by Aly White
“Drop your stuff first, we’re going out for some good food. I know a nice place,” Julian says as soon as he drops his bag on the long velvety couch at the common area. I put my luggage by the door of my room and follow them right away.
Arriving at the restaurant, a waiter welcomes us and brings us to a table by the window, through it I can see the vast, open ocean.
“The usual?” the waiter asks with a smile on his face.
The usual? So they come here a lot, huh? With who? Oh, wait. Shit. Did I just get jealous at a nameless, even faceless girl?
“Sure,” Lucas responds but then Julian cuts him off.
“You sure you aren’t asking her?” Julian says, pointing his lips at me.
“It’s fine. I suppose you come here a lot. Get me your usual,” I reply. The waiter displays a wide smile for us and leaves immediately. “So am I the third, fourth, fifth”—I make a face as if I'm in utter surprise—“or the tenth girl you brought here?"
“Are you curious?” Julian asks, there’s this broadening grin on his face. He puts his elbows on the table and leans forward, closing in on me, as though he’s testing the waters.
“Stop it,” Lucas says and pulls Julian back to his seat. “No, you’re the first,” he says to me, “and the last.”
“Oh, so you want to play the romantic protagonist,” Julian says in a bouncy tone. “Then I’ll be the second guy who steals the girl.”
“Oh, great! Now, I'm in the roleplaying mood," I say. "Then I'll do the villainous mother." I raise an eyebrow at Julian, and I see Lucas let out a couple of laughs.
The food finally arrives. French baked toast with cream and eggs. Scrambled eggs with truffle. A fruit shake that looks like a mixture of pineapple and watermelon. A cup of espresso.
“I notice you two have a deep liking towards eggs,” I say over breakfast.
Julian softly coughs, and Lucas'ss eyes slightly tremble.
“I don’t mean eggs, I mean eggs,” I add. “Do you dream about it?”
The two fall silent for a second until Julian looks up straight at me. I can tell just from his eyes alone that he comes prepared. “Oh, he does.” He points to his side. “Precisely my eggs,” he says. “I mean the eggs I cook.”
A wave of delight hits me. Just when I think he has a counterattack aimed at me, he veers off and fires the person beside him with an unforeseen remark. I turn to Lucas and asks him, “Do you dream about it?” I flash a smile for him.
He lifts his mug and takes a sip of his espresso. “Last night I dreamt about it. Apparently, I sucked it dry. Not enough juice, might be drought season,” he replies. “There, you guys having fun?”
The breakfast, then, is filled with laughter, going through every plate all smiles.
After breakfast, we stay for a bit at the restaurant. Lucas changes the topic and starts to mention Austin’s wife. “Are you two beginning to like each other?” he asks, pertaining to Diana.
I snicker as soon as the word “like” enter my ear. I adore animals of every kind, not a human turned animal. It's a different kind. “Snakes know how to slither their way around, and you won't notice they are already at you back in a stance to hurl itself at you,” I answer coldly.
“I didn’t know you fancy animal role play.” Julian butts in and adds, “We’ll try to accommodate to your needs.”
“Then remind me to bring a syringe pumped with euthanasia solutions,” I retort. “I like my animals sedated.”
Julian steps back and raises his open hands to his chest, motioning that he is withdrawing from this game. “You started it,” I giggle at his response.
Lucas coughs and says, “Anyway, she doesn’t act like a bitch anymore,” he pauses, “back in high school she was.”
Julian nods and says, “She’s nice now.”
“So you mean to say she has changed?” My tone is showing a bit of my annoyance at them for taking their side. So what am I going to do? Befriend her? Link arms with her? Throw her the best sleepover party ever?
Then a question hits me. Is this jealousy? For the second fucking time around?
Aubrey
Is this jealousy? I repeat the question in my head over and over again until my head explodes along with the unanswered query. We were at the restaurant when the bewildering question decided to emerge in my head. Until coming out of the restaurant, all the way back to the hotel, up here in my room, it still bothers me.
So I think of everything other than the cumbersome baggage I have brought till here, but without doubt, it all boils down to it. Damn right, everything just circles back to it.
I pace in my room from the end to another in hopes that any movement may help cast away this plummeting feeling. That perhaps once I get tired, I'd be forced to forget about it.
When I peek through the window, the sea seems to have gotten dark, gloomy, dead as though grim is brewing and transforming the seawater.
The cruel thing about this is that you just can’t discard a thought even if it’s painfully bugging you. You just can’t put them in a paper bag, seal it, bring it far away, and throw it, abandoning whatever is inside. You can’t pass it to someone willing to shoulder the agony, because it never works that way. It is for you to handle alone.
But I can’t handle it anymore—alone. Where or what or who do I turn to? I remember the whole thing, the whole fucking question is tearing my skin bit by bit, demanding me to go bare—flesh level bare. It seems to undress me, taking my clothes one by one until I’m naked head to toe. It seems to want to be familiar with my unguarded side.
Should I let it?
The thought comes to me like a meteor falling down to the ground, powerful and unpredicted. But what if this jealousy is one-sided? Another thought comes, but this time it is a different voice in my head that has spoken.
I continue to walk from side to side in the room when all of a sudden, Julian peeks in and catches me in the middle of pacing and says, “That breakfast sure knows how to make it difficult to wear a swimsuit.”
I stop walking at once. It is a relief that he thinks I’m burning the calories I have put in my body this morning and not because I’m conflicted with my relationship with them—or do we have a sort of relationship in the first place?
“We’re about to head out. Snorkeling,” he says with the utmost enthusiastic expression on his face.
He is all smiles, and I wonder if I’d throw him the question that I’ve been having difficulty finding the answer, would he walk away and run to the boat and leave as though he didn’t hear any word from me. Or would he stay and bring me to the bed and kiss me?
But I allow this wondering to stay only in my head. I can’t risk it, or perhaps I don’t want to risk it. I’m, after all, hanging by a thread, and any minute by now there’s a chance that I might fall to my demise.
I catch myself staring at Julian, and strange as it seems, Julian is staring back at me as well, not speaking a word after he has announced that we're going to the sea to snorkel. My body involuntarily jerks a bit. Regaining my composure, I say to him, “I think I'll pass.”
“I don’t take no for an answer,” he replies.
“Shut the door then. I’ll just change.”
He doesn’t leave and, instead, he moves his eyes all over the place, scrutinizing the inside of the room and taking his time as if he hasn’t seen that particular room of his own suite. “Can I stay?” he asks in a low voice.
“And watch me change?” I almost raised my voice. “Julian, please.” The way I say the word “please” differs from the manner I’ve used back at the restaurant. It is grave, dismal, like the kind of please you use after you say, ‘leave me alone.’
I can tell that he has seen through the sudden tone in my voice, but he doesn’t choose to probe. Instead, he tells me, “Then come to me if something troubles you.” He closes the door and disappears before my eyes.
But what if I ran to him instead, pull him by his wrist, and kiss him by the door? Would things turn
out different? I change into my swimwear, and then I step out of the room, leaving another question behind. But then you get reminded that it never really leaves you, it only stays.
I regroup with Julian and Lucas outside the hotel, the second they see me walk to them, the two utters some praises, that I look stunning, that I’d be a perfect magazine cover model, that I’d pass as an angel. But these flatteries never replace the maddening voices in my head.
I go with them to the sea, and once the guide signals that we’ve reach the spot, the two boys gear up right away and jump into the water.
Julian and Lucas keep their shoulder and head above the water. I can see their shoulder muscle glow like they were born with grand sparkles on their skin. Their eyes are squinting against the sun as they face me and beckon me to come down to the water and swim.
But I am not feeling it, the depth of the sea scares me—not that I am usually terrified of the seawater. It is the deepness that alarms me, the distance of the surface of the water from the seabed seems like the growing space between the two guys I came here with and me.
And if ever I do a leap of faith, I’d go down straight to the ground and not the surface, not with the boys. It worries me that I’m gradually getting attached to them. It bothers me that I’m craving for their touch, for me to touch their skin more than usual.
Maybe, I’ve gotten too attached. More than them. More than any other woman they’ve met. More than the whole world.
“I’ll help you get down,” Lucas tells me, extending his arm to reach over for my thighs. “Don’t be scared of the water.”
I pull away just as he is about to put his hands on my body. “It’s better if I observe instead,” I say, there is a touch of weakness in my voice.
“The animals or us?” Julian asks as he swims back to the side of the boat beside Lucas.
“You guys are the bonus,” I reply and show him a smile that I believe they’re familiar with. But Julian has already caught my fronts to truly be deceived.
“Hey, remember what I told you?” Julian asks, calling to mind the words he has uttered not too long ago.
In an instant, I calm down as though a chant was delivered in front of me, making its effect prevailing. I move back to the edge of the boat and drop my feet to the water. Julian and Lucas help me get off the boat, and the minute I let myself be with the cool water, I feel a wave of rawness and chillness in my body as though it is calming my nerves.
I let the calmness of the sea inhibit my body. For the first time in a while, I let go of a smile—an actual genuine beam. We dive in the water and float close to the reef and witness a few schools of fishes calmly swimming, King Angelfish, Pufferfish, yellowtail surgeonfish, parrot fish, but what gets our attention is a group of giant oceanic manta rays. They are almost like flying together in synchrony.
I marvel at the sight of the large group as I have never witnessed even one to start with, though I get the initial image of it from books, internet, and other materials. Seeing them up-close, gives me so much satisfaction that I forget the things that are bothering me.
For a moment or two, I enjoy being submerged in the water but when we come back to our boat. I feel the urge to not speak to the boys, and it is the kind of urge that doesn’t let you choose your actions. It forces you to act its desire.
I try to think the reason why I get an urge like this especially after having so much fun back there under the water with the boys. It hits me, then, that just because we swim in the same sea level doesn’t mean we rise with equal feelings.
Just like the oxygen tank, it is only momentary, passing and it goes away once the tank is empty. Soon, we’d go back to the surface, back to square one, where I’m the one who’s deeply attached.
Aubrey
Is this the water’s work that I am feeling way too cold to even think as I should be, to begin with? The chillness is conquering my body and every time the breeze hit my skin, I shudder a little bit.
In contrast to the time of our arrival when I’ve blindly believed that the wind is caressing me, the air, now, as it blows in my face feels nothing but a slap. Along with the wind is a message that says, “They don’t feel the same way as you do, and they never will.”
I am a little out of it, but I don’t tell the guys, and it is not like informing them would make me feel at ease or bring to under control the clatter in my head. The entire way back to the land Julian and Lucas talks to me, forcing the words to come out of my mouth. I only give them a one or two words reply, or a nod or a smile.
I’ve never felt a coldness of this kind, that even my mood is greatly affected by it. It is not like I’ve chosen to feel this way, one minute it came to me like a raging storm out of the blue, and all hell breaks loose, my head turns into a lump of disarray.
“Should we walk along the shore and take some breather,” Lucas attempts to get me out of my confinement, out there in the complex world—who knows if it is more complex than my head, but who cares right now? Who cares now that I’m beginning to look like a heap of mess?
I don't give him a response, and instead, I step out of the boat and walk ahead of them. I hear a muffled sound from behind, and I notice that the worried query is coming from Lucas asking if there is something that bothers me like a headache or something. But I don't hear any reply from Julian, so I figure he only shrugs his shoulder.
I know he has seen through me, but he does not know exactly the reason why I am out of it. Why I have been acting this way. Why my mood is fluctuating. He only knows that I’m bothered by something.
And why would he be aware of the reason behind my erratic mood when I know that I am the only one who’s aware of my feelings, as it the source of every unpleasant feeling I am experiencing right now.
Julian and Lucas catch up to me and seize my hand with their hands, holding it firmly. Lucas is on the left side, Julian is on the other side. Our shoulders are touching each other, but I allow them to do whatever they want with me. Maybe I also want to touch them as well. Or maybe it is because I give no care anymore and just let whatever happens, be what needs to happen.
What exactly do I want to happen? The question arises in my head once again, but until now, I still don’t possess any answer to give back to this insatiable mind. For a fleeting moment, I blame my head for thinking so much ahead.
Julian breaks the silence and says, “Snorkeling is fun, don’t you think so?” I guess, he wants to start with small, empty talk.
After walking a little bit on the seaside, I finally get the itch to speak—of what? Responses to empty talks? Or to speak about the real thing? “Better than I expected,” I say to him. So, I choose to thread on the empty road. “I get to observe animals I don’t see every day.”
I am expecting Julian to give a reply that is filled with sexual innuendo as soon as I drop the word animal, but he nothing of such indecency comes out of his mouth. He replies, “It’s a relief you enjoyed it.”
“This is the reason why we brought you here,” Lucas adds.
While keeping my hands in his, he fiddles with my fingers. I anticipate a wave of delight in me just as how, for the most times, it delivers excitement to my body. But nothing of the sort arrives. I wait and wait and wait, but nothing comes, and so I assume that I am already immune to it, which makes me kinda sad.
“I really appreciate it,” I say to him the words I have used the first time he opens up about their motive of coming here.
“And?” Lucas says, and I only give him a stare. I want to say to his face that he must not expect so much from me, not in this waning state. And I want to embed advice within me: do not expect. We should not expect anything from each other.
“And perhaps I should head back,” I tell him a completely different answer. “It’s getting quite chilly.”
I feel stupid saying those words as I see a drop of sweat fall from Lucas's forehead to the side of his left eye. He doesn’t wipe it, he lets the fluid travel down to the side of his cheeks to his ja
w until it disappears before my eyes.
As I anticipate an answer from him, wanting to at least get a word before I run away, he lets go of my hand and moves behind me and places his hands on both of my shoulders and rubs it gently, producing a weak heat.
I want to giggle at his adorable deed, but my face only displays the emptiest reaction ever. “I don’t think it’s helping,” I say. He drops his hands at once and goes back to my side, but before he takes back my hand again, I remove my right hand from Julian and step back. “I’ll see you guys around,” I say and feign a smile at them.
The distance between us as I walk away from them is growing and growing and growing like no one among us three attempts to cut the distance. No turning back. No running after the person who is leaving.
I head back to the hotel and up to the suite and back to my room, and as soon as I cross the threshold, I feel my energy drop as though I am getting drained by a pump. I fall to my knees, but I manage to avoid my descent by planting my hand on the wall.
I think about where this relationship is headed, but as expected, nothing comes out of this futile thinking. I wobble my way to the bed. The throb in my head is persistent.
“What did I expect coming here?” I mutter.
A deeper relationship? I don’t think I’m ready for it.
Then just a purely sexual relationship? I don’t think Julian and Lucas are satisfied with only that. It is not guaranteed, but there are bits of their actions that tell me they want something more. More than touching. More than having sex.
Though I can't give my entire trust to my head as it has been long mixed up, and anything it conceives is merely a muddle.
The confusion gets to me because for some time, I admit, it is on my side that wants more. But now that a decisive factor has laid itself before our eyes on the ground, and all the parties involved has one thing left to do, and that is to pick it up, I can’t help but freeze.