Chapter 29

CHAPTER 29

I t definitely got Dad upset.

I was grounded—yes, I could still apparently get grounded at my age—until the school year ended. Maybe more, but it did not really matter as I wasn’t going to attend club meetings anymore. Cholo was not allowed to come over and I was strictly going to turn up at our meeting place where dad picked me up two hours after my last subject ends, which he would now know as he asked for a copy of my schedule.

He was even going to keep my phone until Monday just to prove a point.

Tita Cris and Liana tried to appeal on my behalf, asking me to tell them everything. Dad did listen when I told him the whole story but he stayed firm on his decision. I didn’t bother protesting because I truly needed it.

Yuck, what was that? I did not even sound like myself anymore these days.

“I think he’s trying to make up for all those years that he was too scared to ground you,” Tita Cris had said in an attempt at humor when she brought me chicken soup in my room just after Dad gave me that long-ass sermon.

Liana was beside me on the bed back then and she had given her mother a withering glare.

“Real funny, Mom.”

“Do you want me to ground you, too?” said Tita Cris and I laughed at Liana’s expense as I ate my soup. “Pati si Gian, pagbabawalan kong pumasok!”

“You’re back together?” I sputtered, looking at Liana disbelievingly. “And you were going to tell me when?”

“Well, I was about to tell you pero since you just got yourself kicked off the club and delayed from graduating by a year, I couldn’t bring it up anymore,” she said, shrugging. “I had to give you your moment.”

“My moment?”

“Yes, your moment,” she joked, eyes glinting in mischief. “Wouldn’t want you to accuse me of stealing your thunder.”

“‘Nyeta ka!” I shouted, spilling soup all over myself as I aimed a kick at her.

“Oh, Vinnie!” Tita Cris complained, sounding like a hamster that got poked by a fork. “I just changed those sheets. You are in so much trouble, young lady!”

“Oops,” said Liana, making an escape as her mother ran off to get new bed covers. “She just used her dolphin voice. You’re on your own, sister.”

As much as my family, sans Dad, tried to get me over it with jokes and chicken soup, the sad reality slapped me hard in the face when I got back to school.

Summer acted more smug than usual and she kept talking in class to introduce herself as a University Student Council candidate. She made it a point to hand me a flyer, discussing her plans for an easier process for delayed students extending their residency.

“Pangit mo,” Kristine hissed as Summer walked away. She was beside me the whole time, rolling her eyes and making loud snorts every time Summer said something silly.

“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!”

“She was trying to get a rise out of me and I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction,” 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 did after she appeared with the ‘backup,’ but Miss Mikayla did not think much of this and just shooed everyone into action. The sponsors 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 Management 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 club partner.”

“Good for you guys, then,” I said sadly, thinking of how I would not be able to handle events like that anymore.

“Anong ‘good for you guys’ ka d’yan,” Kristine scolded me. “You’re doing that with us.”

“I got kicked out of the club, remember?” I exasperatedly replied, opening my Business Law textbook.

“Kicked out? Miss Mikayla’s not a member, she can’t kick you out,” she replied. “Hello, you’re the next club 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 own book or she would have seen me scowl. Sure, I was not an club big shot like Cholo or the rest of them, but could there not have been a more legitimate reason to make me stay other than the fact that I was Cholo’s girlfriend?

“Hey, Vinnie!”

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 barf. 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. Let’s go?”

“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. “Since when did rules apply to you?”

“Since I flunked BA 170,” I answered sadly and I fumbled for a change in topic. “Have you enlisted for BA 199 yet?”

“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 Miss Co 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 and I hated myself for it.

“If I remember correctly, Patsy and I agreed to have you fail that subject if you slacked off,” he recited and I marvelled at the sharpness of his memory. “Which you did not.”

“But I angered a sponsor,” I said, hardly daring to believe this. “I pushed Miss Co’s sister! Well, by accident. Are you telling me she’s not mad at me for that?”

“No! Patsy heard everything and asked me to speak to you. She even made Ate Mikayla apologize to me,” Cholo said, laughing.

“She did?” I asked, tears of relief flooding my eyes.

“Of course,” he told me, rubbing my arms. “We can’t let something like this 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 cried out 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!”

“Okay, sshh, we don’t want you to get in trouble for noise!” Cholo said, laughing in my ear. “Make sure you attend 170 class tomorrow and the briefing for our 199 Practicum subject next week. You’ll need both 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!”

“Like you had a choice,” he groaned but laughed right after. “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 Management 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?”

“Cholo Sunico Valiente!” 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 after giving me a huge kiss on the forehead, he made his way to the stairs. “You take care, Lavinia.”

I smiled and waved before leaving for home.

I was practically skipping while I waited for Dad to pull over at the mall exit. When he pulled over, I was surprised to see that Liana was not 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.

“Miss Co spoke to Cholo.”

Dad looked at me once and turned his eyes back on the road as we approached the Ayala stoplight.

“Miss Co is not going to flunk me, after all,” I said, my voice small and suppressed. “I can still graduate on time!”

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 could not 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 Miss Co 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 pala 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.

“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 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 started working with 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. 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 did not even know if I could 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 had not told me that to dishearten me but I could not 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 tall weeds that Summer had planted in my mind last time.