She could feel his breath against her neck, smelled freshly washed sheets, sugar and cinnamon on his skin.
Was she just imagining it, or did he take a little sniff of her too?
With their arms tangled up in each other, he twirled her again. Now she was looking up at his face. His eyes were sparkling with mischief, and she tilted her head slightly just because she wanted to see more. He slid a hand down her back, pressing lightly on the base before he eased her backward, and Sari was about to fall, she was sure, but his hand supported. Gabriel gently dipped her, her entire weight supported by his arms. Their eyes locked, and Sari didn’t want Gabriel to be the only one doing anything—she pressed a hand on his cheek and kissed him.
It was a quick kiss, barely even scandalous had this been anywhere else. But this was the Laneways, a small community that loved drama just as much as they loved free food. The whole thing occurred in seconds, but those precious seconds were enough, making the entire crowd cheer in delight as Sari and Gabriel looked right into each other’s eyes.
Sari would like to personally note that Gabriel Capras had really gorgeous eyes.
They were smaller, but they were full of warmth and happiness, with the kind of full lashes that she could only achieve with copious amounts of mascara, which wasn’t fair at all. Those eyes were dancing with mirth and amusement, like he couldn’t believe this was actually happening. His lips were curved in the slightest of smiles, his hair curling around his face. Every line on his face deepened when he smiled, but it only made him look sweeter and much happier. Sari felt her face burn and her heart pound.
“I like that look on your face,” he said softly. “Your ‘I hate you so much I want to kiss you’ face.”
“We need to talk,” she told him, looking up at his eyebrows, which were a lot less distracting than his eyes.
“There are more subtle ways of getting my attention, sweetheart.”
“I didn’t think you would get the hint, dimples.” She rolled her eyes, but pressed her lips together to keep herself from smiling. She gently pushed him off her, and Gabriel relented easily, before he turned to their little audience and waved. To the drum and lyre band he started to applaud, and let them take a little bow.
“Iced tea and snacks in my café, as promised.” Sari nodded to the group, and twenty-something kids and their supervisor all headed into Café Cecilia, leaving Gabriel and Sari standing in the spot between their two shops, looking at each other under the warm glow of the recently lit Christmas lights. She turned to him and started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” he asked her, placing his hands on his hips, and his dimples were out and on full display.
“Nothing,” she said, but immediately took it back. “Everything. This whole prank thing. I can’t believe you didn’t save any brazo de mercedes for me.”
“I can’t believe you made me demonstrate the proper use of a condom to Ate Nessie.” He shrugged casually as he stuffed his hands into his pockets. “And now this whole thing. You must really like me, Sari Tomas.”
“I...don’t,” she said, but the words sounded weak even to her. Gabriel took one step closer to her, a little grin playing on his lips. Sari’s cheeks suddenly felt very hot. This was the Philippines, it was hot all the time, but then again this was Lipa in December, and she was very, very flustered about it. “I don’t like you.”
“What did I ever do to annoy you?”
You made me want you, when I’ve never wanted anything else for myself, she thought.
“Oh, I don’t know, blaring ‘When I Kissed the Teacher’ during my barista training class the day we met wasn’t pleasant.” She scowled at him, but really, she’d lost all fight the moment he’d dipped her in front of a crowd. Sari still felt the touch of his lips against hers, still thought of the way he’d looked at her through the window and asked if she was okay.
“That was an accident, I swear,” Gab chuckled, holding his hands up in surrender. “I just really like listening to ABBA sometimes.”
“And your big neon sign casts a glare into my store.”
“Well, one of us had to make the warehouse look attractive from the street.”
Well, that stung. Sari was proud of her store and what it looked like, and she didn’t like that Gabriel felt it was fine to comment on it the way he did. Immediately she backed off, pushing aside everything that had just happened for this little slight. Pikon, she heard Sam’s voice in her head, but ignored it.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Sari shook her head, and turned back to her place, noticing the way Gabriel’s face had dropped a little. “I have half a classroom of children in my café, a private cupping to arrange—”
“A what?”
“My job. I’m here to do my job, making coffee. That’s all.”
“Well, I bake things, and that’s my job too,” he said defensively, and Sari wondered what she’d said to make him suddenly put all of his guards up. And for Gabriel, who seemed completely unaware if he even had guards up, it was odd to see him do that.
But she hadn’t known him for very long, and she shouldn’t be thinking these kinds of things. If she was a different person, a better person, she would ask him what was wrong. But she wasn’t. So she didn’t.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go out on a date with me?” he asked suddenly, and Sari knew a defense mechanism when she saw it, mostly because she’d just played an elaborate prank on him to avoid thinking about her sister’s impending move. There was no way that Gab was serious. He couldn’t be.
“Sure. November 31 work out for you?”
“I...oh. You almost had me there,” Gab said, shaking his head as Sari shrugged casually. They were both grinning at this point. “I believe the next prank is mine, sweetheart.”
“I’m looking forward to it.” Sari nodded at him before she turned her heel and walked back to the café, taking a to-go cup of coffee and ignoring the knowing looks Sam was giving her.
“Rosario, you cannot be serious,” she said, adopting a British accent she probably picked up from watching Pride and Prejudice too many times. “You’re really dating the Baker Next Door?”
“It was just for show! I was trying to prove a point.”
“In his mouth?”
“I’m going back to work. Go inter-crop a plant or something.”
“Oh, scary.” Sam rolled her eyes before she followed her sister back up to the coffee lab. From that point of the morning, all through lunch, she and Sam talked business—how her new cacao trees were looking, a new batch of Liberica that Sari needed to roast, if there were any issues at the roasting and packing facility that they needed to sort out. It was work, and it was the kind of work that usually would have soothed Sari. But not today, apparently. Today she felt a little jumpy and out of her skin, like the kiss from this morning (it was barely a kiss, to be honest) still lingered on her skin.
The rest of the day was relatively quiet, thank God. Sari was standing behind the counter again, humming along to the Christmas song playing on the speakers as she made candy cane coffees for the group of teenagers who had asked to shoot a music video for class in the café. From what Sari could tell, it was an adaptation of Ang Mag-anak na Cruz, which she distinctly remembered not reading in high school.
“Rosario!” One of her regulars, Mrs. Vargas, came into the café looking a little flushed and terribly excited. “Yoo-hoo, dear!”
“Yes, Tita V.” Sari smiled. “Spiced hot chocolate or barako?”
“Spiced hot chocolate with ice, please, I’m melting,” Mrs. V laughed, sitting in her usual seat by the window. “Come and sit with me for a moment, and tell me all about that delicious bedimpled boy next door.”
Sari wrinkled her nose. “There’s nothing to tell though.”
“That’s not what I heard through the grapevine, though! I heard you were serenadin
g him with a marching band this morning. I love it! You don’t see a classic ligawan nowadays, you know? It’s all texting and chatting and Twittering, but that? That is romance. Good for you, hija, taking charge like that.”
“I wasn’t—”
The door to the shop rang just in time to interrupt her. Sari looked up at the door to see one of the shopgirls from Meile’s Garden a few doors away holding a bunch of flowers in one arm. The stem had spiny little leaves, and branched off into flower heads with the most adorable blossoms, huddled together and shivering in the wind. Sari could almost hear laughter coming from the blooms.
There was a brief moment where she was reminded of the way sugar had seemed to dot Gabriel’s hands that morning. Baby’s breath, Sari’s brain supplied just before cutting off thoughts of Gab.
“Flower delivery for Sari Tomas,” the shopgirl said, holding up the bouquet.
Beside Sari, Tita V gasped. “Oh, hija,” she cooed. “That is so romantic.”
“What?” Sari nearly dropped the coffee cup she was holding. “I didn’t order flowers.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Tita V happily supplied. “Your boy next door did.”
“It’s a special delivery,” the shopkeeper explained, before Sari could correct her. They turned to the door, where Sari could see two more shopkeepers and the shop owner herself crossing the street to Café Cecilia, each one of them carrying huge bouquets of the same flowers in both arms, two to a person. Half baby’s breath, half carnations. From what she could see of the flower shop’s storefront, there was still a whole multi-cab full of buckets and buckets of baby’s breath and soft pink carnations that supposedly belonged to her. “There’s a card. Should we unload them here?”
Sari frowned and let them. As her entire floorspace became slowly invaded by the prettiest sea of pink and white, her staff and customers very unhelpfully pointed out the obvious.
“Ay, M’am Sari has a secret admirer!”
“Well, after this morning, it’s not so secret anymore...”
She pointedly ignored them, taking the card and greedily opening instead for clues. This has to be a prank, she thought. His handwriting was messy and haphazard, like he’d scratched off the note without much care or thought. Even his baking was like this. But even with Gabriel’s seeming lack of care, Sari knew that each and every bake in that shop of his was perfect and made with love, and clearly this prank was the same way.
Just to let you know that I was thinking of you. Date?
Sari looked up to the wall she shared with Sunday Bakery, and suddenly felt her heart thumping in her chest, her hands get cold. Because this wasn’t a prank anymore. This was...this was ligawan. Real, honest to goodness ligawan, something he did because he was thinking of her. A lot, apparently.
“I...” was all she managed to say before she slipped the card into her apron, grabbed a handful of the flowers and headed up to the coffee lab, telling her manager that they could handle this. Because she certainly couldn’t.
Still holding the flowers, she looked frantically around the shop. The daybed was too close to the window, her office desk was too small. She headed out to the fire escape, which was thankfully, empty. The door on his side was closed, and she exhaled a slow breath as she sat down, letting the slats of the metal flooring dig into her butt as she considered the lovely blossoms.
Falling in love wasn’t exactly on Sari’s radar. She legitimately thought she was past the age where she still fell in love. She was twenty-nine, after all, and kids her age were getting married and having babies and moving into mid-size condominiums in Manila. But this gesture of Gabriel’s, which would have certainly irritated her two weeks ago, now touched her heart in ways she’d never experienced before.
I was thinking of you. It was such a simple sentiment, a sweet one, but it meant more to Sari than all of the little interactions they’d had over the last two weeks, meant more to her than anything else. He was thinking of her, and she didn’t feel alone.
She looked up at the closed fire exit door to Sunday Bakery and smiled. She slipped the bouquet through the latch of the door without really thinking about what that was supposed to mean, and went back into the shop to handle the thousand other flowers that were waiting.
* * *
“What in carnation,” Sam said a few hours later, plucking one of the scentless pink blossoms from one of the little milk jugs they used as vases on the customer tables. “I go back to the farm for a few hours and suddenly this happens?”
Sari raised an eyebrow at her. She hoped her sister didn’t notice that her cheeks had been pink the whole day, just like the carnations. “You think you’re the first to make that joke? Kira beat you to it. As did Mrs. Recto. And the mayor. And his wife.”
“You know what, I take it back, you and Gab are perfect for each other.” Sam rolled her eyes, tapping the flower against her sister’s nose. “It’s a Christmas miracle. Sari finally finds The One.”
Sari snorted and hid a smile behind a bunch of flowers placed in a repurposed iced tea bottle. She was so happy it was getting a little bit embarrassing. But because her sister knew her all too well, Sari heard her snicker with laughter anyway.
“Two lonely, petty masters of their craft that refuse to see how perfect they are for each other.”
“What was that?” Sari pretended not to hear, attempting to school her face into impassivity while she rearranged the cups on top of the espresso machine. Not that the cups needed rearranging, but Sam didn’t know that.
“Nothing, nothing, not a thing, Ate! Clearly, I’m just a fly on the wall here.” Sampaguita Tomas rolled her eyes before she twirled the carnation in her fingers. “And Ate Nessie and the titas aren’t already planning your wedding outside. I hope you like pink and white for a color scheme.”
Chapter Twelve
December 18
“Good morning, sir!” Gabriel’s staff greeted him chirpily two days later, and he greeted them back with equal enthusiasm. He’d seen the flowers Sari left at his door, and he took it as a little gesture of thanks.
The flowers had been a bold move on his part, and a brilliant one, because it served the dual purpose of being sincere and possibly being interpreted as a prank if she didn’t feel the same way.
Somehow, he’d known she would like it.
Ever since he’d accidentally given her a beso on the cheek, possibly even before that, Sari Tomas had occupied his thoughts. He hadn’t come back to the Philippines, come to Lipa, to fall in love, but he was a big believer in the grace of the universe, and he wanted to roll with it for as long as he could.
Well, Santi did say this was good for business, he told himself, trying not to think of what his father could possibly make of all of this. Hunter Capras was way too serious to appreciate a prank like this, even with nine kids and a particularly nefarious kitty. His mom, maybe, would think this was cute.
“Where did you get all these flowers?” he asked innocently as he walked through his bakery, which was doing a good job of currently looking like it was a flower shop that sold only pink carnations and baby’s breath. “And Ransom, don’t think I didn’t see Sab posting on Facebook with a bouquet you gave her!” It was as if his little prank war with that café next door had sparked a revolution in the Laneways. He’d heard rumors of grand gestures happening left and right, Christmas gifts coming into the Laneways by the truckload, so much that their local delivery service had complained. Love and Christmas magic were in the air, and Gabriel pretended he couldn’t see it.
His phone buzzed with a message. It was from the family’s group chat, where they talked about everything from global warming to the time Bubbles the cat ran straight into a glass door. It was supposed to be a group chat for schedule coordination (nobody ever talked about how much of a logistical nightmare nine kids was), but had now evolved into being part of the family’s daily life, a way to connect
while everyone was living their own lives.
Mom: Good morning, children. Send a siomai emoji so I know you’re all alive.
Although most of the family still lived in their house in Alabang, the Capras family was always in at least three or four different places at once during the week. Gabriel in whatever country he was working in, Lily and Daisy sharing a condo in Ortigas because of work and Rose and Ivy in a dorm in Katipunan for university. Check-ins became mandatory, and weekends in Alabang necessary for those still in the Metro Manila area.
Gabriel, the idiot, was in such a sentimental mood that he actually replied, dumpling emoji and all, when he hadn’t replied before.
Mommers: Gabriel! Good morning! I haven’t heard from you in so long! How is Melbourne? Did you eat breakfast?
Papa: Yes. Report.
Kuya Gab: Oh it’s fine. Nice and cold. The usual.
Lily: How strange...when it’s summertime in Australia.
“Shit,” Gabriel muttered, wishing he could take back his emoji. The thing about lying to your whole family was that it was hard to sustain that lie. Four years ago, when his father told him he basically wasn’t good enough to sustain his own family, Gabriel had made the rash decision that he couldn’t stay in Manila. He’d packed his things and took a job working in bakeries and patisseries in Hong Kong, Osaka and Singapore before he finally ended up in Melbourne. As far as his parents knew, he was there, living in a studio outside the CBD and baking bread for a bakery on Little Bourke Street.
Lily and Daisy knew otherwise, though. He quickly switched chat groups and sent a private message to Lily. He loved his little sister more than a lot of things in this world, but most of the time he thought she was way too smart to be the younger one. That someone up there had messed up on the birth order of the Capras kids, and now the family was stuck with the disappointment as the oldest kid.
Gabriel: Hi can you not laglag me in front of mom and dad tnx??
Sweet on You Page 10