“Your vast wealth of knowledge in the trifecta. Love. Relationships. Sex.”
She listed them like they were things you could pick up in a single afternoon workshop. As someone who had been dragged to calligraphy, watercolor, ceramics, floral arranging, journaling and gratitude workshops (Ate Irene liked a workshop, okay), he knew that definitely wasn’t the case.
“I want to experience one of each at least once in my life. I’ve liked people before, and I just… I can never get their attention. They can’t see me, or they can’t see me as someone they find attractive. Hell, I signed up for those dating apps and I didn’t match with anyone. And since you feel very strongly that there are things Ihaveto know, and other people feel very strongly about deficiencies in my physical appearance that keep me single—”
“Mara,” he chided her weakly. She ignored him.
“—I might as well ask someone to just teach me and get it over with. Make someone fall in love with me. Have sex. Discover all the ways we can disappoint each other, and I can be satisfied and tell myself it’s not for me. I want to stop wanting it, Jay. And if you think that you’re so good at this that you know why I shouldn’t want it, then teach me.”
She was saying these things like she was talking about trying a food she didn’t enjoy. And the thing was—and Jayknewthis—he could do it. Knew it like he knew where the exit ramp to the Skyway was, and that he could easily navigate the car up the ramp.
He could tell Mara what to wear, where to go, what to say when someone came up to her (because people would come up to her, for sure). Show her the little things about dating that he enjoyed, how people played a song and dance of wheedling the red flags out of the other before they committed to anything serious. Show her how he liked to be touched, what turned him on. Encourage her own sexual explorations, whatever her experience. He would be lying if he said that the thought ofthatdidn’t turn him on. Not at all.
But he also knew that it was a bad idea. Because agreeing to do it would mean Mara admitting that there was something—what word did she use?—deficientabout her. That there was something she wasn’t doing right. And he didn’t want to validate that, no way.
They cruised through the Skyway in wretched, sixty-kilometer-per-hour silence, nothing but the agonized tones of Yeoeun’s “Let’s Forget It” to accompany them. All that time Jay agonized over what he was going to say, and he could feel Mara’s anxiety grow and grow beside him.
They finally made it to the Quezon Avenue exit. Only a few short streets away from her place, ten minutes if the traffic wasn’t bad. There was a second where they needed to stop at the exit booth, and Jay glanced at Mara. Her eyes were focused on the road, her face blank and placid, like she hadn’t said anything that changed their whole dynamic.
But he noticed her flicking her thumb against her nails, peeling off her nail polish. He reached out and placed his hand over hers, making her stop. He sighed deeply, suddenly feeling bone tired.
“Stop ruining your nails.” He kept his eyes on the road, driving with one hand. “Sayang the manicure.”
“I’ll live, thanks.” Mara gently pulled her hands away.
Silence again, except for when Mara told him to turn from Quezon Avenue, on to Timog, around the rotunda and through a few more side streets. Jay kept his laser focus on the road, further hammering in how easy it was for him to disappoint someone, Mara now included. After everything he said, and everything they had said, ultimately he was too selfless to take her up on her offer, and too selfish to do it so that she could just find someone else.
How very fucked up of him.
“This is me,” Mara announced on a seemingly random street. Jay pulled up in front of a small brick house, tucked away from the street by a black iron gate. The property was definitely worth more than the house—nobody lived in residences in this area without being of some generational wealth anymore. These lands went for hundreds and thousands per square meter. But there was a fond look in Mara’s eyes as she looked at the house, an ease in her posture that told him that the family probably wasn’t going to sell anytime soon.
“It’s lovely,” Jay said, and he meant it. The gumamela planted in front of the house were in full bloom. From the street, he could see a warm, yellow light from the inside turn on. Someone had probably seen them pull up and left the light on for Mara. It was a different kind of comfort, someone turning a light on for you that you could see from the street. It was a totally different world from his Pasig condominium here, and they lived (for all intents and purposes) in the same group of cities.
Mara shifted to unbuckle her seat belt, but Jay did it before she could find the buckle, slowly easing the belt back without smacking her in the face. He heard her breath hitch. Which was fine because he wasn’t breathing at all as he leaned in.
“Jay,” she said. He turned to her, trying (probably failing) to act like everything was fine. They were parked near a street lamp, and he could clearly see the confusion in Mara’s face, her eyes bright as she nibbled at her bottom lip. “Let’s not talk about this ever again.”
His heart sank. Why did his heartsink? (Because she was upset, and it was his fault, again.)
“I had a long day, and I’m delirious,” she added. Seemed to sink into her seat, all bluster and bravado and anger gone now that they were so close. The world was still quiet around them, consisting of nothing but the space between them, inside this little mirage.
She’d opened up to him. Said things that he needed to keep safe, that he cared about. Her feelings were so precious and delicate in his hands that he didn’t want them tucked away without proper acknowledgment. She deserved that, at least.
“Mara.” He sighed, without pulling back. He wanted her to know that even if they didn’t want the same things, he understood her not wanting to desire love. To yearn for it, and feel foolish yearning for it. “I can’t let this end like that.”
He wanted her to know that she had nothing to worry about. Because if he could want her so much after one night, someone else—someone else who truly deserved her—would, too.
All she wanted was for someone to look at her the way she hoped for. And Jay knew what he could do to make her feel like it was going to happen.
“So what do you want to do about it?” she asked him.
“I’m going to assume your sister told you about my…thing.” He’d never put any stock in his kiss curse until tonight. But if ten times wasn’t a big enough indicator… Jay worked in finance, and numbers. He knew what they meant, even if he didn’t love it. He’d put his faith in a lot less. “With the kissing and the marrying other people.”
“That’s one way to put it.” Mara smiled. If the change in subject confused her, she didn’t let it show. “But she did.”
Of course she did. Because Marina needed to hear that she was still a good person when she first told Jay she wasn’t interested in him, and Jay told her about the kiss curse to make her feel better.
Most of the time, it helped. He didn’t feel bitter or rueful about it, especially not right now. Right now, he just needed it to be true.
