Fairy Tale Fail (6 page)

I told him. About the boyfriend who
thought I was without ambition, without passion, and more
attractive to him when I was just his friend.

***

"Shit. That is
harsh.
" Lucas said, summing up my breakup in a neat
sentence-and-swear-word combo.

"It's not
that
bad," I said,
defending Don instinctively. "I mean, there's no proper place for a
breakup anyway."

"I haven't been to church
in ten years but I know I wouldn't do
that
to anyone." He brought the
little bowl of
bulalo
broth to his lips and slurped thoughtfully. "Well, when I
first saw him I did think he was an ass."

Oh crap. I hadn't seen Don in so long,
I had forgotten that we all still technically worked together. In
the same office.

"Do you know him, like, are you
friends?" I squeaked.

No, they weren't friends. But Lucas
met him briefly during an ill-advised stint with the office
badminton team. It wasn't a pleasant memory.

"Maybe I unfairly tainted your
perception of him already," I said. "Because normally people think
he's a nice guy."

He looked at me with disbelief. "Wow.
You were that into him, huh?"

"I said I loved him, didn't
I?"

This was hour three into our dinner.
The rain was still falling heavily, although thankfully the wind
had stopped its assault. Also, our big bowl of food was pretty much
just a peppered puddle by now, but I sure wasn't in a hurry to
leave.

He wasn't checking his watch
either.

"Ellie," he said, one of the first
times I heard him say my name, "Tell me if I got this right. You
think this guy loves you, and yet he takes you to the place he
knows you adore, tells you that you're lazy, and stupid, and much
more interesting from a distance."

I started laughing. It was like I was
being tickled from inside my gut. For a good minute there I
couldn't stop.

This was not the first time that I had
been told that. Charisse did, so many times, in so many ways. All
of my friends and family did, at least when they weren't sick of
this story yet. But seriously, none of those things sank in. They
became sound bites that I vaguely remembered, things I learned to
start saying to people just so they would think I was okay and stop
looking at me like I was going crazy.

"I am going to be honest with you," I
said. "Because you're paying for my beers."

He raised an eyebrow at me. "I
am?"

"You are now. Do you want to hear
it?"

"Go ahead."

I leaned toward him, toward the middle
of the table, and exaggerated a whisper. "I got so used to thinking
he was The One for me that I would probably still take him back.
Like, if he called me tomorrow and said he wanted a second
chance."

"Even after what he did to
you?"

"Yes," I said. "I think I
would."

"But you seem fine to me."

"I'm busy with work, but it's like I'm
on autopilot. I feel like I'm not entirely here. I really got
attached to the future I thought I would have with him. It sucks
that I'm not living that dream right now."

I wasn't being dramatic, by the way. I
wasn't crying, or hurt. I was just stating a fact, maybe for the
first time ever. It helped that Lucas didn't know me back then, and
didn't spend the past year or so hearing about my pain. At least he
was hearing this after I had already processed it.

"Do you still love him?" he
asked.

"I don't know if I do," I said. "But I
know that I would go back to him again if he asked. It's just
easier. I can't even imagine my fairy tale with another guy. I've
tried, but I can't."

There I said it – my shameful secret.
Ellie was not so free after all.

Lucas ran a hand through his hair –
dry now – and just looked me in the eye. I noticed that he had
stubble again, and I liked how it gave definition to his jaw. He
looked at me, probably expecting me to say I was kidding. I
couldn't possibly still be in love with a guy who didn't appreciate
me.

But I wasn't kidding.

"Well, now I know that you
are
really
messed
up," Lucas said, finally. "I'm paying for the whole
dinner.

Chapter 9

My mom told me to stay on dry land
while traffic was bad. I asked Charisse if I could stay overnight
in her apartment, just a short walk from the office, but she said
that five other people were already crammed in her studio with her.
I knew I should have called earlier, but I was having a great time.
With Rock Star.

After we left the restaurant, we
retreated under a shed when the rain started up again, and made our
respective phone calls. The shed wasn't providing much shelter
against the rain, because I was still getting wet from when drops
ricocheted back up at me from the street.

Lucas had his back to me, still on his
phone call. He had his head down, and I couldn't really hear what
he was saying, but the tone of it seemed tense. At least for him,
who was never tense. Sandra liked to call him her "low-maintenance
friend."

"So," he said when his call ended.
"Your friend taking you in tonight?"

"No, I didn't book her early enough.
She's got too many people there now."

"You don't know anyone
else?"

"Everyone I know is probably already
staying over at Charisse's." I said. "It's okay. I think I can wait
this out a little longer. How about you?"

"Oh, don't worry about me. I have a
relative nearby."

"Good for you," I said.

He shrugged, and then smiled at me.
"Good for us."

***

I used to like playing in
flooded streets until it occurred to me
what
was on a regular Makati street
when it was dry. Cigarette butts. Dog poo. And all sorts of other
crap that shouldn't be on the ground. Didn't matter how it looked
or where it was – one piece of crap was all it took for flood water
to freak me out.

"
Fuck
fuck fuck
,"
I said, when my foot went down an
unseen pothole again.

Lucas held out a hand so he could help
me jump over another puddle. "Nice," he said sarcastically. "I can
see why good guys are attracted to you."

"Shut up," I retorted. "I don't like
walking in a pool of dog poop. And rat pee."

"But see, you just agreed to go
somewhere with a shower. It all works out."

The rain hadn't stopped,
but we were on the move because Lucas had convinced me to stay at
his aunt's house in Bel-Air with him instead. I found the whole
thing a bit weird, but Lucas asked me to reconsider for
his
sake. He had decided
that he was going to stay with me that night until I got a decent
ride home (it was the proper thing to do), but rather than make him
wait in a mall could we at least wait at his
tita
's house where he could at least
be comfortable?

***

Lucas' aunt, it turned out, was ready
for us. A fabulous-looking woman of over fifty, and the cousin of
Lucas' dad, she was retired, a widow, and lived alone in the house.
Her children had all moved out to start their own
families.

When we got there at thirty past
midnight, his Tita Claire pushed me right into the downstairs
bathroom. I could barely remember how I got there, as we traveled
through a maze of rooms: foyer, then living room, then hallway, a
study, then some kind of family room, and then bathroom. Inside, a
neatly-folded pile was waiting: drawstring jogging pants (too large
for me, but that's where the drawstring part came in), a Boracay
souvenir shirt that looked like it had never been used, disposable
underwear (in the right size), a fluffy pink towel, and white
bedroom slippers that had a hotel's name on them.

The shower had hot water
too. It felt
great
. I stood under it for so long, just scrubbing floodwater
bacteria off my feet. I felt like Cinderella being made over by the
Fairy Godmother.

I stepped out of the bathroom to
discover myself indeed in some kind of family room, but only
because Lucas was already there sitting on the floor, back against
the couch, watching TV. He looked fresh out of the shower too, and
was wearing the same kind of Boracay shirt.

I thought of being self-conscious for
a second. I was in ill-fitting clothes, underwear made of paper,
and I hadn't even brushed my hair yet and here I was in front of
Rock Star.

"The shirt looks better on you," he
said, effectively breaking the ice. Sandra was right; I didn't feel
like I had to be high-maintenance if he wasn't.

"Where's your
tita
? I have to thank
her."

"She's asleep by now but she left
chocolate." True enough, there was a box of truffles
waiting.

"Wow," I said, jumping onto the couch
behind him. "I think this is my best typhoon night
ever."

***

Another thing I discovered about
Lucas: He drank three bottles of beer at dinner and managed to keep
mum the whole time, but after maybe five non-alcoholic truffles he
started to loosen up. Past midnight and we were both sitting on the
carpeted floor. Each one gallantly offering the couch, neither
accepting it.

"Are you a secret rock star?" I
asked.

He shook his head.
"
What?
No. Where'd
that come from?"

"Nowhere," I said innocently. "You
know that people talk about you, right? I mean, at
work."

The TV was tuned to the BBC but I had
long since stopped paying attention to it. And so did he, because
at this he turned to lean against a throw pillow and face me
directly.

"What do people say about me?" he
asked.

"You can't not know. How long have you
been at the office?"

"I don't hang out with a lot of people
there. What do they say?"

"Well, it's more of… observational.
People notice what you do. Who you're with."

"Why would they do that? I'm
boring."

It figured that he wouldn't
understand. But rather than explain to him, he launched into an
explanation of how "regular" he was. He had started to explain to
me just what exactly he did for work (I mean, "wealth management"?
Really?) but somewhere in the middle he just started
laughing.

"Please forget everything I just told
you. It doesn't matter," he said. "Seriously. The answer is, I do
stuff my boss tells me so I get paid twice a month. That is all it
is."

"But you're like, assistant manager,
right? And you've been promoted before?"

"Not of my own doing. I guess I'm a
good foot soldier." Lucas grabbed another truffle and bit half of
it off, chewing slowly. "But what really makes it worth it is
working with this one client. Huge corporation. They started this
foundation and somehow roped me into it. They set up libraries in
small towns."

He seemed really into it too, telling
me about the online book donation drive and the corporate
partnerships, and I couldn't help but laugh. Somehow I had imagined
Lucas having some sort of altruistic hobby, only because all the
gossip about him gave him a Clooney kind of mystique, but I didn't
think that it could be true.

"Are you making fun of me?" he
demanded. "Because people don't usually laugh when I tell them
about the kids who can't afford books."

"I'm not laughing at
the
kids,
" I said,
"I'm sorry, please continue. It's great what you're doing, really.
I think it'll help a lot of people."

"Oh no, I have no illusions about
that. The foundation does a nice thing for people, but they don't
even know if enough people will go to the libraries."

"But you do it anyway. Does it make
you feel all warm inside?" I teased.

"Yes," Lucas admitted. "They're not
the easiest clients, but I'd rather deal with them than other
people. Makes the job bearable. But it's just a job, right?
Fulfillment's different for everyone."

"Can you hang around with certain
people I know and just say that?"

"Don is an ass. You don't need to
change his mind about anything."

"Now see, good guys don't call other
guys names."

Lucas laughed. "I'm not a good
guy."

I remembered what I told Charisse –
all the reasons why I couldn't be with a guy like him. He smoked
(or used to), he drank, he had tattoos, and I had no idea how he
was with responsibility. I didn't know him for very long, didn't
even know his parents or what they did. I would have to explain so
much to my mom if they were to meet. I couldn't imagine how he'd
take care of me, what kind of life we would have
together…