Fairy Tale Fail

by Mina V. Esguerra

  "What exactly do you need me to do?"

  He looked in the general direction of Greenbelt with some hesitation, and then he exhaled. "Ellie, you don't look at me like I'm someone you feel sorry for. Just keep doing that."

  I did get it. That look was a special kind of pity that even my closest friends gave me. Friends of those who've had their hearts broken want them to recover, but they want it to happen right away, as if we could help it. As if we could just glue ourselves back together. I could tell when they started getting impatient, and yeah, that look was hard to see and be around.

  "So I get to be the cool one tonight, and you're the pathetic one?" I teased. "Do we have to hold hands and stuff? Would that convince your friends to leave you alone?"

  Lucas laughed, but I detected some relief there. "Do you just imagine all the time that your life is a romance story? I really did just invite my new friend Ellie to dinner, because she's smart and likes traveling and is very into pop culture and might fit in with my friends. All you have to do is eat and enjoy yourself." He unlocked the doors and started to get out of the car. "But if you feel like you need an excuse to take advantage of me, just say so, I'm sure we can think of something."

  And then he slammed his car door shut before I could protest. I caught up with him and instead followed up with a solid (but harmless) thwack on the back of his neck.

  Chapter 12

  It was almost like traveling, but the food was free, and I didn't have to ride a plane.

  Everyone at Lucas' friend Mark's party was half a foot taller, years older, and leagues cooler than me. Seriously. Every single person.

  In a way, it explained why he seemed oblivious to the adoration the office people had for him. In this crowd he was almost ordinary. First of all, they were all thirty and older. At twenty-nine, Lucas was already one of the youngest, an idea that I found strange and disorienting at first.

  I didn't know anyone there, except for Sandra, and I realized that I didn't have to pretend to be cool. I entered that bar and got a feeling strangely similar to landing at a new airport – this was a fresh start. Every single person there was a fresh start to me.

  And suddenly that put me at ease.

  As Lucas showed me around and introduced me to one group of strangers after another, I actually felt good about myself. It was easy when they welcomed him so warmly – they really did miss him, I could tell. Normally I would have been shy and insecure, being young and unaccomplished in the face of the lawyer, the doctor, the grad student, the entrepreneur, but I didn't care. They were his friends, not mine, and they would only find out my weaknesses if I told them.

  "So how long have you known Lucas?" was the favorite question of the night. After saying "a few months" several times. We got bored with it.

  "She was my childhood yaya," Lucas said to George, the doctor.

  "I met him at the MRT station yesterday," I told Annie, the grad student.

  "I met her in church," Lucas said to Sheila, the lawyer, perfectly deadpan.

  She was the only one who called him on it. "Liar. You don't go to church!"

  He was great at this, and I bet he didn't even need me. By the second hour I was feeling comfortable enough to stay afloat even as Lucas was taken aside by a bunch of people who wanted to catch up with him. Birthday boy Mark and his wife Lisa immediately headed toward me when Lucas left my side.

  "You're not really his secretary, right?" Lisa said, eyeing me curiously.

  "I'm not," I said, laughing. "But we work together."

  "But really, how long have you known each other?"

  "We've been working together for years, but I only really started hanging out with him recently. But everyone has been asking me that."

  "Well, we're all just concerned for our boy," Mark said, lowering his voice a bit. "We just want to see him happy."

  Somehow it didn't appear to me that Lucas was unhappy. Sure, he had been hurt, but he looked like he had his life under control. Really, people should leave us brokenhearted folk alone and stop trying to fix us. We healed on our own time.

  "And frankly, we're relieved to see him with someone like you," Lisa added.

  "Um, what does that mean?" I wondered what kind of girls then Lucas said he went out with, the ones who didn't last.

  "You said you wouldn't be judgmental," Mark teased his wife.

  "I'm sorry!" she said, rolling her eyes. "But we've known Lucas a while. We know what he's like. He got really burned by Patty and started dating girls who were different. It was like he got so screwed up that he thought maybe he should just date the opposite of Patty. Ugh, I knew those wouldn't last from the first time I met them."

  To put it more diplomatically, Mark and Lisa thought that Lucas' girlfriends after Patty weren't, well, decent.

  "Patty is a great girl. She made a mistake. He probably thought that he should be avoiding her type, from then on, but that was his mistake," Lisa explained.

  I shook my head. "She can't be that great then, if that's what she did to him."

  Lisa sighed. "It doesn't matter what she did to him. Lucas only really gets along with girls who are confident and smart. She has to be someone who can keep up with him, or keep him interested. Being betrayed by that kind of person shouldn't turn him off from all confident and smart people. He tried going out with ditzes and they all didn't last."

  "What she means is that we're glad he brought you and you're not a ditz," Mark said. "It's a sign that Lucas has started to have faith in his instincts again."

  "Oh, you can't possibly know that," I joked. "I've got issues like you wouldn't believe."

  "Okay, okay, let's not put so much pressure on Ellie." Mark shifted gears rather quickly, tossing a quick glance in Lucas' direction. "We're just glad he's here."

  Lisa leaned closer. "This is the first time I've even seen him in more than a year. Where was he last year, Mark? Ilocos Norte?"

  Mark shook his head. "No, Vigan. And over Christmas he was in Cebu. We'd invite him to something and find out that he's taken off somewhere. But I'm glad to see him like this. He looks, well, normal."

  Aw, he used travel as an escape too. We looked over at Lucas, who was standing on the other side of the room with Sandra. He saw me and raised his beer, and I toasted him with my drink (and a huge smile) from across the room.

  "He'll be fine," I said to Mark and Lisa.

  ***

  "You know what? I love being the not pathetic one. Thank you for inviting me tonight."

  "You're welcome. How bad was I?"

  "You were perfect. Your friends were relieved to have you back."

  I thought Lucas' first night back with his barkada was a success. He was funny and witty, he reconnected with almost everyone, and most likely convinced the entire group that he had recovered and was really back. But then again, Patty wasn't there, so that may have made the transition smoother.

  The conversation with Mark and Lisa gave me a much-needed ego boost, too. I was glad that in that room full of cool people, I managed to hold my own. Or at the very least, I did well enough to not be called a ditz.

  I went from lazy and "not passionate about anything" to confident and smart, in the span of a year. Not too bad, Eleanor.

  Still, Lucas didn't jump back in completely. He told me that he wanted to leave early, and at eleven he started making the rounds of goodbyes. By this time we were hungry again, and ended up taking out fried dimsum and dark chocolate soft-serve ice cream from a convenience store. We settled in front of his car at the open-air top floor of the parking building, and ate there.

  "You definitely inspired me," I added. "For when I decide to join Charisse and our friends again."

  "What do you mean? You're not ready to do that yet?"

  I thought about it for a minute and shook my head. "No. I still need closure."

  "Ugh," Lucas mocked a shudder at that. "Patty said that to me a lot."

  What was so wrong with that? I needed to know, in no uncertain terms, that som
ething was over. I didn't get that from Don. "Maybe if you actually sat down and talked to her, she would know what you really feel, and you wouldn't have spent all this time avoiding her," I said.

  "I did say how I felt. Very clearly. It hasn't changed. I think you say 'closure' but mean 'another chance.'"

  I stabbed my last bit of siomai with a toothpick and grumbled under my breath. Earlier this evening I started to see myself in Lucas, but really, we were on opposite ends again.

  "But anyway," Lucas said, "I hope you had fun."

  "I did," I replied, serious. "It feels great to be around people who don't think of me as broken. I was thinking that this was why I traveled. If only I figured out that I should just crash strangers' parties, I wouldn't have spent so much."

  Lucas started on his soft-serve ice cream, and for a second I was distracted by how he licked the dark chocolate off his spoon. I was still a bit tipsy from the bar – surely that was why I was fixating on his hands, his fingers, how stubble had grown on his face since this afternoon.

  "Why do you still think you're broken?" Lucas said, and I snapped out of my trance. "You've become happier, right?"

  "I didn't spend all this time alone by choice. He left me."

  "Oh, you were hurt back then, but today it's different. I don't think you realize it yet, but you are completely over him."

  "Stop it," I said. "Stop giving me therapy. Tonight's about you."

  I intended to start a speech about this night being about his closure, so I turned to him, mind somewhere else, and was met with his hand on my jaw, pulling me in for a kiss. His fingers kept my skin a safe distance from the stubble on his cheek, and the result was something playfully light against my lips. He tasted like, gah, dark chocolate, and something faintly umami but that was probably me and the dimsum I had just swallowed. For a moment there I forgot about where I was and all the baggage I had with me. I allowed myself to be that free person again.

  And then I pushed him off me.

  "Seriously?" I said, coughing into my hand. "You think this was the perfect time to kiss me? I tasted like siomai!"

  Lucas laughed and resumed eating his ice cream as if nothing happened. "Your obsession with the perfect moment is cute, but now I know why your friends were concerned all this time."

  "Why, because I actually think things through?"

  "Overthinker."

  "But… but I don't even know you very well. I don't just kiss guys I don't know."

  Lucas set the ice cream cup down on the hood of his car. "What do you need to know?"

  How many ex-girlfriends? What did he think of courtship? Why did he stop going to church? Would he ever go back again? Did he believe in life after death? Was he in the habit of kissing girls not his girlfriend? What did his mom do for a living? Who did he vote for in the last election? All these things I would have found out if I had been his friend just a bit longer, I couldn't possibly unload all of this on him now!

  "What's that tattoo mean?" I said, plucking a question out of the cloud.

  He turned to his left arm and lifted his sleeve slightly, and I saw more of it. Definitely not a Chinese character.

  "It means 'first officer.'"

  "In what language?"

  Lucas smiled and cleared his throat. "When I was younger, my brother and I created this story about a pirate society, like an alternate history for colonial Philippines. We created a language for it and everything. He's an illustrator for comic books, and he's always dreamed of writing that comic himself when he finally had enough cred. I got three tattoos based on our original designs to remind him to go do it one day."

  "That's nice of you," I said. "Where are the other two?"

  He tilted his head a little and grabbed the empty siomai cup from my hands, replacing it with my own dessert. "You know what? I think now is not the perfect moment for you to see the other two. Eat your ice cream."

  I grudgingly accepted the cup. "You are mean."

  Lucas looked pleased with himself. "This is what playing by your rules feels like."

  Chapter 13

  "No, Eleanor!"

  I rolled my eyes and instead concentrated on teaching Dylan the colors of the rainbow. Maybe it was a mistake, telling Ate Gladys casually that Don and I were planning to have dinner. I had forgotten that she was one of those people who wanted me to stay away from him.

  "And this is orange, Dylan, like the fruit. Orange."

  "Are you fond of punishing yourself or something?" Gladys' eyes were wide and she looked like a suggestion away from slapping sense into me. "Don is a bad boyfriend. I thought you'd gotten over this!"

  "He's not a bad person, Ate Gladys, stop it."

  "You should be watching out for yourself."

  I used to get really annoyed when my big sister acted all big sisterly. She was only two years older and in my opinion, that didn't make her that much wiser. "I did watch out for myself. Didn't I stay away from him on purpose?"

  She handed her son another crayon and eyed me suspiciously. "And he's had girlfriends since you, right? What did Charisse say about them?"

  Charisse didn't like to tell me about Don anymore, but some things did slip out. I got hints here and there. Don's latest relationship didn't seem to be a happy one, and when I tried to ask why, Charisse only shrugged and said that she was seeing a pattern. She was becoming an expert at changing the topic when I tried to press further.

  "She says he's not happy," I said. "Which I think is very interesting."

  "Do you really think you can handle it? What if he fails you again?"

  That wasn't fair of her. It was more than a year since we broke up, and things changed. He broke up with me not because he wanted someone else, but because I wasn't living up to his expectations of me, right? Well I was my confident and happy self again. This new job, and hanging out with people like Sandra and Lucas, meeting Lucas' cool friends… I felt, well, refreshed. It was the best time for me to reconnect with him; I was ready.

  "Yes I can handle it," I said. "I need this."

  ***

  When I got to the office, a minute before eight-thirty, Sandra was standing by her desk instead of sitting. On her face was the biggest smile I had ever seen (at least on her).

  "We're going to Bangkok!" she squealed, jumping up and hugging me. "I'm sorry. It was in an email from Herman this morning. I should have let you read it first but I couldn't wait. Yay!"

  "What? Why me?" I said, smothered a little by her aggressive hug.

  "Um, because you're assistant manager now and your travel plans were the most efficient and best-reviewed of all Client Services teams in the region? But I'm giving you spoilers, just read the email!"

  I never paid attention to the Regional ExCom before... but it was because I never really thought I'd go there. I used to help my boss at Marketing prepare for things when she attended, but other than that I didn't even know when it was held. Apparently, the following week.

  We all were supposed to leave for Thailand next Sunday evening, which meant we had only a few days to help Herman with all the things he wanted to bring. Half the time I didn't know whether to panic or stay calm... I just had the distinct feeling that I was in over my head, and wanted to laugh at myself.

  On Wednesday, I was walking back to my desk from a trip to the copier and saw Don waiting there for me.

  "You need something?" I asked absently, thirty other things going around my mind.

  "Just wanted to know if you'd like coffee," he said.

  "Oh." Couldn't this have happened last week? Already I was forgetting things I told myself to do. "Um, I only have ten minutes."

  "That's all I have time for too."

  This was a big deal. I was seriously busy, and kept having to push reminders and work stuff out of my mind to be able to savor that Don wanted to talk to me. I checked my watch and it was just after three-fifty.

  I was part of the routine again.

  So what do we talk about in ten minutes? Is he single again? D
o I ask that now? How many copies of the booklet did Herman want again? Ten? Fifteen? What was the number of the guy in the printing office? I'm going to need to get that from Sandra.

  Focus! I said, kicking myself mentally. We got the cheap brewed coffee from the cafeteria and got seats near the exit. "So how's your family?"

  He told me all he could in a few minutes. I listened, but drifted in and out of my own planning for the errands I still needed to do.

  "...which is just typical of Frances, don't you think?"

  "What?" Shit. Frances was a girl in the barkada. At some point he had started talking about our friends and I didn't even notice.

  Don shook his head. "You're distracted. Sorry, this probably wasn't a good time."

  "No, this is... I'm sorry. I just have a million things to do and..."

  "It's all right. We'll talk on Friday."

  "Right, Friday."

  We both stood up and started making our way back, and I took a big gulp from my barely-touched cup. (Bleagh. The coffee from the pantry that Lucas always brought for me tasted better.)

  "So Lucas is your friend now?" Don said, a clumsy attempt at small talk.

  "What?" I was in the middle of mentally revising an email to Herman and didn't expect that name to come up. "Well yeah, I guess he is."

  "You used to like him, right?"

  I had never seen Don jealous, come to think of it. None of my guy friends were a threat to him. He on the other hand, called me petty and "imagining things" when I was mildly annoyed by his need to be friendly with every ex-girlfriend. At the time I thought it was just the Good Guy thing to do, but this was also the guy who didn't talk to me for more than a year. Even though I worked in the same building.

  I coughed and shrugged casually. "Well, most of the girls in the office do. That's not really a thing."

  Don nodded, and his shoulders also moved slightly, like it was no big deal. "He has a kid with his ex-girlfriend, right?" he asked pointedly.