned to see Santi coming up to the store with his arms full of what looked like a mini-refrigerator, still in its box. Ransom and Gab immediately ran up to help him, and once they had the thing well in hand, Santi let go.

  “Seriously, dude?” Gabriel grunted as he and Ransom brought the mini-ref inside the store to put to one side until the Christmas party.

  “What?” Santi asked, walking to the sink to wash his hands. “It’s for the raffle tonight.”

  His staff had been talking about the Christmas party since the day they had their soft opening, and Gabriel had to admit he was equally excited. Like most events surrounding the holidays, the Pinoys just did it better. And a company Christmas party always meant tons of food, games, huge raffles and group presentations that were sure to be mind-blowing. On t
he Laneways, the Christmas party was when all the stores, their staff and their owners came together to eat, drink, be merry and conquer the annual karaoke contest. Both Ransom and Faye made sure to talk Gabriel’s ear off about it, hyping up their boss, who had never attended before, for the Best Christmas Party of All Time.

  “Ready to win the karaoke contest, boss?” Ransom asked.

  “A performer doesn’t get ready, he stays ready.” Gab grinned.

  “Well, if you’re going to win, it’s going to have to be this year, because we don’t know where we’re going to be next year,” Santi said, giving Gab an odd sideways glance.

  “What?” Gab asked, a little confused.

  “If the mall deal comes through, I mean,” Santi explained, crossing his arms over his chest to face his business partner. “You know. The one we decided we would pursue for Sunday Bakery?”

  “Of course.” Gab nodded, because Santi was right. The mall deal was what they both wanted, the logical next step for the business, and the logical next step in Gab’s Plan Let’s Impress Dad For Once In Our Life. And it was a fantastic opportunity. Who didn’t love the extremely high foot traffic of a mall?

  Gab couldn’t seem to hold on to that thought for as long as he used to. Why was he more excited about the upcoming Christmas party than he was about potentially getting a mall deal?

  Because you went too far, and now you’re way too attached to this place, was the answer, and this time, he heard it in Lily’s voice. Lily, the voice of reason in his head, and always one who was ready to deliver the harsh truths.

  “Gab, you could just say if you don’t want the mall deal,” Santi said to Gabriel as they went upstairs to the kitchen, where Faye was already waiting for him. “It’s something we both have to be all in for, if we’re doing this.”

  “Yeah, no.” Gab shook his head.

  “Could you be more specific?” Santi asked, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head to the side.

  “Yes, I still want the mall deal, and no, I know we have to be all in for it.” Gab sighed deeply, placing a hand on Santi’s shoulder. “Sorry I keep flip-flopping about this. It’s an air sign thing.”

  “Gabriel, I like a lot of things about you,” Santi said, which was probably the biggest compliment he’d ever paid Gab in the time they’d been working together. “Your belief in astrology is not one of them. But tell me the moment you change your mind, okay? I don’t want to do this if you’re not ready.”

  How could Gabriel not be ready for a mall deal? He’d spent years being told that this was the only way his profession was going to be good enough, and he was going to have to be good enough.

  “I’m ready,” he said, more to convince himself than Santi, throwing on his bandana as if to prove it further. “I’m ready. I’ll see you at the Christmas party tonight?”

  “I’ll be the one spreading Christmas cheer,” Santi deadpanned, which made Gabriel laugh. He wanted to bet that he was one of the few people in the world who knew that Anton Santillan had a penchant for dry humor. “See you later.”

  “Bye, Santi!” called Faye, who before that point was reading from her phone in the corner and wearing a pair of earphones while waiting for a batch of cookies to finish cooking. He didn’t miss the blush on her cheeks when Santi gave her a tiny smile and a wave.

  “Crush mo?” Gab teased as soon as Santi disappeared downstairs. And Faye, his twenty-year-old part-time worker and baking apprentice, the same age as his little sister Rose, blushed furiously and frowned.

  “No,” she said a little too loudly. “Stop it, boss. Seriously. STOP.”

  “O ano, should I ask if he’s interested?” he teased, picking one of the just-cooled cookies and taking a bite. He loved this particular recipe. His sister Daisy had gone through a domestic goddess streak when she was fourteen, and made enough cookies to fill five ice cream tubs for Ivy’s seventh birthday. She’d accidentally added crushed pretzels in one of the batches with the gooey, grated chocolate and walnuts, and created a winner. The Capras kids had scrambled for those cookies and played tong-its to establish ownership of said cookies.

  Just like Daisy’s, these were snappy and crunchy, the kind of cookie that left crumbles on your lap that you wanted to eat. Faye was getting really good at this.

  He looked over at their neon sign, bright red and loud, reminding his customers that “it only takes a bite,” and grinned at the thought of the glare it cast in Sari’s shop. Then a thought struck him.

  “If you weren’t paying me, I would hate you,” she grumbled.

  “What was that?”

  “I was saying, Manang Nessie said you should bring sansrival for the party tonight,” Faye said a little too loud, and with a smile that was a little too wide. Gab was always thinking of what to bake next and it was sometimes hard to keep track of the things he’d already promised.

  Gab gave a low whistle. That was a huge promise that he maybe should have remembered giving, because a sansrival was no joke. Everyone had a favorite kind—some liked it when the nutty meringue layers in between the buttercream were crisp and crunchy, others preferred it soft, mallowy and chewy. Some purists didn’t think that a sansrival should be flavored with anything else but cashew, others liked to experiment with pistachio, almond or macadamia nuts.

  And then there was the buttercream, the thing that bound the entire cake together, generously sandwiched between the layers of the meringue. Too cold and buttercream was flavorless, too warm and it melted. Some liked it sweet, others liked it closer to butter. Some wanted it flavored with coffee or rum.

  Damn. It was like a challenge. Bake the perfect sansrival and win the hearts of the people he was going to leave anyway.

  “Well, no time like the present to start,” he said, stretching his arms over his head as he pushed the thought aside. “I don’t really like making sansrival.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s hard to please everyone.”

  It was also the birthday cake he’d baked for his younger sister Rose on her sixteenth birthday. He’d already been midway through culinary school then, on the brink of quitting yet another college course, ready to accept that he was just going to fall even farther behind, when his mother had asked him to make something for Rose’s school party. So he made a sansrival, and it was like the entire world made perfect sense. When he baked, he was in perfect control of the ingredients, making magic he couldn’t quite explain. And everything fell into place for him, in a way that the three other courses he’d shifted out from hadn’t. He loved baking. He loved making his family happy with the things he made.

  So he ran with that, and never looked back.

  He liked to think this was the cake that had started and ended it all. Baking the cake made him think about baking, baking eventually made his father tell his son to “be serious.” Because Gab was a man, and a man didn’t dally around with random courses and hope something stuck. Because a man who wanted to support a family didn’t bake his way to it.

  “It’s a waste of your time,” his father had told him. “You’re never going to earn enough to make her comfortable the way I did for the family. Just get a regular job, anak.”

  “You never told the girls that they were wasting their time,” he pointed out.

  “That’s different. They’re girls, who will become wives. You’re a man, Gabriel, and people will expect you to be able to support a family of your own, and I don’t see how you’re going to be able to do that by baking for other people. For once in your life. Take yourself seriously.”

  The memory stung him, four years later. He’d spent the four years trying to outrun all of those memories, only to have it come running back and smacking him across the face here in Lipa.

  There was a reason why he didn’t particularly like making sansrival.

  “I should get started,” he said, grabbing an apron and
putting it on. “Faye, care to help? Mastering your meringues is a key skill in baking.”

  “Yes, boss!” she said enthusiastically, following him up to the bakery. He hated to admit this, but his mood had dimmed spectacularly, and he wasn’t sure that even a Christmas party was going to make things any better.

  Chapter Thirteen

  December 18, Laneways Christmas Party

  Several hours and one carefully made sansrival later, Gab took back his earlier statement.

  A Christmas party made everything better.

  They had sectioned off the back end of the Laneways, creating a huge party space under the strings of twinkle lights. A makeshift marquee was set up to protect from the rain, but it only made the entire scene look like the inside of a circus tent. Mismatched tables and chairs were set up, the buffet table groaning with the amount of food it carried. There was apparently going to be a pretty big raffle—Gabriel could spy a washing machine, stand fans and...was that a TV?—up for grabs along with the two mini-refs courtesy of Hotel Villa and Sunday Bakery.

  Someone brought in giant white parols on bamboo sticks and set them up around the front, so it looked like a stage fit for a show. Sari clearly had flowers to spare, and now the stage and the tables were full to the brim with baby’s breath and carnations and other flowers from Hope’s Garden. With the cool nip in the air and Jose Mari Chan’s “Christmas in Our Hearts” on repeat, it was a scene that could make the biggest Grinch’s heart grow several sizes too big.

  “This party is fancier than my debut, and my dress had a train,” Kira Luz said, sliding up to him, holding a plate of lechon in one hand and one of his caramel banana cupcakes in the other. Gab had sprinkled crushed banana chips on top of the cupcakes, making them extra fantastic to eat, but not quite a taste match to the lechon. “You remember? I think I made you one of my eighteen roses.”

  One would think that someone who made chocolate and tasted it for a living would be a little more discerning with her tastes, but Gab didn’t judge. He’d known Kira since college, and he’d always thought she was a bit of an odd duck, but she gave too little shits for anyone else to care. She was the one who had called him seemingly out of the blue one day while he was in Melbourne, after months of not talking, with a simple question.