Kira sighed. Because she was relieved, obviously. Nineteen roses would have been too much. (Assuming they were for her, of course, and they weren’t!) Was it terrible to say that she wasslightlydisappointed? Because she was. As reality star, and star-in-her-own-mind, Valentina said, “this doesn’t fit into my fantasy,” and hers in particular included maybe a string quartet and a fountain that came with those roses.
Not that this one rose wasn’t nice, or sweet, it was just...well, she just really needed to talk to him, is all. Because this waiting was terrible. Because this crush (because that was what it was) was starting to crush her, and she needed to settle it all. To quote another famous Ru girl, “because what you want to do, isn’t necessarily what you’re gonna do,” so just because she wanted this to happen, didn’t mean it was going to.
So better to ask now, diba?
“You um, wanted to talk to me,” she reminded him.
“Let’s talk outside,” he said, clearly unaware of her turmoil. He handed off the flowers to one of his staff, and got a nondescript box and two forks in exchange. He extended his hand toward a nondescript door off the side of the restaurant. “Privacy awaits.”
Kira walked through the door and was met with Lipa’s chilly late December air. They were in the garden, the one with the lit fountain that she could only just see through the restaurant’s many windows, in a corner that was just out of sight.
Almost every santan bush was topped with twinkle lights, making them look like they were glowing. It was well into the evening, but the gumamela flowers were still open and in full bloom, their petals dancing in the cool wind. The lightest scent of ylang ylang lingered in the air from the trees nearby, and rosal from the bushes.
It was like stepping into a fairy tale, if you didn’t mind the occasional tricycle roar in the distance. Kira took in a deep inhale of the cool evening air.
There were just some moments in your life you knew were important. The day Kira decided to make chocolate, the first time she ever matched a couple. This, for some reason, felt like one of those moments.
She turned to face Santi, and smiled. He looked like a god that decided to walk among the mortals, and he might as well have been, with his fancy MBA and Canadian degree, his money and just the way he carried himself. He was different. No matter how much he tried to hide it, Santi hadn’t been part of Lipa for a long time now. And even as he stood there in the garden, Kira could see that loneliness in his eyes. That longing for something.
“I need your help,” he announced, and it was a good start. A very good start, indeed. “I have dessert.”
Chapter Six
December 27
The garden outside La Spezia
Roasting: a step in the chocolate-making process that involves delicately roasting the beans to achieve a particular flavor. There are no rules to roasting, but it’s best to let the heat in gradually, and let the beans develop the flavors that fermentation already created.
“Is that cake?” Kira asked, practically bouncing as she settled into the bench near the door, placing the rose next to her. Santi smiled. She was nervous. The person who sold him that bench had called it a gallinera and explained that it could also hold a chicken in its wooden cage base. Santi had to tell to the man that he wasn’t really interested in raising chickens, but the bench was really nice.
This would be the perfect time to ask her,he thought, suddenly.Would you sell the Laneways to me? Would you help me make everything right with my family, in exchange for everything I built here?
Because that was the trade-off, wasn’t it? Even if he did manage to convince the Luz Holdings board to sell the Laneways to him, Kira would hate him for taking it away. Gabriel would lose Sunday Bakery, as would Sari and all the other retailers there. They would stop selling their goods to Villa, which relied a lot on local sellers, and Villa’s reputation would be in tatters.
But hey, that wouldn’t matter, if Santi was in Manila, diba?
A knot in his stomach twisted. He couldn’t ask that of Kira. Regardless of his feelings for her (and her status as Reigning Patintero Champion of Lipa), it was made clear to him in his last three years that the Laneways were Kira’s place. A place the Luzes carved out for her when she needed a soft landing, until she grew it into something spectacular enough that Vito wanted it for himself. Every time she came to him to ask for business advice, he saw it on her face. How it ate her alive that she didn’t know the answers, that she needed to come to him, because not knowing might mean someone taking it away.
It was magic. Hers, how she built a community there.
And Santi had experienced some of that himself, part-owning Sunday Bakery. People deferred to Kira on decisions, they greeted her in the morning. The place was hers. He couldn’t ask her to give it up, not for all the redemption in the world.
In short,he told himself,it’s hopeless.
And besides, he hadn’t asked her out here for that.
“Something better,” he assured her, making a gesture for her to move a little so he could sit next to her. It felt nice, sitting next to Kira here. It felt right. And Santi had long since lost that feeling. How strange to have found it again, three years and one hotel later, in this very spot. Santi opened the box containing the dessert and showed it to her. “Or at least it could be.”
“Ooh,” Kira said, her eyes growing wide at the sight. Santi tried to hide a smile. He liked seeing her so intrigued. “What is it?”
“This is a tartufo,” Santi explained, handing her one of two spoons. “An Italian dessert I once had at the Piazza Navona in Rome, or a replica of it. It has the right elements, but there’s something not quite right with it. I can’t figure out what it is.”
One of the reasons why Santi had thought to open a restaurant was because he liked feeding people. It was an instinct of his, to have food ready to share anytime. And with La Spezia, it felt more special, more intimate, to be doing it in such close quarters. The restaurant’s menu changed as often as he and his chef could talk about it, and he spared no expense when it came to sourcing the best ingredients. Because if he was going to put himself out there, there was no better way to do it than with food.
It sometimes surprised people what food Santi called nostalgic. He liked the thick, almost marinara-like tomato soup from that Italian restaurant in Mindanao Avenue. He held caramel cakes with buttercream flowers close to his heart, because that was what he always had for his birthday. He loved mais con hielo when it had a scoop of vanilla ice cream and cornflake bits. It wasn’t all lumpia and halo-halo.
With La Spezia, he was sharing memories from a trip abroad, a trip that had ultimately made him realize that he’d changed. That he had become completely different from his family. So to have his tartufo be not quite right? He wasn’t going to stand for it.
