Fairy Tale Fail (10 page)

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.

I was halfway ready to tell him that
no, Lucas claimed not to be the father, but then I remembered that
he would prefer people not be corrected. "I've heard that too," was
all I said.

Don didn't press it, so for the rest
of the short walk back to my desk we were just sipping coffee. He
said goodbye, and reminded me about Friday. I jumped right back
into work without thinking about it. It was just as well – I
suddenly wasn't in the mood for a big dramatic reunion, much less
one that started in the cafeteria. That was not where "happily ever
after" happened.

***

The big dramatic reunion wasn't going
to be on Friday, either. On that day, an email from Don showed up
in my inbox at four PM.

Ricky is making me redo
his presentation right now and he's leaving tomorrow morning! Let's
just have our dinner in Bangkok? You'd like that, right?

I replied,
Sure, no problem. See you in Bangkok.

A familiar feeling nagged at me, but
it took a while before I recognized it. There was once a time when
I took Don's rainchecks and cancellations hard, but now was not one
of those times. Maybe I was just that busy. Or maybe I didn't mind
so much anymore.

"Hey."

I looked up to see Lucas in the space
between my desk and Sandra's. I didn't see him at all this week
either, apart from the occasional offer from him to refill my
coffee. At first I wondered if he wanted to talk about the kiss,
but he gave no indication of needing to discuss it further. I
didn't mean that in a bad way, by the way – I just didn't have the
time to think it through yet.

"Have a safe flight, okay?" Lucas
said. "I'm taking off early."

"Don't talk to me," Sandra grumbled,
head not moving from her monitor. "I have to finish the math on
this in five minutes. See ya, Lucas."

"Lunch or dinner soon, okay?" I
offered.

"I'll find you," he said.

Chapter 14

Bangkok, on the other hand, was a good
place for a big dramatic reunion.

It was the place I
retreated to when I realized that Don wasn't going to be coming
back to me anytime soon. I had a great time there, and started to
find the fun side of me again, and it was fitting that it be the
setting of where we would talk about
us
again.

The Regional ExCom – at least the part
we were invited to – would last three days only. First day was the
day we arrived, but we were getting in on an evening flight and had
no time to do anything else. Second and third day would be all
work, and the fourth day we were free until our evening flight back
to Manila.

I wasn't
completely
spaced out
because of work. I knew that if Don wanted to make it special, he
could only set up a dinner with me on our last night in Thailand.
Work would be over by then, and we could skip the dinner scheduled
with the officemates. I wasn't sure when his flight back would be
but I didn't think anybody was leaving early the next morning, so
we could talk – or whatever – all night if we chose to.

For my next personal trip I had
decided on Bali (rather than Vietnam), but I dipped into the Bali
fund to buy a new navy blue suit dress, two new tops that would
look great with my favorite blazer, and splurged a little on
something for dinner with Don. Just in case.

***

As someone who was only
ever in Bangkok as a budget traveler, being there for work was like
being in a totally different city. On my vacation I stayed mostly
in more affordable areas like Pratunam, explored tourist haunts
like Khao San, and ate street food. On
this
trip I was picked up by a fancy
car at the airport (or rather, my
boss
was picked up by a fancy car but
we were with him), the hotel where we were having our Regional
ExCom was a famous business hotel along the river, and I had per
diem.

Not that I had enough time to go
shopping. We got to the hotel after ten PM and I only had time to
dump my luggage in the room I shared with Sandra. Herman had a
presentation the next morning and he had some last-minute tasks,
and we were working in a room set up as a "business center" until
past two AM.

When I checked my email the next day,
there was something from Don:

What time did you get in?
I'm going to be in sessions all day, Ricky's orders. But I made a
reservation for dinner tomorrow night, hope you have the time for
it.

Did I have time for it? I
only did wait a
year and a half
for this moment, right. And there would be no
distractions this time.

***

Technically my second day in Bangkok,
but I spent all of it inside a hotel. A fancy, five-star hotel,
sure, but I just realized as the day ended that I couldn't count
this as a "trip" really. It shouldn't count if I was stuck in a
function room for the majority of it.

Herman had another presentation
scheduled for the next day, this time to a different group of
bosses. He was fussing over it all afternoon, to the point that we
missed the buffet dinner for everyone. As the only person who
didn't go off and eat an afternoon snack, I was given the privilege
of leaving early. It was already after nine PM and I hadn't had
anything to eat in hours.

I didn't even know
where
to eat. I headed
back into the hotel and took the long way around to the elevators,
seeing directions for the restaurants I couldn't afford. It was
wonderfully
rich
,
this five-star hotel, by the way. I would never have decided to
stay there if I traveled on my own, and was just glad that someone
else was paying the bill. My tummy rumbled a bit as I waited for my
elevator – and then someone familiar stepped out of it.

"
'Tang ina,
" I said
uncontrollably.

Lucas – alive and
well
and in Bangkok
– laughed and took me aside. "You want to cause an
international incident, Ellie?"

"What are you
doing
here? You never
said anything about Bangkok!"

He shrugged. "I was busy. You were
busy too. Figured I would see you here anyway."

"Sorry… it's great to see you here.
I'm just – surprised. Did you just come from the
dinner?"

He did, and when he described the
scrumptious buffet that I had just missed, I and my stomach felt
bad together. But then he offered to find a dinner place nearby
with me.

"This really okay with you?" I asked.
"You've already eaten."

"Eventually you'll learn that you
can't really force me to do anything I don't want to do," Lucas
said. "So yes, this is really okay with me."

***

It wasn't until after midnight that I
noticed his tie. He was in a coat-and-tie ensemble, the expected
(but not required) outfit of the lucky ones who had the time to
show up at the dinner. I was sleepy, but I noticed that his shirt
was an interesting shade of gray, which strangely seemed to
complement his uneven tan, and said so. His tie was black, but
there was some kind of yellow artwork on it, which I wanted to see
more of.

I asked Lucas what it was. I didn't
remember the answer.

Next thing I knew, it was three AM and
I was snuggling next to him on one of the hotel lounge's sofas. He
was sleeping, one arm around me, his head resting just over mine. I
could feel through my hair that he was snoring softly. My own arm
wasn't so innocent; it had snaked around his waist and was pinned
by his body to the sofa, and I apparently had wrapped his tie – his
black and yellow tie – around my other hand. I lay still,
pretending to still be asleep, and let his heartbeat time my
breathing.

So this was what being this close to
him was like. I probably had five more seconds before my movement
betrayed that I was really awake.

One
: He smells like butter. Why does he smell like
butter?
Two
: I'm
single. This is not cheating.
Three
: I wonder if my hair smells
okay.
Four
: This
is really comfortable.
Five
: I wonder what time it
is.

How did this happen again?

He walked with me to the 7-Eleven a
few blocks down to get food. I bought a weird-looking bun, two
packs of cookies, and two bottles of juice. I started munching on
stuff on the walk back, and said thank you to him, I would just eat
in my room. He said I should eat by the lounge instead and enjoy
the night sky over the river, but could we drop by his room first
so he could leave his coat.

I looked at him
suspiciously for a second. "Yeah,
drop by
my room to leave my coat.
I've never
heard
that
before."

Lucas laughed and shrugged
off his coat for emphasis. "Well I can't walk around in this. And
we're being
friends
, like you want."

Nothing else happened when
we got to his room because when we got to 1123 ("My birthday, isn't
that weird?" Lucas said) the
Do Not
Disturb
sign was hanging on the
door.

"No,
that's
weird," I said, still chewing
cookies. "Who's your roommate?"

Lucas shook his head. "Anton. This guy
I work with. That fucker."

"Literally," I said, giggling. "Did he
actually bring someone into your room without telling you? Where
are you supposed to sleep tonight?"

He leaned closer to the door and tried
to press his ear against it. "You want to check?"

"Ew, no." But then my curiosity got
the better of me and I leaned in too. "Do you hear
anything?"

"No."

"I don't hear anything. You'd think
they'd be louder. Or the soundproofing here is really
good."

Lucas straightened up, away from the
door, like it had burned him. "You know what? Let's just go. I
don't think I want to know what Anton's doing in there."

So we ended up, as planned, at the
lounge. The pretense was to enjoy the view of the river but
honestly? I couldn't see much of it. And I was too tired to go and
walk toward the viewing deck. As I finished the last of my pathetic
dinner, Lucas started telling me about the plans for the sequel to
the video game movie that I hated.

I almost choked on a cookie crumb.
"Seriously? They're making more of that crap?"

He spent a considerable amount of time
telling me what they should change about the sequel, conveniently
ignoring that I had called it crap. But later, he started asking me
stuff. He managed to find out about my family, and this was when I
got comfortable. I sat a little closer, and was visibly more
animated as I told him about my quirky semi-retired parents, my
older sister and her doctor husband, my younger sister and her
cooking experiments, and the cute thing Dylan did with his eyes the
other day.