“No, because I’ve read this romance novel. I mean, I had the sense that there was always something going on between the two of you,” Gabriel chuckled. “I’m very wise that way.”
“I disagree,” Santi said. “Everyone is still talking about how silly your courtship with Sari was. With the marching band. And the carnations.”
“It was a prank war, Santi! And for the record, I asked her out the first time I met her, my affections were never in doubt,” Gabriel said proudly, piling yema rolls onto a plate like they didn’t have enough food already. “I mean, you know naman, right? It’s not a bad thing to feel things for Kira.”
“Really?” Santi asked, chuckling ruefully. “Because I definitely feel like I don’t deserve her.”
“But you deserve to be happy.” Gabriel wasn’t looking at him as he ate, but it didn’t make the words any less true. “And you think you’re in a position to make her happy. So go forth and let yourself try.”
But Santi wasn’t the kind of guy who tried something. He did it, and always did it well. And he could say he was due to make this declaration for a while now, and he didn’t really expect that Gabriel Capras would be the first to hear it, but Santi was trying to be better about being honest about how he was feeling. And it was easier to say to Gabriel, who understood how difficult it was for Santi to admit to wanting things. It was safer too to admit how he felt to someone who wouldn’t leave. Gabriel didn’t have to know that Santi giving in to his feelings came at a cost, that his grandfather still asked about the Laneways, and had, just that afternoon.
But he had to say it out loud, because his chest felt like it was going to burst into pieces. So he might as well tell Gabriel.
“I want it all,” Santi said thoughtfully, not quite sure if he believed it yet, but saying it out loud had its merits. “All the happiness. With Kira. With Sunday Bakery and Villa and La Spezia. I want to be happy, Gabriel. I understand why you decided to stay.”
Gabriel blinked at him, and wasn’t that exactly why the two of them decided that they needed to talk, to hash this out? But as Kira said, goals were changeable. And today, as he stood in his bakery with his friends, with good bread and even better coffee, Santi knew his goals were changing slowly.
“Dude...”
“Please don’t call me dude.”
“When we first met you asked me not to call you Santi, Santi,” Gabriel reminded me. “Let me have this.”
“Fine,” Santi sighed. “Gabriel.”
“Anyway, I was going to say that I’m glad you made the decision...dude.” Gabriel elbowed Santi in the ribs, as if Santiwas the newcomer to Lipa. “It’s work, though. I mean, you can’t just do something without doing the work. That’s like me thinking I can make bonete better after eating it a couple of times, or writing something that ‘subverts the genre’ when you never actually respected the genre in the first place.”
“What?” Santi asked, somewhat confused.
“Nothing,” Gabriel said quickly. “I’m just saying. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. To be open. To imagine a life here. It’s really not as impossible as everyone made us believe.”
Santi knew it wasn’t impossible. But he couldn’t fully explain why he just couldn’t give up on Manila yet.
By the time Santi and Gabriel actually finished talking about Sunday Bakery’s Grand Opening, and their merienda was all gone, it was well into the evening already. After declining a dinner invitation with Sari and Gabriel, Kira had asked if Santi was interested in grabbing dinner just the two of them.
Something casual,she’d insisted.Like Lipa Grill or something. I love their inihaw na pusit. Are you a fan of lomi?
He was not, unfortunately, but Kira didn’t seem as incensed by it as other Lipeños were when he brought it up. And now here he was, sitting outside the Laneways in the early touches of the evening, looking up at Kira’s twinkle lights while she closed the shop for the day.
Santi had only been inside Gemini Chocolates a handful of times. At first, he’d been too embarrassed, suddenly showing up in Lipa so suddenly after his conversation with Kira. Then he was ashamed because he hadn’t told her that he was partnering with Gabriel on Sunday Bakery.
Because it was the holidays (or maybe because Kira just really liked a good outdoor light), twinkle lights were set up overhead, over the big window that looked into the space. Underneath that, she’d hung individual parols made with delicate white capiz and gold frames, subtle but effective when put together with the twinkle lights. Santi sat on a simple wooden bench by the window and found himself surrounded by plants—a large dill plant that had no business being that tall, a climbing plant with curly leaves and deep purplish blue flowers. (They’reclitoria ternatea! Kira would happily tell him later.) There were other plants there too, more than he could ever name, even one placed inside the basket of a bike that looked like it had seen better days.
With the Christmas music playing in the distance, and the cold snap that accompanied the breeze, the little spot outside Gemini Chocolates felt calm, and comfortable. Santi leaned against the wall, resting the back of his head against the glass of the window.
He took deep breaths, trying to settle the uncomfortable twisting in his stomach, the one that had seemed to follow him from Makati. He had always been good at hiding it, but in a place like this, it felt safe to feel it, to give it a chance to calm itself.
The following were things that he was trying to settle in his head:
1) He was never, ever going to be able to ask Kira to sell the Laneways to Carlton. That was a given. From a financial standpoint, it was making too much money for the Luzes to let it go. Santi would admit he had a mild emotional attachment to this place, he couldn’t imagine the depth of Kira’s or any of the other shop owners’. Which meant that.
2) Santi was going to have to stop trying to go back to Manila. He had all the logical reasons to just stay here and be happy, but there was still a part of him that wanted his family’s love. Which, he really should be smarter than that, because everyone knew the story of the scorpion and the frog.
3) He was currently sitting here, and all he could think of was the woman closing the shop behind him. And he knew what he wanted (more), that he wanted to ask if she was interested in more. But more would mean involvement, and involvement meant that she would have to be exposed to the Santillans. He didn’t want to do that, and risk losing her. More than his constant juggle of complicated, he was aware that the people he loved weren’t thebestpeople. They would judge. Ask questions. Make her feel small, because that was their way.
He couldn’t bring that to her door.
And he’d thought about it, over and over, endlessly. Did heneedher? No. He couldn’t need her, because to need someone was a weakness. And Santi had grown up knowing that he shouldn’t need anyone.
