by Tara Frejas
“Why—because you would be the better choice?”
Say yes. No. Shit, don’t say yes.
“No.” Pio pulled away and cradled both sides of her face in his hands, his eyes boring into hers. “It doesn’t have to be me, Audrey. You don’t have to choose me. If there’s a choice to be made, it shouldn’t be between Luigi and me or anyone else. Choose yourself.”
She closed her eyes when his lips touched her forehead. She wanted to reach out and grab him when he let go and stepped out of the way. But she did no such thing, and perhaps, next to falling in love with Luigi Blanco, walking away from Pio Alvez was going to be the second biggest regret of her life.
TWENTY-ONE
“I t didn’t work out.”
Cecilia Alvez looked up from her chopping board, gave her youngest son one look, and raised her arms wide open. The sight drew a sob out of Pio, who rushed to his mother’s side and hugged her tight. He knew the four-hour drive to San Pablo was worth it, if only for the brand of comfort she offered.
“Oh, sweetie.” Her sigh carried a trace of laughter, probably recalling the last time he came to her with a broken heart. “Is this the girl you told me about?”
He nodded.
“What happened?” she asked, pulling her head back so she could study her son’s face.
Pio released her from his embrace and wiped his face with the back of his hand, gaze then falling on the splash of color in front of him. Sliced fruits and vegetables were lined neatly on platters, organized by color. Reds on one side, yellows on the other. Greens separated in a bowl.
It was so like his mother to arrange things in this manner. He had noticed this as a child, when he came home from school to find their clothes, toys, and books put together by color. Much later, he realized this was how she coped. When she couldn’t put back together what his father had so heartlessly wrecked, she found something else to work on, if only to find a semblance of order in her life.
“She and her ex are getting back together,” Pio said bitterly and filched a celery stalk from one of the platters. He imagined it was Luigi’s head and chewed on it with mild rage.
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry to hear that.”
A glass of water appeared in front of him. And a box of Mrs. Field’s chocolate chip cookies. He might not come home often, but it seemed his mother hadn’t stopped stocking up on chocolate anything just in case Pio needed a picker-upper.
“It’s okay.” He sat in front of the counter and reached for the box of cookies to open it. “I thought about it a lot on the way here. I guess it makes sense that you continue choosing the person you’ve created a lot of memories with, even if they treat you like shit.”
“Language, Jaime Pio.”
“...even if they don’t treat you well.”
Cecilia sat beside him and quietly watched as he inhaled two cookies in a matter of seconds. She reached out and brushed away crumbs from the side of his lips. “Memories are nice, but they’re not everything. I’m going to sound cliché, but love and respect are important, Pio. If those two aren’t present, then a relationship means nothing.”
“But you still chose Dad. What does that mean?”
“I didn’t choose your dad, Pio. It was you that I chose. Gani and Datu and you.”
The words were a punch in the gut, and all of a sudden he was seven again, standing outside the master bedroom and watching his mother cry. He was seven, pretending to be asleep on her lap so he wouldn’t see her tears. He was seven and desperately trying to nick a few coins from Datu’s piggy bank so he could cheer his mother up with an ice cream cone the sorbetero was peddling outside the house.
“You stayed for us?”
“Pio. Did you think I’d be a fool to stay because of your father?”
His fingers closed around the glass of water in front of him. “But you could’ve left, Ma! We could’ve lived somewhere else!”
“You don’t think I’ve tried?” Cecilia’s now glazed eyes met his for a split second before she focused on his new haircut. She ran her hand over his head. “Do you remember that vacation we had in Baguio? That took a while, didn’t it?”
Three months, to be exact.
Pio was in second grade when his mother brought them to her sister Conching’s family home in Baguio. He thought it strange that they were vacationing in the middle of the school year, but his worries quickly flew out the window after being presented with the prospect of horseback riding. And then there was riding bikes and gondolas at Burnham Park, playing mini-golf in Camp John Hay, and picking strawberries in La Trinidad. They had found a lot of things to do that Pio didn’t even miss school.
He wasn’t sure he could say the same about his brothers, though.
“I was so confident I could raise the three of you on my own, but days passed and I realized one thing: Raising you alone would mean depriving you of a lot of things. Comforts. Privileges. It meant Isagani had to say goodbye to music school, and Datu had to give up on photography. Your dream of performing at the Cultural Center? That would’ve been gone too. So I made a choice...”
“You could’ve chosen to be happy.”
“I chose to be a mother, and that’s the same thing.” She squeezed Pio’s cheeks together until his lips resembled a duck’s bill. “You and Gani and Datu—you are my happiness.”
All choked up, Pio took his mother’s hands and pressed them against his chest. “For the longest time...” He paused and bowed his head, clearing his throat before he spoke. “For the longest time, I kept wondering why you stuck it out with Dad. It didn’t make sense to me that you kept being his wife when he’d already stopped being your husband. It broke my heart to see you smile at us when I knew you were miserable, waiting every night for someone who might not even come home.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to hide my tears from you, Pio. But I’ve stopped pining for your father a long time ago.”
“Do you regret it?” he asked, raising his head and seeing a resigned smile on his mother’s face. “Did you wish...you could’ve walked away from it all?”
“No, sweetheart. If I had to go through all of that again to have the three of you in my life, I would.”
A pained sob escaped his throat as he reached out to hold her. “I’m sorry, Ma.”
“Hush,” she whispered and said nothing else. She simply held Pio in her arms, soothing him by humming a random tune and patting him on the back. It didn’t matter how old he was or will be someday, like this, Pio knew his mother would always see him as her baby.
On days like this, he didn’t mind.
“Is it too late now?” she asked later. “Is there nothing else you can do to win your girl over?”
“I don’t know—”
“What the fuck is going on here?”
Mother and son looked up to see Datu standing by the kitchen doorway, holding an empty glass in his hand and looking confused.
“Language, Datu!”
“Ugh, censorship...” Datu said, feigning annoyance. “Fine. What’s going on here?”
Pio opened his mouth to speak, but his mother beat him to it. “Girl problems,” she said, to his chagrin.
A look of dismay appeared on Datu’s face. “Kuya Gani!” he yelled toward the second floor of the house. “Basted na naman si Pyo!”
Having Isagani Alvez as an alarm clock meant you would be roused from your drunken slumber with anything in the room he could smack your ass with. Thank goodness Pio didn’t play baseball or golf, and Isagani would never hurt a musical instrument, so an old movie script had to do. A loud thwack announced its landing on Pio’s butt cheek, and the stinging pain made him yelp and roll on his back.
“Good morning. Get up, let’s run.”
“I can’t. My head hurts,” he mumbled, unable to open his eyes just yet. Only when he started feeling around for his sheets did Pio realize he had fallen asleep on the floor. How he got up his room was a mystery, but he did remember having a few drinks with his brothers last n
ight.
“What did you say?” Taking Pio’s right leg, Isagani dragged his hungover little brother across the floor. “Nope. Nah. Can’t hear you, Pyo.”
Too hungover to make any sudden movements, Pio’s protestations were reduced to a whimper (and a groan when his head hit something on the floor) while his kuya towed him toward the bathroom. Isagani dropped his leg and crouched beside his limp body, slapping his face a few times.
“Huy, wake up!”
“Let me sleeeeeep.”
“No, listen to me. I’m leaving for Cebu tonight and won’t be back for two weeks,” his brother said. “The last thing I want is to come home and find you back in that funk again. Now get freshened up. You don’t have to keep up with me out there, but you need to clear your head.”
What followed was fifteen long minutes of struggling to stay awake under the shower, almost slipping on the bathroom tiles, and putting on a shirt the wrong side out. He almost fell off a chair trying to tie his shoelaces.
“Congratulations and welcome to the light, my brother!” Isagani said when Pio finally stumbled out the front door. But instead of throwing him a water bottle and a towel, Isagani walked over to Datu’s car parked a few feet away.
The car’s side window rolled down, revealing Datu behind the wheel. “Get in loser. We’re going shopping.”
“Shopping” apparently meant driving up to Tagaytay and hoarding jars and jars of fruit jam, salad dressing, and gourmet sardines from Balay Dako Deli. Without being asked, Datu said his film crew had a victory party coming up (the last film they produced got qualified to join an overseas film festival), and he wanted to buy little “thank you” gifts for them. Isagani, meanwhile, thought it a good idea to tag along so he could try the restaurant’s cuisine.
Everything sounded like an excuse, but Pio couldn’t find it in him to grumble, not when his brothers were hell-bent on lifting his spirits up. They played his favorite songs in the car, bought him bottled water and Gatorade at the stopover, and even ordered all of his favorite dishes for lunch.
“So that’s it?” Datu asked, after swallowing a bite of inihaw na pusit. “You’re not going to write an elaborate speech or a love letter?”
Isagani piped in. “Yeah. No grand gestures, nothing?”
Pio smothered his rice with a spoonful of kare-kare sauce and put a small amount of bagoong on his plate. Perhaps it was futile to stifle in a laugh. And what for, really? This—his brothers asking him about love letters and grand gestures was just so out of character for them, it was hilarious. How they both seemed so invested in his “girl problem” made it even funnier. And they weren’t acting like it, either. His brothers didn’t inherit that talent from their parents.
“What do you want me to do? She already chose him.”
“Oh, come on!” Datu banged his fist on the table, startling the family seated one table away. “You don’t really believe she chose that scumbag, do you?”
“But why would Audrey lie to me?”
“Because maybe she’s scared to fall in love and get hurt again—like some people we know?” Datu jerked his thumb toward Isagani, who burned his tongue trying to sip from his tiny bowl of bulalo. Isagani retaliated with a backhand slap against Datu’s arm.
Pio rubbed his thumb against his temple, feeling another headache kicking in. His brother’s theory sounded feasible, but he didn’t know how to feel if it were true. Couldn’t Audrey have told him the truth? After all, if she only drew the line, he wasn’t about to impose his presence in her life. He didn’t have to be told twice.
Isagani shook his head and pointed a fork at Pio. “The thing about you is you fall in love too fast.”
“Is it bad that I’m wired that way?”
“No, but some people may find it alarming. I don’t know this girl, but she might just have wanted something casual, y’know? Something that didn’t require 100 percent commitment because she’s been there and that just burned her.”
“Naks, speaking from experience.”
“I’m holding a knife, Dats.”
Datu cleared his throat. “Oh, lechon!” he blurted out, sliding out of his seat to make a beeline for the carving station. Pio snorted with laughter.
When Datu was out of earshot, Isagani leaned forward and gave his youngest brother a pat on the cheek. “Give your heart a break, Pyo,” he said, his often playful smile turning affectionate. “And if you really wanted Audrey to be happy, you have to give her a break, too. I think Dats is right. You guys might have had a lot of fun together, but things went way too fast between you and Audrey. That’s terrifying, especially for someone who’s still learning how to trust someone else with their heart again.”
“Thanks, Kuya.”
“Don’t mention it.” A pause. “But really? No grand gestures?”
“You can woo her with one of your EDSA billboards,” said Datu, carrying a plate of lechon to their table. Both Isagani and Pio glared at him. “I’m kidding, jeez. Lechon?”
TWENTY-TWO
I t’s been a week since she last saw Pio, and Audrey had begun to hate herself. First, for lying to him. Second, for missing him.
(Third, for being unable to find a new job. But that was easier to resolve, so.)
“Ate, you know I love you...but I will hurt you.”
The veins on Vivien’s neck sprung to life as she tried her best to keep this conversation hush-hush. At a little past midnight, everyone else in the house had already gone to bed, and they knew better than to be louder than a whisper.
Audrey spent the last half hour confessing to her younger sister about Pio and their little arrangement. And while Vivien felt betrayed for the first ten minutes of their conversation (“How could you lie to us?”), the remainder of the story put a fascinated twinkle in her eyes.
That dreamy gleam turned into a fiery rage, though.
“He told you he actually wants to date you, and you pretended to be asleep? And then you lied to him about working things out with Luigi? You are the absolute worst!” Vivien hissed, slapping banana slices onto lumpia wrappers out of frustration.
“Viv, don’t take it out on the turon.”
Her little sister shot her a look, prompting Audrey to raise her hands, as if in surrender. “I panicked, okay? This wasn’t meant to be something other than what it is! I can’t, Viv. It’s just too soon.”
“Well, Luigi didn’t think so.”
“Luigi and I are two different people. And besides, Pio is...”
“Gorgeous? Sweet? A good kisser?”
“Younger!” Audrey blurted out, wondering if she was overthinking this. So what if Pio was almost five years younger than she was? That didn’t necessarily mean he was immature. The time she spent with him made her realize he had more wisdom and a stronger sense of responsibility than some people her age. Yes, he could be a lot playful, but she liked that side of him too.
“And a celebrity?”
“That too.”
Vivien shook her head. “You sound so much like Mamay. And I’m a little disappointed you would bail on this chance to start over because of a bunch of excuses.”
“You don’t understand. I’m just not ready for this yet. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to start over? I spent almost a third of my life with Lui. No matter how much I deny it, he’s still so much a part of me—” Audrey paused to keep her voice from breaking. “I still think of him sometimes, even when I’m with Pio. I think ‘Oh, this was where Lui and I had dinner during one of our anniversaries,’ or ‘Oh, Lui would like this dish, this movie, this shirt color Pio is wearing.’ That’s just not fair!
“Besides...I have other things to prioritize. Like looking for a new job. You know I can’t afford to be funemployed for long stretches of time.”
Vivien only looked at her with attentive eyes but said nothing else for a long while, the drawn out silence between them she spent preparing turon to sell the next day. Audrey left her seat and washed her hands over the kitchen sink, drying h
er hands with paper towels as she returned to the table. This time, she sat on the empty chair beside Vivien and quietly helped her wrap banana slices and jackfruit in lumpia wrapper.
“Ate.”
“Hm?”
“Do you remember Benjie, my manliligaw?”
The name rang a bell, but the face was a little hazy in Audrey’s memory. She did remember how Vivien’s suitor would accompany her home from university and hang out at their house every so often to play with Bella, who was then barely two years old.
“Yeah—what about him?”
“Remember what you told me back then, when I asked you for advice about Benjie?” Vivien asked, using a pair of tongs to transfer the uncooked turon from a big platter to a plastic container. “I wasn’t really looking for a relationship, but Benjie...that persistent loko told me he was willing to wait until I’m ready, that he was willing to care for Bella like his own.”
She heard a trace of wistfulness in Vivien’s voice, and Audrey recalled being curled up in bed with her sister (and Bella, asleep between them), having a hushed conversation just like this.
“You confronted him at the gate, remember?” Vivien laughed behind the back of her hand. “And then you said you thought he was sincere, that he only wanted the best for me. You told me to think of taking a chance at love again, but I kept holding back. I fell in love with Benjie too, but I was so scared he’d be like Bella’s dad...and I wasn’t ready to set myself up for that kind of heartbreak again. So I let him go. But sometimes I find myself imagining what life would be like if I had been brave enough to take the leap for Benjie.
“I do know how difficult it is to start over, Ate. But trying not to drown in an ocean of what-might-have-beens? That’s not exactly easy, either.” Regret laced Vivien’s smile when she turned to look at Audrey. “I’m not saying take the leap now. I just don’t want you to walk away from someone who obviously made you happy.”
Eight hundred and forty-three.
That was the total number of messages in Audrey and Pio’s chat window—a mess of Q&As and occasional side comments, where-are-yous and what-are-you-doings, Spotify links, links to movie schedules and random photos of dogs, and sometimes, a bit of daily ranting.