“And you remember when Selena Guerro got engaged, she had this whole post about the ex that was her good luck charm?” David asked. And again, yes, Mara remembered because even she who wasn’t into local celebrity gossip had heard about it. Had read the post and commented how odd it was to credit your latest relationship to your ex. “Guess who.”
“Wait,” Mabel said, shaking her head in confusion. In her mind, the pieces arranged themselves into a simple answer. Not the most logical, but perhaps the most simple. Occam and his razor rejoiced. “Are you saying he’s like…a last kiss guy?”
“Thelast kiss guy.” David nodded. “If you want to find the one, if you want to marry the love of your life, even if you’ve neverhada love of your life, you kiss Jay Montinola. A hundred percent, the next person you meet, you marry.”
“We’re here!” A familiar voice filled the room, as Mara, Marina and Mabel’s parents burst into the salon in a flurry of formal wear, their driver carrying a tote bag full of Sonya’s Garden treats behind them. It would have been hilarious in slow motion. “Time for family photos!”
I’m not the kind of guy people fall in love with. Jay said as much to her in the ballroom. And as Mara smiled for family photos, squeezed closer together and followed prompts of, “wacky, wacky,” she wondered if kissing Jay Montinolawasactually a curse. To her it sounded more like an opportunity.
But she didn’t think she could kiss Jay. Not this time.
FIVE
So. That happened. Jay had gotten himself into sticky situations before—the kind he would never repeat to his niece. Not now, not ever. But tonight was the kind of sticky that wrapped around your heart and made it feel like you’d done something wrong. When in fact, he hadn’t.
He was a go-with-the-flow, bahala-na-si-Batman kind of guy. He didn’t mind being told what to do. But yeah, if there was a bingo card for how Marina and David’s wedding reception was going to go, kissing the maid of honor definitely wasn’t on his list.
Because he almost had. Had comereallyclose. They were already there, his balance just intact and Mara in his arms. And she was gorgeous. Her soft, warm skin and plump cheeks were flushed red. He could smell her perfume, something floral and sweet—but not overly so, like a second skin. He would have asked her if he could kiss her. She could have said yes. If she said yes, then Jaysohn Montinola would have kissed the fuck out of Mara Jane Barretto.
But alas, he did not. And he knew at that moment he’d done something wrong, because Mara had seemed flushed and upset. Now here he was, the human disaster relegated to the back tables with Mon and Scott, wondering what he’d done.
The dinner had been exquisite. Maybe. He couldn’t seem to recall specifics, just a vague sensation of being pleasantly full. He remembered there was a steak. Foie gras, perhaps, and Scott commenting in the background on how it didn’t quite go together. But it was still good.
Jay could be shown three dishes and asked to correctly identify which ones he ate tonight, and he would not be able to guess a single one. How can one leave a fancy restaurant after a free meal and still not know if the food was good or not? How very un-Pinoy of him.
Usually, this meant that his brain was preoccupied with other things—work he needed to do, a fun thing he could do with Luna, a dance he wanted to learn. But not tonight. Tonight, he was fully distracted by a kiss that never happened.
Why, though? Missed connections had happened to him before. It was par for the course in the life of a person who actively dated.
Maybe the difference was he’d really,reallywanted a chance to kiss Mara. Wanted to feel her body pressed against his, feel her curves as he sank his lips into hers. He had a feeling that they would be very good at kissing each other.
But the moment had passed, and Mara Barretto was marked safe from Jay’s Kiss Curse.
“—really don’t think he’s listening at all,” Scott was saying, and Jay managed to bring himself back to the moment. Back to the ballroom, where the flowers looked even better under the lighting setup. To the food on the plate in front of him. They had apparently made it to dessert, which was a faux-Twix with sea salt and a caramel sauce that would follow Jay to his dreams that evening. To Scott, sitting beside him and telling a story about…oh god, he had no idea.
“So there we were, on the beach, and the dragon came down in front of us and asked if we were interested in checking out his hole.”
“Don’t you mean horde?”
“No, I mean hole, Mon. There was a hole in the cave, and there was treasure inside it.” Scott’s arms were spread out wide, mimicking… Jay was not completely sure what. What story was he trying to tell? “Right, Jay?”
“Right. What?”
“I think you finally got his attention,” Mon pointed out. Not-so-subtly grinning from his side of the table. “Welcome back to the wedding, buddy.”
“Ha-ha, very funny,” he said sarcastically, rolling his eyes at the two, who seemed even more amused that he was acting all bitchy. He was bored, that was all! “I was distracted, that’s all.”
“By what?” Mon asked, at the same time Scott said, “Bywho?”
Then his phone started to ring in his pocket. Perfect timing, Universe, thank you. Jay had already planned to ignore them both anyway, but the ringing made it seem more out of necessity. Scott and Mon were great most times, but some days they came together and decided to share a single brain cell between them, and Jay was usually the subject of the organelle’s attention.
There was also an email from his boss in Hong Kong, subject line URGENT: Return to Office. Jay ignored that for now.
“Ops, that’s Ate. Gotta take this,” he said, practically springing out of his seat to answer the call. He slipped out of the ballroom and to the hallway that connected this ballroom to the casita from earlier. Just in time, too. The hosts were just announcing that they were about to get the program going.
“Hey, did I buy the Nespresso machine, or did you?” Ate Irene sounded a little harried over the phone, and Jay pulled the phone away from his ear for a second to check the time. 9:00 p.m. was pretty early by most standards, but it usually meant that the baby had just gone to sleep and she was raring to do a whole list of things. “I can’t remember.”
Well, not a baby so much as a three-year-old, but, still.
