Chapter 30

CHAPTER 30

H ad 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., waking me up.

Cholo Valiente

Happy three months!

I was about to reply when a speech bubble appeared, telling me he was typing.

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.”

“Sus, palusot,” 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 QC. I won’t even see you until this afternoon because you have your club president interview lined up this morning. 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 on 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.

“Good morning to you, too,” I sleepily said to my reflection 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 hide from embarrassment. Cris and Liana were giving me weird, knowing looks. Dad pretended to continue reading the news on his iPad.

Lifting the bouquet, I found Ferreros instead of flowers and laughed. There was a small Post-it note attached to the handle.

Since you hate flowers and everything they stand for, I got you chocolates. Here’s to getting chonky together. Happy 3rd!

There were more stuff waiting for me. In Finance 2, I had a wrapped book on top of my usual seat. There were little gifts I found in my seats in class all day, even in Business Law. I was sure Professor Villafranca noticed but I was glad he did not comment on it and hid a smile instead.

The best part was in Marketing. I was first to arrive in the classroom, and Miss Co called me over to her table as soon as I walked in.

“Hoy,” she said. “I heard you assumed I was flunking you and you were planning not to come in again. Is that right?”

I nodded, not meeting her eyes.

“Next time, talk to me directly,” she said. “And no more fights, especially not with sponsors. You’re only off the hook because it was Atsi’s fault and she knows it.”

“I’m so sorry, Miss Co,” I said.

“It wasn’t just you who had been unprofessional. Atsi was older and she should have known better than humiliate Cholo and try to lunge at you in front of ten other people.”

“Are we getting reported?” I asked. I remembered Cholo mentioning that the club could get in hot water if the sponsor found out about what happened.

“No. We agreed to keep this quiet. Atsi also had a duty as a brand sponsor and she breached that. She would be the one in bigger trouble with her employer if this came out.

But still. Don’t push your luck. No more trouble, okay?”

I nodded 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 open slots for our Feasibility Study subject next semester.

“Heard you’re off the hook,” said a voice behind me as I took notes from a bulletin board. There was Summer, smiling, her ridiculous candidate name tag hanging over her 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.”

“Look, Summer?—”

“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 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 was so thoughtful to 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. “His family’s hard to impress so he’s doing the work now, especially after what you pulled with his cousin. Little things at first—subjects, internships, no biggie. Next time it will be the clothes you wear, how you wear those ridiculous bangs, and eventually 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 family’s 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 could, I could not. 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.

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.

“Fuck’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 feeding basin against its steel cage.

“Sorry,” I said, distracting myself from the nasty feeling that had been lingering in my stomach since I talked to Summer. “I lost track of things.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I replied shortly, still unable to get Summer’s words out of my head and they joined the roots of what she, Miss Mikayla, 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. He looked unsure. I stared at it.

“What’s this?” I asked in a low voice.

“Why does it sound like you already know?” he asked, looking. “Okay, spill. Who among my siblings or siblings-in-law told you?”

I blinked, hardly daring to believe this. Were they in on this? Egging him on, maybe, to change me into something they could show off to their Angkong?

“Cholo, you should have told me first.”

He looked surprised, shaking his head.

“Vinnie, I know it seems like a lot,” he exhaled, trying to reach my hand with his. “I thought you’d be happy?—”

“Didn’t you think I could handle it myself?” I asked. Cholo now looked confused.

“What are you talking about?”

I shoved the envelope against his chest.

“My BA 199 and Feasib class slots!” I replied. “You got me an internship? Signed me up for subjects without my knowledge? You can’t do that, you know.”

“Vinnie, I promise I can explain?—”

“No! You can’t just do things behind my back and manipulate me to get what you want.”

“Manipulate?” he repeated, his eyes growing dark, more sad than angry. “Vinnie, I just wanted?—”

“What? To make sure I don’t mess up?” I cut him off. I should have seen it then, how his eyes pleaded with me to stop and listen, but I was too busy wallowing in my own anger and insecurities to even notice. “To ensure I won’t choose an internship that wouldn’t be up to your standards?”

“Not up to my standards? God, Vinnie, can we pause right there, please, and not get ahead of ourselves,” said Cholo, visibly confused and hurt but still trying regain control of the conversation. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”

“‘Yun na nga, eh. You don’t get it! You don’t know what it looks like when you go around doing things behind my back, to find out from other people that you’re working to get me to look like something that would fit your needs?—”

“Vinnie, when did I ever do that? I never asked you to become anything for me,” he said, his voice sounding weak and vulnerable.

I would forever hate myself for not seeing that and for where I let my pride lead us. “You’ll never be okay, will you,” I began, shaking my head and waving a hand between us. “With who I am. You’ll say that this is okay, that you can deal with it, what I can and can’t be. But I’ll never be enough for you, will I?”

A pause. Cholo looked like I just slapped him.

“Enough?” Cholo let out the word like it was something poisonous. The fight in him was returning and I could see the walls come back up all around him. “Vinnie, you know that all my life I’ve struggled with what that word meant and entailed, don’t you think I would know what it’s like to have someone insinuate that you’re not enough? How can I even think of doing that to you?”

He ran a hand through his hair, his face tired, jaw clenched in an attempt to control himself. “You think I wanted you to turn into something else? God, when we met, you were the opposite of me. You didn’t care what people said or wanted, you breezed through everything and did things effortlessly. You think I forgot about that quiz bee? You were that amazing, smart girl and when we met again, I thought that maybe it didn’t have to matter. Maybe I didn’t have to be so uptight to prove myself after all because you had this I-don’t-care-fuck-you-everybody-manigas-kayo attitude and ended up okay anyway…”

The conversation was going off the deep end, I knew it, but we were way past the point of stepping on the brakes. It was me who had led it off the rails and I stared at him helplessly, not knowing what to say.

“But at the same time you were alone because no matter how tough you wanted to be, you did need company,” he went on. “Well, of course you’d rather die than admit that you were lonely but you were. All I wanted was to be there for you and make you realize what you were capable of, not because you weren’t good enough but because I knew what it was like to grow up alone and have no one to do that for me. I wanted to believe I could do that for you, that I could be needed, but apparently I wasn’t.”

“I’m sorry?—”

“No,” he told me coldly, his eyes distant. He stepped away from me and the weight of what I had done just dropped on my head like an anvil. “I’m done.”

His shoulders dropped and I felt my own tears building up in my eyes. This time I did not know if I had it in me to stop them.

“What do you mean you’re done?”

“I mean, I’m DONE!” Cholo said harshly, throwing the envelope hard against the sofa. “If you can’t find it in you to take a step back and not think that the world is out to get you or turn you into something you don’t want to be… If you’re too proud to accept that what I do for you is not equivalent to me holding you against some standard you had cooked up inside your head, then I’m done.”

Cholo took one last look at me and went on his way out.

I expected him to slam the door but of course he did not, and the soft clicking of the door knob brought a much more hurtful close to what had just occurred.

I sat on the sofa, marvelling at every word I had thrown at him and the air I breathed felt like shards of broken glass.

I reached out a shaking hand to get the envelope. I felt mostly numb as I opened the brown paper. I did not think it could get worse until I saw what was inside.

A plane ticket to South Korea with my name and a number of passes to the amusement parks I had always wanted to visit were inside, along with a yellow Post-it note containing his handwriting.

Aaand to wrap up our three-month-day, here’s Everland, Lotte World, and one weekend devoted to stalking Era of Maidens!

I know you put off your plans because you thought you were getting delayed but then your dad called me to say thank you for talking to Patsy and mentioned he got you a ticket already! He said something about trying to make up for not reacting well when you first told him? Naturally, I got the seat next to you :P

Anyway, I got the passes and put everything in this box. We’re leaving on your birthday week!!! Let’s get our visas together next month.

P.S. Here we come, Era of Maidens! :)