"Would I lie to you, gorgeous?” he joked.
"You would," I laughed, poking his bare chest. His dexterity and strength had surprised me. Who knew he had abs under those t-shirts?
Max feigned getting hurt before he kissed my forehead. I raised my eyes to his, looking deeply into my sleepy, languid gaze.
"Hey Max, did you...er..."
"Does it matter?" he asked nonchalantly, like this sort of thing happened to him all the time. "It wasn't about me."
"Oh," I said, and let the silence stretch on. I hummed a song from Cats as I played with his hair, my mind still half in shock and my eyes fluttering. Max was still looking at me.
"Martha," he said seriously, his fingers brushing up and down against my thigh as I curled it over his. His massive hand still wasn't enough to envelop it. "I meant what I said. I do love you."
I opened my mouth to speak, but he beat me to it.
"And if you don't feel the same, or if you want to keep this between us...nothing has to change. I swear I can be cool about this."
I quickly sat up and clapped my hand over his mouth to shut him up. His hand was halfway up my thigh.
"Max, it's a little late for that," I said, smiling before I smacked my lips over my own hand. "I'm not too sure about how I feel yet, but I know that I enjoyed this."
He mumbled something from underneath my hand and I dropped it to let him speak, pulling his bed sheet up to cover my breasts. If he noticed my sudden modesty, he didn’t let on.
"So much that you'd like a repeat performance?" he asked, wiggling his eyebrows at me.
The suggestive gesture made me roll my eyes, which naturally wandered down to the apex of his thighs. Oh my god, how had I not noticed that before?
"If we're going to do this again," I said, pulling the sheet with me as I walked up from the bed, stumbling slightly. Yep, I was going to feel this in the morning. "I'm going to need water."
I let Max's laughter follow me all the way out the bedroom, where Wookie and Bibi followed me curiously, their heads tilted to the side as they played with their toys. My bag was still in his living room couch, so I pulled out a pen and a notebook from it, tearing off a sheet and scribbling something on the torn page.
Then, with the dogs still watching, I picked up one of Max’s books (Stardust by Neil Gaiman) and slipped the note inside before I returned the book to the shelf.
"Don't tell Max," I whispered to them before I walked to the kitchen, with Bibi trying to hop on to the hem of the blanket.
Max would tell me much later that he could hear me laughing all the way from the bedroom.
I came in to the office the next day in a chipper mood. I smiled at everyone who greeted me, and I found myself humming my favorite showtunes as I walked into the office. As soon as I walked in with a cup of energizing morning fruit shake, I saw Mindy’s head snap up and study me from tip to toe like she was scanning me for weapons.
"Oh my god, you've had sex," she said point blank, immediately dropping everything to wheel herself right in front of me in her office chair.
"Good morning to you too," I chirped, skipping past her to walk to my desk while singing under my breath.
"Martha!" Mindy squealed, rolling next to me again, this time slamming her hand on my desk like it could keep me there. "Tell me everything!"
"We've got a lot of work to do, Minds, the senior accountants will want support for the tax filings," I said with a tiny smile. “Plus I have to leave early because of this yoga thing Tita Merry signed us up for. Although I will confess that I had a pretty great weekend."
She squealed, reaching a decibel I knew only my dog could hear.
"Oh my god! You are such a fertile goddess!" she exclaimed, so excited she was bouncing in her office chair. "I knew your boobs were big for a reason!"
I accepted the compliment for the first time. Then, for some odd reason, Mindy, my co-worker and assistant, started rubbing my arms and fondling with the fat on my detached earlobes. It tickled, so I laughed and pulled away from her.
"What are you doing?"
"What does it look like? I'm rubbing you for good luck!" She exclaimed, and I laughed and convinced her to go back to work, checking my phone when I saw a series of text messages from Max. I snorted.
Max: Miss me? Come over tonight. I’ll let you feel my bicep. Or maybe more ;)
Max: Okay I stole that from Friends, but appropriate.
Max: Your Tita Flora said you used to refer to yourself as the Little Mermaid. I will need instant confirmation, possibly a photo if this is true.
Martha: I am neither confirming nor denying and wth are you doing talking to Tita Flora??
Max: HA. So it is true.
Getting into work mode was always easy for me, although it did feel like a chore more than anything else. I was responding to client emails, helping Mindy work out the math to figure out the proper authorized capital a ten-million peso startup needed before I got another text. This time, it wasn't from Max.
Enzo: Want to show you something amazing. Meet me? Tell everyone it was urgent.
Wondering what this was about, I told Mindy I would be out to lunch to meet with a client (not exactly a lie), and took my car to the address he sent me. I found myself in front of a large warehouse, just at the edge of the business district right next to Pasig River. I wrinkled my nose slightly from the smell of the dead river and found Enzo waiting for me by the door.
"This doesn't feel very amazing so far," I told him, and he laughed and pulled my hand to the door like a kid in a toy store. I'd never seen him so excited.
"Trust me, you'll like it," he promised, as we entered the warehouse itself. The place was teeming with life--workers yelling at each other as large structures were moved from one area of the room to the other. Things were being unloaded from a container van, and I remembered why Enzo was so excited. We'd processed the shipment of Very Efficient Developments goods, and the container had just come into the warehouse.
"I wanted to show you what we were planning to do with all the things you helped us set up," he said, practically sprinting to the middle of the warehouse. "The fruits of our labors, so to speak."
We stopped at a clearing, and I furrowed my brows, confused at what I was looking at. It was a house. Nicely made, and quite spacious, it stood proudly in the middle of the building. Enzo's grin was wide as he looked at it, his pride overflowing.
"It's a house," I said, looking at it.
"Yeah, it's a house that took us only twenty days to build," he said to me with that little grin he had that always made the girls go crazy. "That's what I do here for Frank. He developed these 'House in a Box' projects, and I find a market for each of them. This model is the one we're looking to offer for victims of calamities at low rates. Earthquake-proof up to intensity 8, and flood-proof too."
He walked towards the house, and I could see pride in every step he took. His shoulders were raised and he wore his chin high because he knew he'd done good work. I approached the house with him, and had to admit, it was impressive. They were going to use this as the model house, he explained to me, and they'd added all the furnishings and fixtures inside.
I stood inside the house, looking around. Was I surprised that Enzo managed to pull this off? Maybe. But that smile on his face was hard to place. Had observed him so closely that I knew when he was acting and when he wasn't. He was acting right now, for some reason. It’s not that he wasn't sincere. He just didn't seem all too convinced about what he was doing. I folded my arms over my chest and studied him carefully. He smiled at me.
"What do you think?" he asked, crossing one foot over the other to make a small spin around the house. "They're also developing these sorts of pre-made things for classrooms. The high end models will help pay for these ones, and we’ll be set.”
"I think you're going to make a lot of families in Tacloban very happy," I said. "But why are you showing me all of this? All I did was set it up, you made all of this happen.”
“You helped me work on this,” he said. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
I remembered Regina talking to me about her fights with Enzo over money. Was that why he was trying to show me this? Because he knew that I would appreciate it?
“I was just doing my job,” I pointed out to him. “You don’t need to make this about anything else.”
Then came the first real look on Enzo's face. He frowned and looked pensive, looking down at his leather shoes as he scuffed the floor with them, his hands in the pockets of his trousers. He looked like a poster from a movie, in this lighting.
"Why are we acting like nothing happened?” I pressed, leaning against the kitchen sink. I knew I was being cruel. Something had been unleashed in me, and finally, finally I was talking to him. I wasn't afraid of consequence, or of upsetting him. I needed to say this, before it got way too complicated.
“Enzo, we haven’t talked to each other since college. Now you’re acting like I matter to you. All we had between us was that one play decades ago, and one night. I was gone the morning after.”
"Believe me, I remember," he said, looking at me like I was the one who had hurt him. “Why didn’t you stay?”
“And then what?” I asked, pushing myself off of the kitchen sink. “The play was over, you were heading off to London, what would have been the point? I left because I knew it didn’t mean anything to you. It was just sex.”
This time, he looked up. He was hurt. Like I had been the one who gutted his heart out and left it on display for everyone to see. Like he was the one who had been in love.
“How could you possibly know that, Martha?” he asked, shaking his head in disbelief. “I really thought we had something back then.”
“That’s crap,” I said to him before I walked off to the bedroom like a coward. I sat on the bed, trying to regain my breath. I knew we needed to have this conversation, but it was difficult. It had already been way too long, and my feelings had flip-flopped all over the place since he came back. Where was he four years ago?
“Not crap, it was the truth!” Enzo said from behind the door. It didn’t lock, so he could have come inside, but I think he needed the space and the distance too. “I told you I remember everything about that night. I saw you leaving, and a part of me wanted to get up and fight for you to stay. Sometimes I wish I did, because I was in love with you, Martha. I was so in love with you. I can't believe I let you go like that.”
I leapt up from the bed. Suddenly the entire room was suffocating, and my heart was hammering in my chest. I needed to breathe, but I seemed to have forgotten how. Everything had fallen away, the world was right side up, and I was left standing there with nothing but a pre-fab door separating me from him.
The door swung open, and I actually took a step back. He was giving me the look I wished had given me all those years ago. He wasn’t acting, and if I had been the Martha from a month ago, I would have been the first one in line to grab his face and kiss him like there was no tomorrow.
“Enzo,” I said to him in warning. “You can’t say things like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I loved you,” I said to him. The words spilled out of my mouth before I could stop them, like the beads on a necklace that had snapped. They scattered everywhere, and it was impossible to catch them all now. I’d been holding it together for too long. “I have, long before that night ever happened. I was just so scared you would reject me, and I didn’t think…”
His eyes widened, and the shock of those words seemed to shake him as badly as it had shaken me. He was so close that the heat from his body radiated off of mine, warming my toes and burning my cheeks. The fire around us started burning so hotly that I needed space to breathe. Was this what being in love supposed to feel like?
“What about…what about Max?” he asked me.
I had this image in my head how this was supposed to go. I would tell him the truth and he would smile and cradle me in his arms. Then he would kiss me, and I would feel so light and happy that we would actually start floating while ‘As Long As You’re Mine’ from Wicked would play in the background.
But this was nothing like that at all. Instead of feeling freed of the feelings I’ve been harboring for so long, it was like someone had piled on more weight to them, and I was dragging it all over the ground. I felt horrible and guilty, and I wanted it to go away. All the heat and the warmth vanished immediately, washed out suddenly by a bucket of ice cold water.
My feelings for Enzo were gone, just like that. What happened? I’d been holding on to it for so long that I didn’t notice when it left. We didn’t bother to fight for how we felt, so anything we could have had, the possibility of him and I, vanished in wisps of smoke.
"Martha," he said gently. "What about Max?"
“Max isn’t my—I mean, we…” I stammered. “We’re just…”
Hunger rose from inside me in the worst way possible. My mouth craved for something sweet to fight the bitterness hanging above us. I knew it was wrong. This moment was going to leave a permanent, gaping hole inside me if I didn’t stop it now.
“Enzo,” I said, placing my hands over his chest to push him away. “We can’t do this.”
His face changed, like he was trying to hold in a laugh. Of course he knew that we couldn’t do anything. It was way too late for both of us. We were done.
“Of course,” he said. “I’m marrying Regina.”
“Yeah,” I said, sighing deeply. “And I’m….not.”
He smiled. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged, putting distance between us. “Does Regina know what happened at the cast party?” I asked him, and he shook his head.
An alarm rang from my phone, telling me I had to go if I wanted to get to Tita Merry's on time. I pushed past Enzo and he followed me out of the house, out to the factory. I heard him calling my name, but I ignored it. I walked so briskly that my thighs began to burn, and I was panting by the time I reached the car.
He reached me easily, placing his hand over the door before I could reach it.
“What are you going to do?” he asked me. I frowned at him and used all of my weight to push him aside and get in and lock the door. I lowered the window just enough so he could hear me. “I have to go,” I said, and started the car. “We have this yoga thing…”
“We should have said something,” Enzo said.
“I don’t owe her anything,” I told him. “But I should have told her the day she came home.”
The last thing I saw on my rear view mirror was Enzo’s face pale and I drove away from him, and away from the feelings that I had known for so long.
When I arrived at the Benitez house, everyone was already in position for the yoga class. Apparently Tita Flora found a guy who offered to teach them yoga at home. Maggie was the most enthusiastic of us to do it, standing in front in her fresh from America Lulu Lemon yoga leggings and skintight tank top. Regina was wearing something similar (although she opted to wear a sports bra instead of a shirt), and they were taking a selfie. Tita Merry was sitting on the mat, chatting with her sisters, who were chittering about how nervous they were to have things stretched. The teacher hadn’t shown up yet.
“Oh Martha, you’re here!” Regina exclaimed with glee, bouncing over to me with her ponytail. “Isn’t this cool? I had no idea you could do home service yoga.”
“Yeah,” I said, feeling slightly jumpy. “I’ll just change in the bathroom.”
“Okay, hurry back, we’re starting soon!” Regina exclaimed.
I nodded wordlessly and headed straight for the bathroom, taking a second to catch my breath. The knowledge of what I’d done was pressing down on me. I couldn’t help but feel that Enzo was just going to burst into the room and tell everybody that I’d declared my love for him and that my relationship with Max was a sham.
I was guilty, and I hated the feeling. I knew I was going to say something, and soon.
I changed qui
ckly and emerged back into the living room. Maggie and Regina were waiting for me by the door, both of them giggling like mad.
“Holy quivering bodice, Martha! You might want to leave something to the imagination boob-wise,” Regina said, raising her hand to the sports bra I was wearing, deliberately placing her hand over my chest.
“Oh, stop that, she looks great!” Maggie shushed her, pushing me back towards the living room. “Your mom is wearing sweatbands and a headband. I don’t think my sister’s fantastic boobs are going to be bad for anyone.”
“Regina, I slept with Enzo,” I suddenly said, clapping a hand over my mouth. Oh my god, since when was I a word-vomiter? I was fat! I should know a thing or two about keeping things inside, goddammit! Her hands immediately dropped from mine, and she stepped back like I was contagious. Maggie’s eyes were bugged out in surprise. I’ve seen Regina seethe, but I’ve never seen her do it like this. Her back was ramrod straight, and her eyes shrunk into tiny slits.
“What?” she asked me.
“It was a long time ago,” I prefaced. God, I should have started with that. “Back in college. I told him that I was in love with him, and—“
“You’re in love with him?” Regina exclaimed, like that was the worst part of what I had to say. Maggie, who knew nothing about all of this, could only look between us in shock.
“I told him this afternoon,” I said in a small voice. I was going to run out of words soon. “I was in love with him for so long, Regina. I couldn’t keep it inside anymore.”
“That’s bullshit,” she yelled, the curse word making the whole house vibrate like it disapproved. “If you were so in love with him, why didn’t you say anything? I’ve been here for more than a month now, Martha! There were literally dozens of times you could have said something. Even then you should have told me the moment you saw him get down on one knee for me!”
This was a fight I was never going to win, I knew. It didn’t stop me trying, though.
“It wasn’t easy, okay?” I said. “He brought up a lot of unresolved feelings when he came back, and I wanted to work them out for myself before I told you!”
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