Fairy Tale Fail (9 page)

To put it more diplomatically, Mark
and Lisa thought that Lucas' girlfriends after Patty weren't, well,
decent.

"Patty
is
a great girl. She made a mistake.
He probably thought that he should be avoiding her type, from then
on, but that was
his
mistake," Lisa explained.

I shook my head. "She can't be that
great then, if that's what she did to him."

Lisa sighed. "It doesn't
matter what
she
did to him. Lucas only really gets along with girls who are
confident and smart. She has to be someone who can keep up with
him, or keep him interested. Being betrayed by that kind of person
shouldn't turn him off from
all
confident and smart people. He tried going out
with ditzes and they all didn't last."

"What she means is that we're glad he
brought you and you're not a ditz," Mark said. "It's a sign that
Lucas has started to have faith in his instincts again."

"Oh, you can't possibly know that," I
joked. "I've got issues like you wouldn't believe."

"Okay, okay, let's not put so much
pressure on Ellie." Mark shifted gears rather quickly, tossing a
quick glance in Lucas' direction. "We're just glad he's
here."

Lisa leaned closer. "This
is the first time I've even
seen
him in more than a year. Where was he last year,
Mark? Ilocos Norte?"

Mark shook his head. "No, Vigan. And
over Christmas he was in Cebu. We'd invite him to something and
find out that he's taken off somewhere. But I'm glad to see him
like this. He looks, well, normal."

Aw, he used travel as an
escape too.
We looked over at Lucas, who
was standing on the other side of the room with Sandra. He saw me
and raised his beer, and I toasted him with my drink (and a huge
smile) from across the room.

"He'll be fine," I said to Mark and
Lisa.

***

"You know what? I love being the not
pathetic one. Thank you for inviting me tonight."

"You're welcome. How bad was
I?"

"You were perfect. Your friends were
relieved to have you back."

I thought Lucas' first
night back with his
barkada
was a success. He was funny and witty, he
reconnected with almost everyone, and most likely convinced the
entire group that he had recovered and was really back. But then
again, Patty wasn't there, so that may have made the transition
smoother.

The conversation with Mark
and Lisa gave me a much-needed ego boost, too. I was glad that in
that room full of cool people, I managed to hold my own. Or at the
very least, I did well enough to
not
be called a ditz.

I went from lazy and "not passionate
about anything" to confident and smart, in the span of a year. Not
too bad, Eleanor.

Still, Lucas didn't jump back in
completely. He told me that he wanted to leave early, and at eleven
he started making the rounds of goodbyes. By this time we were
hungry again, and ended up taking out fried dimsum and dark
chocolate soft-serve ice cream from a convenience store. We settled
in front of his car at the open-air top floor of the parking
building, and ate there.

"You definitely inspired me," I added.
"For when I decide to join Charisse and our friends
again."

"What do you mean? You're not ready to
do that yet?"

I thought about it for a minute and
shook my head. "No. I still need closure."

"Ugh," Lucas mocked a shudder at that.
"Patty said that to me a lot."

What was so wrong with
that? I needed to know, in no uncertain terms, that something
was
over
. I didn't
get that from Don. "Maybe if you actually sat down and talked to
her, she would know what you really feel, and you wouldn't have
spent all this time avoiding her," I said.

"I did say how I felt. Very clearly.
It hasn't changed. I think you say 'closure' but mean 'another
chance.'"

I stabbed my last bit of siomai with a
toothpick and grumbled under my breath. Earlier this evening I
started to see myself in Lucas, but really, we were on opposite
ends again.

"But anyway," Lucas said, "I hope you
had fun."

"I did," I replied, serious. "It feels
great to be around people who don't think of me as broken. I was
thinking that this was why I traveled. If only I figured out that I
should just crash strangers' parties, I wouldn't have spent so
much."

Lucas started on his soft-serve ice
cream, and for a second I was distracted by how he licked the dark
chocolate off his spoon. I was still a bit tipsy from the bar –
surely that was why I was fixating on his hands, his fingers, how
stubble had grown on his face since this afternoon.

"Why do you still think you're
broken?" Lucas said, and I snapped out of my trance. "You've become
happier, right?"

"I didn't spend all this time alone by
choice. He left me."

"Oh, you
were
hurt back then, but
today it's different. I don't think you realize it yet, but you are
completely over him."

"Stop it," I said. "Stop giving me
therapy. Tonight's about you."

I intended to start a
speech about this night being about
his
closure, so I turned to him, mind
somewhere else, and was met with his hand on my jaw, pulling me in
for a kiss. His fingers kept my skin a safe distance from the
stubble on his cheek, and the result was something playfully light
against my lips. He tasted like,
gah
, dark chocolate, and something
faintly
umami
but
that was probably me and the dimsum I had just swallowed. For a
moment there I forgot about where I was and all the baggage I had
with me. I allowed myself to be that free person again.

And then I pushed him off
me.

"Seriously?" I said,
coughing into my hand. "You think
this
was
the
perfect time to kiss me? I tasted like siomai!"

Lucas laughed and resumed eating his
ice cream as if nothing happened. "Your obsession with the perfect
moment is cute, but now I know why your friends were concerned all
this time."

"Why, because I actually think things
through?"

"Overthinker."

"But… but I don't
even
know
you very
well. I don't just kiss guys I don't
know."

Lucas set the ice cream cup down on
the hood of his car. "What do you need to know?"

How many ex-girlfriends? What did he
think of courtship? Why did he stop going to church? Would he ever
go back again? Did he believe in life after death? Was he in the
habit of kissing girls not his girlfriend? What did his mom do for
a living? Who did he vote for in the last election? All these
things I would have found out if I had been his friend just a bit
longer, I couldn't possibly unload all of this on him
now!

"What's that tattoo mean?" I said,
plucking a question out of the cloud.

He turned to his left arm and lifted
his sleeve slightly, and I saw more of it. Definitely not a Chinese
character.

"It means 'first officer.'"

"In what language?"

Lucas smiled and cleared his throat.
"When I was younger, my brother and I created this story about a
pirate society, like an alternate history for colonial Philippines.
We created a language for it and everything. He's an illustrator
for comic books, and he's always dreamed of writing that comic
himself when he finally had enough cred. I got three tattoos based
on our original designs to remind him to go do it one
day."

"That's nice of you," I said. "Where
are the other two?"

He tilted his head a little and
grabbed the empty siomai cup from my hands, replacing it with my
own dessert. "You know what? I think now is not the perfect moment
for you to see the other two. Eat your ice cream."

I grudgingly accepted the
cup. "You are
mean.
"

Lucas looked pleased with himself.
"This is what playing by your rules feels like."

Chapter 13

"No
,
Eleanor!"

I rolled my eyes and
instead concentrated on teaching Dylan the colors of the rainbow.
Maybe it was a mistake, telling
Ate
Gladys casually that Don and I were planning to
have dinner. I had forgotten that she was one of those people who
wanted me to stay away from him.

"And this is
orange
, Dylan, like the
fruit.
Orange.
"

"Are you fond of
punishing
yourself or
something?" Gladys' eyes were wide and she looked like a suggestion
away from slapping sense into me. "Don is a bad boyfriend. I
thought you'd gotten over this!"

"He's not a bad
person,
Ate
Gladys, stop it."

"You should be watching out for
yourself."

I used to get really
annoyed when my big sister acted all big sisterly. She was only two
years older and in my opinion, that didn't make her
that
much wiser. "I did
watch out for myself. Didn't I stay away from him on
purpose?"

She handed her son another crayon and
eyed me suspiciously. "And he's had girlfriends since you, right?
What did Charisse say about them?"

Charisse didn't like to tell me about
Don anymore, but some things did slip out. I got hints here and
there. Don's latest relationship didn't seem to be a happy one, and
when I tried to ask why, Charisse only shrugged and said that she
was seeing a pattern. She was becoming an expert at changing the
topic when I tried to press further.

"She says he's not happy," I said.
"Which I think is very interesting."

"Do you really think you can handle
it? What if he fails you again?"

That wasn't fair of her. It
was more than a year since we broke up, and things changed. He
broke up with me not because he wanted someone else, but because I
wasn't living up to his expectations of me, right? Well I was my
confident and happy self again. This new job, and hanging out with
people like Sandra and Lucas, meeting Lucas' cool friends… I felt,
well,
refreshed.
It was the best time for me to reconnect with him; I was
ready.

"Yes I can handle it," I said. "I need
this."

***

When I got to the office, a minute
before eight-thirty, Sandra was standing by her desk instead of
sitting. On her face was the biggest smile I had ever seen (at
least on her).

"We're going to Bangkok!" she
squealed, jumping up and hugging me. "I'm sorry. It was in an email
from Herman this morning. I should have let you read it first but I
couldn't wait. Yay!"

"What? Why me?" I said, smothered a
little by her aggressive hug.

"Um, because you're
assistant manager now and your travel plans were the most efficient
and best-reviewed of all Client Services teams
in the region
? But I'm giving you
spoilers, just read the email!"

I never paid attention to the Regional
ExCom before... but it was because I never really thought I'd go
there. I used to help my boss at Marketing prepare for things when
she attended, but other than that I didn't even know when it was
held. Apparently, the following week.

We all were supposed to leave for
Thailand next Sunday evening, which meant we had only a few days to
help Herman with all the things he wanted to bring. Half the time I
didn't know whether to panic or stay calm... I just had the
distinct feeling that I was in over my head, and wanted to laugh at
myself.

On Wednesday, I was walking back to my
desk from a trip to the copier and saw Don waiting there for
me.

"You need something?" I asked
absently, thirty other things going around my mind.

"Just wanted to know if you'd like
coffee," he said.

"Oh." Couldn't this have happened last
week? Already I was forgetting things I told myself to do. "Um, I
only have ten minutes."

"That's all I have time for
too."

This was a
big deal
. I was seriously
busy, and kept having to push reminders and work stuff out of my
mind to be able to savor that
Don wanted
to talk to me
. I checked my watch and it
was just after three-fifty.

I was part of the routine
again.

So what do we talk about
in ten minutes? Is he single again? Do I ask that now? How many
copies of the booklet did Herman want again? Ten? Fifteen? What was
the number of the guy in the printing office? I'm going to need to
get that from Sandra.