Fairy Tale Fail (5 page)

So, obviously,
I
was the Hero here. I
just wish I knew who the Villain was, though. Don's issues had been
with
me
. It might
have been easier if I had been competing with someone
else.

I may have decided to stay
away from Don but I didn't change my mind about him. I
knew
I wanted a good guy,
I knew I wanted
him,
and… our breakup? First test. Ignoring me after I told him I
still loved him? Second test. I was probably going to be tested
three times, or as many times as necessary, but if I loved him as I
said I did, I wasn't going to waver. He would come around,
eventually.

***

The company-wide weather
report, sent via text message, was not as optimistic:
Signal number 3 storm headed for Manila today.
Classes on all levels have been suspended. Please make appropriate
travel arrangements
.

"Boo," I said, as I prepared for
work.

To everyone else, my life was going on
as usual. I had my family, my job, my trips, and (most of) my
friends… I really didn't lack anything. I wasn't sitting in my room
pining for my ex all day.

But the little things still hurt
sometimes.

Like when Charisse said that she would
stop telling me news about Don, even if I asked. I said it was all
right, I could handle it. But she said no, she wasn't going to
allow me to keep tabs on him. So if he started seeing anyone again
since that party at Ricky's house, I wasn't sure.

And then, at six-fifteen AM, I saw
someone's online photo album and knew for sure.

What did I see? Photos from
last weekend's
barkada
beach trip to Laiya, Batangas. Which I never even heard about.
I clicked through the album and checked out the people there –
Charisse, Don, pretty much everybody, including some new faces I
didn't recognize. Don had his arm around a girl, the photo catching
him in the split second after he had planted a happy kiss on her
cheek. I didn't know her at all. She didn't work in the office, or
at least I had never run into her.

Ah, shit. My Prince Charming had moved
on without me, and he had taken all of our friends with him. Some
Hero I turned out to be.

***

My mood was as gloomy as the sky
outside. I decided not to drive to work, because my car was an
automatic and I didn't feel like getting stuck on the Skyway or
worse, flooded side streets taken to avoid traffic. I loved living
in the south Metro Manila area but we knew what these storms were
like. I personally had been stranded on the highway three times in
my life already, didn't want to make it four.

The storm wasn't on my mind anyway.
The only thing I wanted to do was get Charisse to have lunch with
me so I could demand an explanation.

"What?" Charisse said, pausing in the
middle of slicing her salad greens into smaller chunks.

"I can't believe you didn't tell
me."

"That we were going to Batangas, or
that Don has a new girlfriend?"

"Shit. Both."

Charisse shook her head. She didn't
seem sorry. Not that I was expecting her to be, but maybe just a
little.

"Look, I told you, Ellie,"
she said, "I think you're
so
okay right now. You're doing everything you want
to do. And you don't have Don baggage hanging around messing you
up. This is best for you, really."

"It's not fair," I said, like a child.
"I think I should get to decide what I find out."

"What would you have done? You would
have shown up in Batangas, right? And then what?"

"You guys are my friends too," I
insisted.

Charisse raised an eyebrow
at me. "Ellie, we're all still here. Fine, you don't hang out with
us everyday anymore, but that doesn't mean we're not
friends.
If you showed up
for Don, and not us, then you're not going for the right
reasons."

I knew that, objectively.
But I couldn't make myself
get
it, and I felt like I couldn't make Charisse
understand either. She had never been dumped. I even knew firsthand
that she had at least two guys still in love with her at that
moment, and if she saw them on the street she would hide. She
wouldn't have understood me even if I used charts and
graphs.

***

After lunch the storm really came at
the city, and hard. I could barely see out the windows, and it was
like the rain was hitting the glass office windows horizontally.
The office called off work at four PM, but that wasn't going to
help me any. Even if I found a shuttle that would take me south,
I'd be stuck in it for hours.

So I stayed at work and did web
research for my next trip. I was thinking Vietnam. Hanoi? Ho Chi
Minh? Did it have to be one or the other? Or maybe Bali next
time?

This started out, by the way, as
research for someone else's business trip. My role in the team was
really just to coordinate, and on a whim my boss asked me to
arrange his travel because he was visiting a client's branch office
in Thailand.

I went back into his office with an
entire folder full of stuff for him to read. Did he want a hotel
near the train system? Near the office (but it was a bit out of the
way) or in the business district? I noticed that he had an extra
day after the meeting, did he want to be booked somewhere with
interesting sights within walking distance?

These were things I always
asked myself when I prepared
my
travel plans, so I couldn't just book him in some
random hotel without finding this out, right? He was floored by all
my questions, and pleasantly surprised. He answered all of them and
I found him a nice place, within budget, and he was able to spend
his extra day walking around buying souvenirs for his
wife.

"You're doing all our travel from now
on," he said when he got back.

So, Vietnam. I figured that I could
only afford Ho Chi Minh City, because Hanoi required a connecting
flight…

"You're still here?" Lucas said,
showing up by my desk at six o'clock.

The rain hadn't stopped, but I didn't
even notice the time. I was sucked into a time warp when I planned
for trips. So many reviews to read, pictures to look at…

"I'm stuck," I said. "The shuttles are
probably all gone. Or stranded on the highway already. Best thing
for me is to stay. Why are you still here?"

He looked around and I thought I saw a
flash of guilt in his eyes, but it was gone when I
blinked.

"I had work to do," he replied. "But
you can't stay here all night. You see that rain? The electricity
might go out."

The thought of walking twenty-two
flights of stairs made me cringe, visibly.

Lucas smiled. "Join me for
dinner?"

Sure, travel planning could wait. I
shut down my desktop and grabbed my jacket.

Chapter 8

Yeah, this was one of those
storms. The kind that told even us jaded people, "No, you haven't
seen
me
yet,
bitches."

The scene outside our building was a
mess. Trash bins had not just toppled over, but were rolling far
from their original spots. Tree branches were either swept up in
odd angles or on the ground, and the gutters were just barely
keeping the rainwater from the sidewalk.

Rather than bear with the
burger place in our building, though, Lucas insisted on real food.
He said there was a small cafeteria-style place he went to a few
blocks away. Really good
bulalo
. I looked out at the rain, and
the wind, and my shoes, and my nice purple top, and
shrugged.

Bulalo
did sound good. The weather put me in the mood for meat and
marrow. (It's not as disgusting as I made it sound.)

I pulled my jacket around me tighter
and followed him out. I had an umbrella, but it was the kind of
storm that would blow an umbrella inside out, so the only way to
stay mobile was just to run for it. Thankfully the restaurant was
open when we got there, and they didn't mind too when little
puddles formed around us when we sat down. I was soaked, by the
way, even through my jacket.

Lucas looked great though. He ran a
hand through his wet hair and the calculated mess pointed in a
different direction.

"So, you don't usually stay late at
work, right?" Lucas said, after ordering.

"No," I answered, drying my hands on
some table napkins. "I'm usually out of there after my eight
hours."

"Because you live far?"

I thought about it, and
shook my head. "No, I just don't want to be at work all night. What
were
you
doing
there anyway? We were all sent home at the same time."

"I think I'm in the mood for a beer.
Do you want a beer?"

Interesting. "Did you just avoid
answering me?"

He smiled sheepishly and called the
waiter, asking for two bottles of San Mig Light.

I patted my forehead with another
table napkin and shrugged. "You do realize that you invited me to
dinner during a storm, which means you're stuck with me asking this
question all night. Might as well answer it."

I didn't think I would ever be able to
tease Rock Star that way, but what the hey. I couldn't go home, I
was hungry, what else did he expect me to do?

"I'm not talking on an empty stomach,"
Lucas said.

***

What did I know about Lucas, anyway?
All of it had been rumors, passed around the office, usually picked
up and shared by Charisse who had more friends on other
floors.

It was quite possible that even after
all of that, I knew nothing about him at all.

"So what's your 'thing', Sandwich
Girl?" he said, just when I was about to start pestering him
again.

"My what?"

"Your thing. What is it you do that
makes you want to get out of work right away."

See, that was a great way
of putting it. Don had the impression that people who left the
office as soon as they were allowed were lazy.
I
thought they led exciting lives and
couldn't wait to get back to them.

"Thank you," I couldn't help saying to
Lucas. "Some people have criticized me for not staying at the
office late enough."

He shrugged. "Yeah, well, if people
want to give their heart and soul to their job, then good for them.
My work doesn't define me."

"That's exactly what I've
been trying to tell
some
people."

I had a lot to look forward to when I
clocked out. I started counting them with my fingers. "Movies. TV
shows. Dylan, my new little nephew. Finding out what's for dinner.
Speaking of, I need to text my mom that I'm having dinner out. And,
my research."

"Your what?"

"It's strange," I warned him. "I mean,
I don't think everyone does this. I plan hypothetical trips to
places."

It was a hobby that I did
spend a lot of time on, like hours and hours on the Internet every
night. Well not
every
night, but one thing usually led to another. Like, planning
for a trip to Europe, wow. I could spend weeks on that, just doing
one scenario after another.

"Like how?" Lucas said. "Like, for
example, a trip to France. What would be your scenario for
that?"

"How much money do I have?"

Lucas blinked. "Um… not a
lot."

"How much time off do I get from
work?"

"Two weeks?"

"Just France, or do I do other
countries? Because once I get a visa for France, I would think,
might as well go to other countries within the EU with that,
right?"

"France and Italy then."

"Which cities? Do I take a tour, like
Contiki, or do I plot the touring myself?"

Lucas leaned back against his chair
and shook his head. "You're right, planning this could take
forever."

"But in a fun way."

"Of course. But don't think this is so
strange, I'm kind of on a travel kick too. Locally,
though."

He told me about what inspired him –
going diving for the first time in Malaysia, and realizing that he
hadn't even tried it back home.

"So I said I would," he concluded,
"and then it escalated to just visiting the next place because I
hadn't seen it. And the next place, and the next. Any local spots
part of your hypothetical trips?"

"No," I admitted. "Well, maybe not in
the near future. I really did start this to get away and be in an
unfamiliar place."

"So what are you running away from?"
he asked, casually but pointedly, motioning to the waiter to take
his empty beer bottle. Apparently Rock Star was a sharp
one.