“You still use that oracle deck?”
“Kuya, it’s me. Of course I still use it. Unlike some Tauruses who sold my last Christmas gift to them.”
“It was the thought that counted!” he exclaimed, brandishing the fountain pen he’d bought to replace the one she got him. Something about the nib being “too thick.”
“But did I tell you that deck used to be mine?”
At Kira’s wide-eyed stare, he chuckled. “Shocked, bes?”
“You gave me a secondhandgift?” She gasped in mock horror.
“Excuse me, not secondhand, sentimental,” Kiko corrected her. “I was so desperate for guidance when Jake and I first started dating that I got that set off of the Internet. I don’t know if I reallybelievedin it or not, I mean, one of the cards just says, ‘phone home.’ But it was comforting. It made me feel a little less...”
“Less alone,” Kira agreed, nodding. Because it really did. Oh, she knew there was some ridiculousness to all of this, her trust in the stars, in plans and divine beings, that pulling a random card from a pile meant anything, but it was comforting.
And it never steered her wrong so far.
“Exactly,” Kiko agreed. Then he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and Kira was pretty sure it wasn’t because batibot chairs were the least comfortable things to sit on. “Listen, Kira. I think we were a bit too hard on you last time, when we talked about Gemini...”
“Medyo lang?” Kira asked, raising a brow because she was going to need him to grovel a little more.
“Okay, we were alothard on you about the Gemini thing,” Kiko admitted sheepishly. “And I’m not making excuses for what we said, but you actually did it. You found your own way to save it.”
She didn’t know about saving. There were a lot of things that could still go horribly wrong. But as long as she stuck to her goals, and faced her issues head-on, she knew she would be okay.No fear,as the Swan Princess movie taught her.
“I actually stepped out here because I got a call from Chloe Agila,” Kira explained to her brother, feeling a little smug, and rightly so. “Apparently, Altair Chocolates has been made the exclusive distributor of the Carlton Hotels.”
“What?” Kiko said. “Even—”
“Even Villa.” Kira nodded. “It’s why I had to redo my entire presentation. It’s why Santi isn’t here.”
“Shit.” Kiko winced.
“Shit talaga,” Kira agreed, frowning. It was why she still hadn’t left that corner of the room, despite the fact that the call had happened about an hour ago. “But apparently, the order is too big for Altair to do by itself. So Chloe wants to start a, what did she call it, a collective? She wants chocolate makers all over the country to pool together our resources to make chocolates that we will sell to the collective, and the collective will sell to Carlton, or any other client that’s interested in Filipino chocolate. So instead of one maker getting all the contracts, we share them all.”
“Wow,” Kiko said, and Kira nodded again.
Chloe had come to Kira with the proposal to make something she didn’t think was possible—a new community, full of chocolate makers from this country, sharing the same problems, selling their chocolates together. There were things to work out, of course. So many details, still. But it wassomething. And it felt right.
Chloe said over the phone that Kira was the first person she’d called about the proposal. And Kira knew that there was only one person who could have led Chloe to her.
I just need someone to believe in me. For once in my life.
And he had. He always had.
“I couldn’t have done it without the people around me, you know,” Kira pointed out. “People who don’t complain when I need something, people who listen when I need it. People who make me strong. Like you guys.”
Kira smiled at her brother, and that vote of confidence from him meant a lot more to her than she would ever be able to express. But it felt like they were on equal footing somehow.
“What do we do about Santi, then? Do you need me to kick his ass? I know he’s tall and can cut me in half with that jaw of his, but I can totally take him.”
“Oh god. Huwag na.” Kira laughed. “You just had lunch, and he’s got terrible eyesight.”
“Sure ka? I’m super sober no,” Kiko insisted, before he burped, and both Luz siblings wrinkled their noses. “Or not.”
Eventually she found her way back into the ballroom, and back to her own plate of bagnet kare-kare, which really was its own level of deliciousness. By the time she joined the family in the festivities, she threw herself into the role of being the consummate pamangkin—talking about how she made her tsokolate so good (it’s all in the fresh milk, tita!), if the SM really had Uniqlo (yes, Tito) and what time the next Mass at Redemptorist was (there’s one at 5 p.m., po).
“Is it true that the owner of this hotel is your boyfriend, hija?” Tita Maricel, married to Tito Nicos and always up to date with the chika, asked. “That suplado one, the one that looks like an oppa?”
