by Katt Briones
“Pangit mo,” Kristine hissed as Summer finally walked away. She was beside me the whole time, rolling her eyes and making loud snorts every time Summer said something stupid.
“Chill,” I said to her as we made our way to the library. “She’s not worth it.”
“Can you blame me?” Kristine interjected. “I’m just doing what you’re too polite to do. You could’ve walked away while she was reciting that absolute joke of a GPOA!”
“Wouldn’t want her to think I’m scared of her,” I reasoned. “By the way, what happened after I left?”
Kristine proceeded to fill me in about what happened at the launch after I left.
Apparently the launch went smoothly after Summer had saved the day. Everyone in the team figured out what Summer had been up to after she appeared with the ‘backup’, but Miki didn’t think much of this and just shooed everyone into action. The sponsors (Miki’s bosses) were apparently so pleased that they talked to Cholo and asked if they could partner up with one of our committees for an exclusive event—there was another men’s care product they were going to launch within the next year and they were looking for student orgs to partner up with.
“They said Dresden Marketing Club was their first choice,” said Kristine as we found a table in the corner. “Given how well the joint launch for Ephemere and their new men’s brand turned out, they just might ask us to be an official student org partner.”
“Good for you guys, then,” I said sadly, thinking of how I probably wouldn’t be able to handle anything like that anymore.
“Anong good for you guys ka pa dyan,” Kristine scolded me. “You’re doing that with us.”
“I got kicked out of the org, remember?” I exasperatedly replied, moodily opening my ObliCon textbook.
“Kicked out? Miki’s not a member, she can’t kick you out,” she replied. “Saka hello, you’re the next DMC president’s girlfriend! Who in their right mind would kick you out?”
Her statement rubbed me the wrong way.
It was a relief that she chose that exact moment to look at her ObliCon book, or she would have seen me roll my eyes at her. Sure, I was not an org big shot like Cholo or the rest of them, but couldn’t there have been a more legitimate reason to make me stay other than the fact that I was Cholo’s girlfriend?
“Hey, beautiful!”
Cholo had put his arm around me after class, and he quickly turned it into a headlock. Our friends laughed at us as they passed, and I good-naturedly waved them off.
“Hey yourself,” I said, elbowing him in the side. “How was your day?”
“Boring. I didn’t talk to you as much,” he joked, and I made a face, pretending to puke. We hardly talked in classes today as there had been a lot to do, since finals was already coming at us like a huge storm cloud. “Guess what. Our favorite ramen place just opened a branch in SM North. Tara?”
“I can’t, I have to be in Makati in a couple of hours,” I said. “Grounded, remember?”
“You poor kid,” he said, pinching my cheeks, and I wanted to throw him off the stairs. (Mind you, I almost did.) “Since when did rules apply to you?”
“Since I flunked BA 170,” I answered sadly, and I quickly fumbled for a change in topic. “Have you enlisted for BA 199?”
“That’s what I was going to tell you,” he said, squeezing my hands, and I got the feeling he was more excited than me about this. “You didn’t flunk BA 170. Well, not yet.”
“Don’t you remember you and Patsy agreeing to let me flunk BA 170 if I messed Ephemere up?” I demanded, but a small balloon of hope had blown itself up in my chest. I hated myself for it.
“If I remember correctly, Patsy and I agreed to have you get a 5 in that subject if you slacked off,” he recited, and I marveled at the sharpness of his memory. “Which you didn’t.”
“But I . . . I angered a sponsor,” I said, hardly daring to believe this. “I pushed Patsy’s sister! Are you telling me she’s not mad at me for that?”
“Patsy had pushed Miki so many times in her lifetime that she already lost count,” Cholo said, laughing. “And that push you did was no match to countless others that she did in their childhood.”
“You talked to her?” I asked, tears of relief flooding my eyes.
“Of course I talked to her,” he told me, rubbing my arms. “I can’t let her ruin my plans of us posing with the sunflowers together on graduation day!”
I put my arms around his neck and pulled him close to me.
“AGH, I LOVE YOU!” I yelled in his ear, and he hugged me back with such enthusiasm that he managed to lift me off my feet. “I’m graduating on time! Take that, Summer, you bitch!”
“Okay, okay, enough with the cursing!” Cholo said, laughing in my ear. “Make sure you attend 170 class tomorrow, and the briefing for our 199 Practicum subject on Friday, you’ll need that before they let you enlist.”
I broke off from him and squished his cheeks in my hands.
“You are the best, best, best boyfriend ever!” I screeched.
“Like you had a choice,” he groaned, but he was laughing anyway. “Be careful on your way home.”
“Oh, aren’t you going home yet?” I asked, looking at my watch. “There’s no meeting for Ephemere today.”
“Um, today’s the meeting for those thinking of running for Dresden Marketing Club Executive Committee,” he muttered, and I watched in delight as his ears turned red, a telltale reaction of him getting nervous or flustered. “And, uh, I just wanted to see what’s in store and stuff.”
“Bullshit,” I said happily, and I slapped his hand away when he tried to cover my mouth. “Everyone’s rooting for you. Go.”
“They are?”
“Charles Paolo!” I snapped. “Don’t you play coy with me, you knew that from the start. Now go make us proud.”
“You know I will,” he said, and giving me a huge kiss on the forehead, he broke off and made his way to the stairs. “You take care, Lavinia.”
I smiled and waved before finally leaving for home.
I was practically skipping while I waited for Dad to pull over at the Glorietta exit. When he pulled over, I was surprised to see that Liana wasn’t on the passenger seat, so I took it.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, a little too cheerfully that he gave me a weird look. “Where’s Liana?”
“She’s having a few drinks with her co-interns,” he answered, not smiling. I pulled my seatbelt and fastened it, thinking of how to tell him the news. “They’re celebrating since it’s their last day and most of them are graduating.”
The last word hung in the air like an ominous rain cloud, insinuating my dad’s disappointment, but I tried not to let it bother me.
“Oh,” I said. “Um, Cholo talked to our prof.”
Dad looked at me once and turned his eyes back on the road as we approached the Ayala stoplight.
“Patsy’s not going to flunk me after all,” I said, my voice small and suppressed. “I can still graduate on time, Dad!”
He didn’t react. The small balloon of hope in my chest deflated, leaving a hollow space that felt horrible.
“Dad?” I prompted again, hoping there was more to that anticlimactic reaction. I was expecting my being grounded was going to be lifted at the very least.
“Did you try to talk to your prof?” he asked me. I felt my eyebrows knit themselves together, confused.
“I . . . No.”
“Before Cholo told you this, were you planning to make an appeal at all?”
I blinked and stared at the windshield, feeling ashamed of myself. I couldn’t even respond as my answer would have been embarrassing. My plan was not to attend that class anymore, and I just accepted that I was not going to graduate on time. Just like that. Talking to Patsy did not cross my mind at all, because I was too scared.
Dad seemed to understand what my silence meant.
“Vinnie,” he said, and his tone took on one that was more hurtful than the one he had used when he was
scolding me last weekend. “While I understand that Cholo takes most of the credit for you talking to me again, I’m finding his presence a bit inhibiting for you.”
My hands clenched into fists as I let those words sink in.
“Paano kung hindi niya kinausap?” he asked me as we sped along EDSA Southbound, which was surprisingly traffic-free. “Will you just let things be? Stop thinking of what’s good for you?”
I hung my head down.
“I have let myself be excluded from your life so I guess I am also at fault, but it seems to have had adverse effects on you. For the longest time, you didn’t have anyone to stand up for you or tell you what to do, so you learned to be independent. But now that you have Cholo, you just let him do things and decide for you. Where did the other Vinnie go?”
“Dad, I haven’t changed,” I tried to defend myself, but that sounded pathetic even to my own ears.
“I have nothing against Cholo. In fact, I am proud of what you have been doing since you met him. But don’t you think you have to take your own initiatives? He’s helping you out, but you will have to help yourself, too, at some point. You will need to draw that line, Vinnie. You can’t let others take charge of your life for you, or assume that what you’re doing is okay because subconsciously, you’re waiting for someone else to take over or give you an option.”
I remained quiet as I nodded continually, trying to keep my tears at bay.
“That was what I had been disappointed about, Vinnie,” he told me. “I would have no problem with you getting delayed from graduating if I knew you had done everything you can to stop it. But this? You just gave up when that happened and you didn’t even try to talk yourself out of it? That wasn’t you at all.”
“Sorry, Dad,” I answered weakly. I couldn’t even cry. All the energy I had that day dissipated into nothingness. I remained quiet and was caught by a huge, overwhelming sense of defeat.
Dad was right. I was sure he hadn’t told me that to dishearten me, but I couldn’t stop mentally beating myself up for something I should have realized earlier.
There I was again, punishing myself and watering the seeds of my own self-doubt, letting it grow along with the already tall weeds that Summer had planted in my mind last time.
CHAPTER 21
Had I known what would happen that day, I would have avoided it, but none of us saw it coming. Later in life I would look back at it with sadness and regret, and wish that I could spare Cholo and I from the hurt about to unfold.
My phone beeped at 5 a.m. in the morning, waking me up.
From: Cholo Valiente
“Happy three months! :)”
I was about to reply when a speech bubble appeared, telling me he was typing.
From: Cholo Valiente
“Hah, I remembered. U OWE ME!”
Smiling weakly, I dialled him straight up.
“Hey,” I said as soon as he picked up. “You just beat me to it.”
“Whatever,” he replied. “And why do you sound like that? Have you at least brushed your teeth?”
“Actually, your message woke me up.”
“Well, you wouldn’t want to be late today,” he told me. “I had a lot of stuff planned for us.”
Cholo and his plans. I remembered what Dad said yesterday and my heart ached a little.
“Stuff? But you’re in the dorm,” I snapped, though I was again smiling as I dragged myself off the bed. “How is that romantic?”
“Oh just you wait, Lavinia,” he said. “Just you wait.”
“I will be waiting,” I answered, stretching as I made my way to the bathroom. “No proposals, though. Or tarps with my embarrassing face on it.”
“No worries. I made sure to cover your face when I put it in the bulletin board. I’m afraid the bangs would give you away though.”
“CHOLO!”
“Kidding!” he said, guffawing his head off from the other line. “Don’t worry, I just have a slightly embarrassing flash mob in front of BA waiting for you. I even had them study our favorite Era of Maidens songs.”
“Ewan ko sa’yo!” I snarled, and he laughed again before we said goodbye. I put the phone down and stared at myself in the mirror, finding a girl with straight hair and blunt bangs staring back at me with a resting bitch face.
“Good morning to you, too,” I sleepily said to it, and with a last stretch I started brushing my teeth.
I saw the bouquet at the table waiting for me as I made my way downstairs, and I wanted to die from embarrassment. Cris and Liana were giving me weird, knowing looks.
Lifting the bouquet, I found Ferreros instead of flowers and laughed. There was a small Post-it attached to the handle.
Since you hate flowers and everything they stand for, I got you chocolates.
Here’s to getting fat together. Happy 3rd!
There were more stuff waiting for me. In Finance 2, I had a wrapped book on top of my usual seat. In ObliCon, Atty. Villafranca didn’t as much as look at me, which was absolutely weird as not one class passed this semester without him calling me to recite. When I asked Cholo, he shrugged and played innocent, looking at me with these doe eyes that seemed to say “What? So I asked your least favorite prof not to pick on you today, big deal!”
The best part was in Marketing, when Patsy slapped me hard in the arm when I entered her class.
“Bruha,” she said. “You thought I’d flunk you over that? You should have pushed her harder!”
I laughed and enjoyed the rest of the class. Dad texted me that I was effectively not grounded anymore, so I used the extra time after dismissal to browse through my choices for BA 199 (Practicum) and the opened slots and classes for our Feasibility Study subject next semester.
“Heard you’re off the hook,” said a nasty voice behind me as I took notes from a bulletin board. There was Summer, smiling, her stupid candidate name tag hanging over her flat chest. “Wanna join my feasib group?”
“What, so you can mooch off and take credit for my efforts one more time?” I replied, smirking. “That’s really thoughtful of you, but no.”
“Your efforts? Nice try. If it weren’t for Cholo’s foresight, you wouldn’t be here at all. What are you still doing here, anyway?” she said with a surprised tone and a scathing, high laugh as she looked at the board. “Go home. You’re already enlisted for feasib and 199.”
“Summer, one more word and I swear I’ll—
“Oh, Cholo didn’t tell you, then,” she said, feigned surprise still on her face. “You’re already in his feasib group. Your topic’s picked, your 199 slot is ensured since he already had an Ephemere sponsor pledging an intern’s slot for you since they liked the launch so much—
“Hold on,” I said, raising a hand to shut her up. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m a student assistant, so I know,” she answered. “He, on the other hand, is a prefect, and both groups get early enlistment privileges. He, of course, was so thoughtful to go enlist you too.”
“He didn’t tell me that,” I muttered, panicking. Did Cholo really do all that without consulting me?
But why?
“Didn’t I tell you he already has everything planned out?” she asked. “Subjects, plans, internships, no biggie. Next time it will be the clothes you wear, everything else. Cholo is a proactive decision maker, always thinking of what’s next. I wonder what else he has in line for you?”
“Whatever it is, you won’t be around to find out.”
“Then I hope to God you have it in you to mold into his definition of a worthy match.”
I stomped off and stuffed my notebook into my bag, ears ringing. I knew it was Summer I was talking to, but even as I tried to push her words as far away as I can, I couldn’t. Cholo was a planner, that was for sure. But deep in my mind, where my worst fears resided, I wondered if that was true, if he was indeed wanting to turn me into someone else, someone more worthy—someone who would be better to take home to his family, like Summer, or maybe Mi
ki.
I had stayed in my own pit of dark thoughts and forgot that I was supposed to catch a ride with him home. The moment I realized I had forgotten, I was already on the bus halfway through Coastal Road.
No one was there yet when I got to the house, and it was still dark. I opened the lights, thinking of whether to call him or not when the doorbell rang. Cholo’s black Altis was in front of the house, and he was standing beside it with his hands on his hips, furious.
I went outside.
“For God’s sake, Vinnie!” he said. “I was so worried!”
My eyes darted everywhere but at him. There was a brown manila envelope on top of his car trunk. The next-door neighbor’s dog was clanging its metallic feeding basin against its steel cage.
“Sorry,” I said, distracting myself from the anger that was bubbling up at the pit of my stomach.. “I lost track of things.”
“Your dad was looking for you,” he said, his anger dissolving. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” I replied shortly, unable to get Summer’s words out of my head, and they joined the roots of what she, Miki, and Dad said in the past, where they festered and grew. “Do you want to go inside?”
He took the envelope and locked his car, following me inside. I closed the gate and entered the house, feeling my hands grow clammy as I tried to think of how to open up about what was bothering me.
“I was about to surprise you after you came back from the bulletin board,” he told me, handing me the envelope as he grinned from ear to ear, and I already knew what it contained. My mind fought to absorb the situation.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You already know?” he asked, his smile fading.
“Is it so hard to ask?” I muttered, my hands closing over the rough paper. “Exactly how difficult was it for you to tell me first?”
He looked appalled, shaking his head.
“Vinnie, I know it seems like a lot,” he exhaled, trying to reach my hand with his. “But why do I get the feeling that you’re not happy about this?”
“Why?” I spat, my hands remaining clenched. “You’re asking me that only now? Didn’t you think I could handle it myself?”