Every Girl's Guide to Boys (4 page)

Miguel steps out to
refill our glasses with iced tea, and the girls start grilling me. “What are
you doing to Nathan?” Rickie asks. I hate that she puts him on a pedestal, that
she automatically assumes I’m the one facilitating all this drama, pulling the
strings and cackling from up above. Anna takes a less hostile approach: “I read
the comments. What were you doing with Nico?”

“I don’t know,” I say.
“I don’t know what I’m doing to Nathan. I don’t know what I was doing with
Nico. I don’t know what I’m doing.” And then I burst into tears and allow
myself to be enveloped in hugs and hasty apologies and assurances that I’m not
a horrible person.

When my bawling has
subsided (let’s just say it was loud enough for Miguel to come running back
into the room, and Anna had to shake her head at him to make him mumble some
excuse about picking up his mom’s dry-cleaning before making his exit), I say,
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you guys about Nico.”

They look at each
other. Rickie opens her mouth to speak, then closes it again. Anna asks, “Why
didn’t you?”

“He said he was just
visiting, that he didn’t want other people to find out he was here.”

“Oh,” Rickie says.
“Okay.”

I know what that “oh,
okay” meant. It meant,
I so want to knock some sense into you, but now’s not the right
time because you’re all upset and
kawawa.
Maybe later.
I feel I have to
explain further, because if even my best friends in the world don’t see my side
of the story, how am I supposed to dodge all the rumors about to come my way?
It’s been two days since my last conversation with Nathan, and my inbox is
already being flooded by curious readers. Some pretend to be asking legitimate
questions:
I’m torn between two guys. They’re both cute and smart and
talented and desperately devoted to me. How should I choose between them? On
second thought,
why
should I choose between them? Do I even have to choose at all?
Some express care and
concern:
You haven’t been replying for days. Is there anything wrong?
Maybe this time, we can be the ones to help you.
Some, perhaps unable to
control their excitement over such juicy gossip, opt for the direct and
painfully tactless route:
So. Nathan or Nico? Whomever you end up dumping,
akin na lang.
I’ll be
waiting.
Great. Just great. Maybe I should simply flip a coin and get this over with.

“I like Nathan,” I tell
Rickie.

“I know,” she replies.
She looks over at Anna, as if she were asking for permission to continue. Anna
shrugs. Rickie says, carefully and almost apologetically, “But you also like
Nico.”

“I do,” I say. Blame it
on my good girl upbringing, or on my parents who are very much in love and
completely content with each other—but this Nathan-Nico dilemma strikes
me as a bit absurd. How is it possible to like two boys at the same time? I
want to slap myself back to reality. It hits me now that I am actually part of
a real live love triangle, and to think I have never even believed in love
triangles. For me, it goes like this: You are attracted to one person, period.
If you’re lucky, he ends up being into you, too. And if someone else on the
outside likes you, then that’s his problem because he is not even part of the
equation. There are only two points, and they can either intersect (it works
out and you live happily ever after) or remain parallel to one another (it
doesn’t work out and you go your separate ways, blaming one another for your miserable
existence). There is no third point, and there are no three sides. There is no
freakin’ triangle formed.

“Maybe you should think
this through first,” Anna tells me. “Don’t decide yet, okay?”

She may be my best
friend who knows me to my core, and she may be one of the smartest, most
sensible people I will ever meet, but I know she’s wrong. I don’t need to think
this through, I need to choose once and for all. I need some major balls so I
can stop postponing this decision and quit prolonging everyone’s agony. I need
to at least try to be fair to them, and to myself. I know Anna’s wrong, but I
cling to the last few remnants of hope that it is possible to keep both Nathan
and Nico. And at this moment, I become living, breathing proof that in order to
seriously screw everything up, it only takes one word: “Okay.”

Rule number 4:

When in doubt, procrastinate.

So this is
The Plan: I put off making a decision until the very last
minute. And when is the very last minute? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure
I’ll recognize it when it comes knocking. And even when it does come knocking,
I will put off facing it until it threatens to demolish the door and eat me
alive. Yes, that is The Plan. Clearly, I am being quite
“responsible” and “mature” and “level-headed” about this.

The thing about
procrastination is that it cannot be carried out successfully without the aid
of distractions. Have you ever tried staring at a blank computer screen for
hours when you should be finishing a paper due the next day? Not fun, right? So
instead, you log on to Facebook, stalk your crush on Multiply, post random
messages on TeenTalk, brush up on Perez Hilton’s latest showbiz offerings, or
answer stupid surveys on LJ (I don’t even know why they’re called surveys;
who’s keeping track of them?). You do everything you can to forget about that
deadline looming over your head—but of course you don’t completely
forget. Because at three AM, panic starts creeping in and you have no choice
but to confront that blank computer screen again. At three AM, you know the
distractions are useless and that you cannot procrastinate any longer. You know
that any more attempts at evading the task will be futile, because That Thing
You’re Supposed to be Done With has landed right smack in the middle of your
bedroom, purposely set up camp, and refused to go back to its home planet until
it is transformed to That Thing You Are Already Done With.

But it is not yet three
AM. For now, the distractions will take center stage.

Distraction
number one, evidently, is the advice column.

Dear Chrissy,

      
Last year,
I missed my chance with this girl. We both knew there was something there, but
we never acknowledged it. I think she was waiting for me to make a move, while
I was waiting for her to reassure me that it was okay to make a move. I think
she got tired of waiting, and she started believing I was intentionally trying
to hurt her. She got mad at me, there was a huge fight, and we stopped seeing
each other.

      
And now, I
think she wants to get back at me by dating a new guy and parading him all over
town. What sucks is that recently, she seems to be making a suspicious amount
of effort to be friends with me again. I don’t know what she’s trying to do
here, but I don’t want to be her friend. I can’t be her friend—not when
she’s dating someone else. She won’t stop texting or calling me. I’ve been
trying to move on, but she won’t let me. How do you deal with the pain that
keeps following you around?

Sincerely,

Romeo

Dear Romeo
(okay, I can’t believe I just wrote that),

      
This will
sound harsh, but I speak the truth. Like you’ve mentioned, you already missed
your chance. Sometimes, life sets certain deadlines for you to do or say
something, and when the moment has already passed, there’s not much you can do
about it. You don’t want to be friends with her because you think you can still
be something more in the near future. But this is what I think: the reason
she’s trying to rebuild the friendship is that she has finally moved on. Hasn’t
it occurred to you that perhaps she just misses being your friend, and you are
turning it into this whole telenovela scenario where she’s the villain trying
to waltz back into the picture and you’re the poor guy who just wants to be
left alone? You don’t deal with the pain that keeps following you
around—you just let go of it. And maybe when you do, you can learn your
lesson and take your leaps of faith sooner.

Peace,

Chrissy

Distraction number two
is supposed to be a tall glass of full cream milk and a thick slice of white
chocolate cheesecake. But I go downstairs to find Daddy sitting at the dining
table, tinkering with his laptop, and distraction number two becomes a very
strange father-daughter conversation.

“Hi, honey,” he says,
smiling. Very few teen girls can say this—or maybe it’s just that very
few teen girls actually care enough to notice—but every time my dad sees
me, his whole face lights up. He may be having a bad day, he may be busy
running a million little errands for the restaurant, he may be worrying about
an article he’s writing or a troublesome chapter in his novel, but it never
fails: every single time his only daughter walks into the room, his day turns
right around. And it never matters if I’m being crabby or bratty (which,
thankfully, I rarely am) or if I just
want to
rant his ear off over the silliest setbacks; the mere fact that I exist makes
him undeniably happy. I think this is how you would define unconditional love.

“Hi, Dad,” I say,
plunking myself down beside him and pushing the slice of cake towards him. He
makes a face at me, a face that translates to
I want to but your mom will
kill me if she finds out I’ve broken my strict, no-sugar diet
. I smile
sympathetically and shove a forkful into my mouth.

“Why are you up?” he
asks.

“Why are
you
up?” I shoot back. This
is how we usually speak to each other. Sometimes I’d be on the phone with him
and people would think I was just talking to a friend, or someone my age. It’s
not that I haven’t tried using the traditional
po
and
opo
on him and my mom, it’s
just that every time I did, it felt funny and forced. The way we saw it, I was
doing my part—following curfew (nine PM on weekdays and eleven-thirty PM
on weekends, unless there’s a special occasion or a really good reason to stay
out), respecting their rules about boys (I can only go on unsupervised dates
with guys they know, and I was to tell them immediately if things were getting
serious), and being drug-free, alcohol-free, and nicotine-free—enough to
grant me access to something other people only experience from their parents
when they’re already working or married: being treated as an equal.

“This Jurassic laptop
needs to be fixed,” he tells me. He sighs, sets it aside, and catches me
off-guard by asking, “How was the date with Nico?”

“Daaaaaaaaaaad,” I
protest, drawing the word out the way I do when he’s embarrassing me.

“What,” he says,
shrugging. “It was a date, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” I
reply. “I guess it was. This is so awkward, Dad. I’d rather talk about this
with Mom. No offense.”

He pretends to be hurt.
And then he grins and says, “So do you like him?”

“
Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!
”

“Okay, okay,” he holds
up his hands in mock surrender. He goes back to attacking his laptop and I go
back to demolishing my cake. We sit in silence until he asks, “So why
don’t
you like him?”

There is no correct
answer to “Why don’t you like him?” Unless you say, “Because he’s a serial
murderer,” or “Because he texts like this:
elow poh.
d2 n me. wer n
u?
” in
which case these might be considered slightly acceptable replies but you’d
still have to back them up with some sort of elaborate explanation. There is
never a correct answer to this question, in the same way that there is no
correct answer to “Why don’t you have a boyfriend?” or, “Why can’t you be more
like your cousin?” The only answer that will come to your mind is a loud,
obnoxious “duh,” and you’re smart enough to know that’s not a very good answer
to give your dad. Nor is it a very good sign that you have nothing more
coherent than “duh,” for that matter.

I glare at him and say,
“I never said I didn’t like him.” He chuckles, makes me promise not to stay up
too late (I grunt a grumpy “okay”), and retreats upstairs, muttering to
himself. I am left alone with a second distraction cut short and a gazillion
calories. You see what depression does to women? It makes them stuff their
faces with chocolate. And then they forget temporarily about their depression,
egged on by the endorphins and the sugar high. And then the calories start
settling into their tummy and thighs, and they get depressed all over again. So
they stuff their faces again. And then, of course, they get even fatter. And
then they think “nobody’s ever going to love me.” So they eat some more,
because they’re already blimps anyway. It’s a vicious, vicious cycle. I shake
my head at my empty plate, almost expecting it to point out, “Hey, you ate that
cake out of your own free will, so don’t you dare look at me like that, Missy.”
I sigh and trudge back to my room.

I come in expecting to
find distraction number three. Instead, three AM finally finds me—or
rather, climbs in through the window, clutching a round tin container and
wearing a key I had long forgotten about on a chain around his neck.

“What the hell do you
think this is, Nico,
Dawson’s Creek
?” I am trying to be angry. I’m not sure if I
really am. “Why do you still have that key? Hand it over right now.”

He hands me the tin
container instead. The glorious smell of butterscotch toffee chip cookies fills
the room. He smiles at me and says, “You’re welcome. I slaved over the oven for
hours.” He is wearing a leather jacket that would probably look ridiculous on
everybody else but looks cool and dangerous on him, and his long hair is
falling into his eyes. He swipes the stray strands away and looks right at me.
I set the cookies down on my dresser, waiting for him to explain why he is
standing in my bedroom in the middle of the night, why he hasn’t asked to see
me since our Tagaytay dinner, and why I haven’t heard a single word from him
since that day I found out he was back for good. Waiting for him to tell me
that he is the obvious choice and that he is the one I should be with.

This is how he
operates. I should know this; I should know how he manages to get away with
everything every time. He spreads out his affections, dividing his attention
among people, always giving them too little, sometimes barely enough, but never
too much. He says what he means and he means what he says, but he never says
all the things they expect him to say. He is an enigma, and he knows this keeps
them on their toes, ready and willing to be The Girl Who Will Finally
Understand. He knows how to leave them wanting more. He knows exactly how to
make them fall helplessly, hopelessly, head-over-heels in love with him.

And
by “them,” I mean “me.” Of course I mean me.

Time’s up; three AM has
arrived. Nico moves closer and closer until he is directly in front of me. He
tucks my hair behind my ear, and I try not to make eye contact. “Chrissy,” he
says, “look at me.” He puts a hand under my chin and gently tilts my face up
towards his. I have no choice—I look. Big mistake. I feel like fainting
but I cannot bring myself to look away. I tell him, “You had no right to do
that to Nathan.”
Or to me
, I add silently.

“I’m sorry it made you
feel bad,” he says. “But I’m not sorry I did that. It was what I had to do.”

When I don’t say
anything, he kisses me on the cheek, zeroing in on a spot barely an inch away
from my lips—slowly and deliberately, enough for me to realize that maybe
I don’t have to make this decision myself. Because maybe Nico can make it for
me. Maybe Nico is
already
making it for me. He says goodnight and is gone.

The kiss lingers long
after he has left, and my first thought, as I feel my lips curling into a
smile, is that I am probably mistaken about Nico and these possibilities. I
have been wrong about these things many, many times before, and I have
discovered that all the precious little “clues” I would patiently gather in my
head eventually pool into a dismal puddle of disappointment at the end of the
day. I do not want to assume anything because I do not want to be wrong
again—not this time, not when it matters. But here it is, the warmth on
my face embracing the sweetness in the air, evidence that this can be something
special and real and wonderful. And this time, because it matters, I might just
be right.

I fall asleep with a
smile on my face.