It’s an ache, or a twist in your chest that you can’t get rid of. And there’s no one else in the world that can understand it, but the other person. That’s need.
But wanting was a completely different thing. And Santi wasn’t sure he had enough in him to resist that wanting anymore. He’d just inhaled, wondering how the hell he was supposed to tell her all of that, when the shop door beside him opened and Kira’s head popped out.
“Bulaga!” she exclaimed, but the door had been too heavy for her surprise to be effective, and he just smiled at her, still leaning against the window.
“Let me guess,” he said, tracking her with his gaze. “You have a back door.”
“Don’t we all?” She winked exaggeratedly at him, laughing at her little joke as she closed the shop door behind her, skipping one of the three steps to street level before she stood in front of him, her hands behind her back. It was like they were kids again, and she was patiently waiting for him to go outside with her to play.
“Very mature,” he said dryly, as Kira nudged his knee with hers to get him to move over on the bench.
“Tabi,” she said, and he shuffled closer to the dill plant while she eased herself next to the climbing vine, and that was when he realized she was holding two mugs.
“Here,” she said, handing him one of the mugs. “Peace offering, and pre-dinner snack.”
He peered inside and immediately recognized the silky smooth tsokolate, likely made from Gemini Chocolates’ tableya. The mug was hot, and he raised the cup to his lips, where he was met with the hot chocolate. He took a slow, measured sip, and the liquid filled his mouth pleasantly. The chocolate was thick, but not too thick, sweet, but not sweet enough that he couldn’t taste the fruitiness of the chocolate, the heaviness of the molasses and the light touch of the milk.
He knew traditional tsokolate was made with a batirol, rolled between the palms until the chocolate was light, airy and frothy. But this chocolate sill had some density, like it wasn’t something to be trifled with. It was tsokolate that could only have been made by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.
“They say that cacao has the power to unlock hidden yearnings and reveal destinies,” Kira said, looking down at her mug as if she could read its contents. “Makes you wonder.”
“Did the ancient Mayans volunteer that information, or did the colonizers just infer it?” Santi asked, taking another sip, deeper than the last.
“Makes you wonder what your destiny is,” Kira corrected him. A little smile played on her lips like he’d said something amusing, and Santi wondered if this wasn’t exactly what she wanted, to have him drink her chocolate and have him under her spell or something.
He shook his head, and those impossible thoughts away. She wasn’t weaving magic spells into her tsokolate. Was she?
“Sarap?” she asked him, sipping from her mug a lot more carefully than he was.
“Yeah, it’s super sarap,” he said, and winced when he realized how conyo it sounded. But it made her laugh. “Yeah, yeah, make fun of me na. You studied in Ateneo, you should be used to these kinds of mga...words.”
“I am,” she said. “But it’s still funny! Can you say ‘tusok the fishballs,’ please, just once, for me?”
“I would do anything for you Kira.” He scoffed and sipped his tsokolate again. He really should look into getting this for the lobby lounge; the stuff they served was garbage compared with this. “Except that.”
They paused, the two of them looking at each other again. They sat next to each other a lot as kids, but this felt...different. Kids’ relationships were uncomplicated—you exist, therefore we can be friends. It faded when you lost proximity, as they had. But now they were both adults, and she could have decided to sit with so many other people. And still, she chose to sit next to him. Still, they looked at each other with a little bit of awe, affection and that little zing of attraction, because the other person brought it out in them.
People came and left all the time, but right now, they chose to sit beside each other.
“I don’t think I apologized,” he told her, lowering his mug. “For not looking for you at the wedding, or talking to you after. I wasn’t really sure if you were interested in knowing any of it.”
“You didn’t owe me explanations, and I shouldn’t have had expectations like that on the universe.” Kira shook her head. “But please don’t feel like I would never be interested in what’s happening with you,” she said, her voice serious. “You matter to me, Santi. I’m interested.”
“A lot happened in those years that I was away,” was all he said, which really, was a Pandora’s box in and of itself that he was giving her the option not to break open at the moment. “Things that I’m not ready to talk about, I think.”
Instead she reached for his arm, just above his wrist, and gave it a squeeze, smiling at him in reassurance.
“Okay. I’ll be here,” she said, which made Santi immediately frown. He tried to think of the last time someone had been that kind, or gentle with him, and god, his mind was pathetically coming up short. That couldn’t be right, could it?
It could,his brain supplied. It really could.
“I really do like this, by the way,” he told her, indicating his now nearly empty mug, which, how did that happen? He looked at her and she was resting her head on the back of the window again. “Tired?”
“It’s been alongday.” Kira groaned. “I don’t know why going to Manila takes so much energy from me. I don’t even drive.”
“I get it.” He shrugged. “It’s an exhausting place. And you had to meet a friend who didn’t seem interested in what you had to say.”
“I think,” Kira sighed, “you just hit the nail on the head. And now I will hold that grudge over their heads forever. I’m a Scorpio Moon.”
