“Mabel!” Mara took ten steps away from Jay and toward her youngest sister. She noticed Jay’s hands were suddenly in his pockets and that he was now finding the chandeliers the most interesting thing in the room. So interesting that he had a blush spreading across his cheeks.
Oh god, she wasfucked.Mabel was always terrible at keeping secrets, and Mara had about five minutes before Marina found out about this. No amount of threat, bribe or flattery would stop Mabel Barretto when she had a secret.
Mara looped her arm around her sister’s and started to pull her away from the ballroom. “Were you looking for me for the family photos? We should go. Wouldn’t want to miss that.”
“I should head back to the other room,” Jay announced suddenly. “My friends will be waiting. Bye, Mara.”
“Jay.” Mara gave him the most curt of nods before she left the room. A tightness in her chest eased as he left. God. That was…something. She’d never had anyone… And the way he looked at her was…
“Jay? Like Jay the guy you met at that gin bar?” Mabel gasped, craning her neck back at the ballroom, where Jay was probably watching them leave the room and asking himself what the fuck he’d almost done. “Didn’t he date Ate Marina? Don’t you hate him?”
“We…sorted things out.”
“I bet you fuckin’ did.”
“Mabel Janina!” Mara hissed, as the sisters made it to the restaurant’s salon, a gorgeous backdrop of deep green wallpaper for the family photos. Marina was already there, her reception dress being fussed over by the stylists and the assistants. Farther into the room, David was with his family, taking their family portraits. “He apologized to me, that’s all! Donottell Marina, I swear to god—”
“Ate, I’ve apologized to people I’m actually close with, and we never looked at each other likethat.”
“Like what?”
“Like zippers had ceased to exist.”
“Whose zippers ceased to exist?” Marina asked. Her eyes sparkled with curious delight as the crowd of staff dissipated and her sisters joined her. “Ate, you look flushed.”
“Nobody’s zippers ceased to exist!” Mara said. “Oh my go—”
“Ate is flushed because I caught her flirting with Jay!” Mabel said. Secret spilled in less than a minute. Mabel’s record was getting worse. Mara groaned and wondered aloud if anyone remembered the time Mara told not a single soul that Mabel’s underwear was held up by a safety pin at the rehearsal dinner, but her sisters ignored her. Sad! “I saw them making kilig eyes at each other in the ballroom. Also he was on one knee for her.”
“Mabel!”
“Jay Montinola?” Marina shrieked, like it was the best thing she’d heard the entire day, and it washerwedding day. She pounced on Mara, shaking her arm, and she stumbled back in shock. “Oh my god, Ate,yes.This is a great idea! Did you kiss him?”
“No!” That was Mara.
“Yes!” That was Mabel.
“Are we talking about kissing Jay?” David asked, coming up to them as he pressed his cheeks down to relax his muscles. Great. The peanut gallery was complete. Mara was having a fantastic time. “His kiss is foolproof. Ten to zero, I think his stats are, after today.”
“Stats?” Mara asked. “Dude, gross. You keepstats?”
“They don’t. He’s talking about—” Marina cut herself off and turned to David. “Babe, I wasn’t talking about his curse.”
“Curse, he’s cursed?” Mabel gasped dramatically. A camera flash came off without warning and threw Mara even more off kilter.
“Hi, can you warn us before you do that?” She glared at the photographer, who smiled sheepishly and muttered an apology about how they were just taking test shots. Meanwhile, David, Marina and Mabel were all talking over each other. Which meant that David was clearly bonding with her sisters, but, oh my god, she could not get a straight answer from any of them.
“TIME FIRST!” Mara commanded the entire room with a shout so loud, even the photographers stopped in the middle of their task. She shook her head at them, prompting them to resume their work, before she turned to her brother-in-law and sisters, still holding on to the anthurium. “What the fuck are you guys talking about?”
“So there’s a thing that happens,” David began. “A curse.”
“It is a curse, but it’s really more a curse for Jay. Not for the people who kiss him,” Marina added, also unhelpfully. “Obviously, they end up just fine.”
“Marina,” Mara groaned. “From the beginning.”
“Okay, remember when my car broke down in the middle of C-5, and I realized that I loved David when he was the first person I called?” Marina asked her. Mara nodded, having heard this particular story recounted several times. In fact, she heard that story just today when Marina read her vows in front of the church.
David had commuted like a bat out of hell from Makati when Marina called (well, as fast as a bat could commute in Metro Manila, which still took a while). There really wasn’t much he could do to help aside from sit with her in the broken car while it was dragged via wrecker from Taguig to Rizal on a Friday night. The proximity led to them admitting their feelings for each other, and the rest was history. “I had just come from a date with Jay, where we’d kissed for the first time.”
