Jay and Alex met a few years back after being matched on a dating app. They gave it a good try, dating a few times, but called it quits and remained really good friends instead. Alex had gone to Bali for a production job and came back to Manila dating Tori, who was cousins with Ava and also in a barkada with Jay’s high school friends Scott and Mon.
Which was purely proof that the world of middle-class Manila was really not that big.
Alex and Jay were low-maintenance friends, the kind that sent each other memes and talked about shit every day, but never saw each other more than a few times a year.
Being Alex’s best man wasn’t surprising to Jay. Mostly because Jay was Alex’s last straight boy kiss before she decided to date women exclusively and met Tori on a work trip to Bali.
Yeah. Meet Alex Suarez, kiss curse victim number eight. Jay shouldreallystop kissing on the first date.
So Mara really didn’t have to worry about the kiss not working out for her. He didn’t have metrics, obviously, but the successes happened eventually. Patience was a virtue, although he was pretty sure his teachers weren’t specifically thinking of this context in particular. There was nothing Jay could do about that for now.
Right now, Alex was on the verge of panic, and Jay needed to talk her down a bit.
“Hey, hey. You’re declaring to everyone you know that you want to wake up next to Tori for the rest of your life. Isn’t that beautiful?” Jay said, putting his buckets down to usher his friend next to him on the elevated ledge of the villa, facing the beach. Alex’s face stayed in a frown as she glared at the ocean, as if willing a tsunami to wash him away. Well, tough luck. “Well, it is, Al. You’re in love, and you want people to know, diba?”
“I do.”
“See, you know the words already! It’ll be easy for you,” Jay assured her, patting her on the back. “And don’t worry about anything when it comes to this wedding. Between me and Ava, we have it covered. You and Tori picked good people.”
“The best people,” Alex conceded with a little sigh. Almost like she didn’t really want to admit it. She shot Jay a long, assessing look. “You know I almost didn’t choose you.”
“Me? Why?” He pouted.
“You don’t believe in this stuff, Jay. You never have.” Alex chuckled. “And don’t lie. I have the receipts. All the lengthy conversations we’ve had about why you don’t believe in love. Literal nightmares you’ve had about it. Do you still get the one where you’re a hoarder?”
“I don’t thinkIwas the hoarder in the dream,” Jay corrected, but just the mention of the nightmare made him shudder. “Families collect a lot of junk.”
The nightmare always started in the same place. Him kicking ass at a billiard table, which was already weird because he never played billiards. Then a woman would show up—he would never remember who it was—and demand that he go home with her. Only for them to pass through a door and into a room cluttered with, just, stuff. Rattan furniture that was frayed with even-more-frayed cushions. Pirated DVDs. Books, stuffed toys, cassette tapes. Cables. So many cables. Empty fish tanks. There was barely room to breathe.
And then the kids entered. Cute kids who needed food, needed him to play with them, needed his help with homework. Bills would slip through the bottom of the door behind him, all demanding to be paid. Then his phone would ring, and it was his old boss, yelling into his ear because he didn’t meet their targets for the quarter, why didn’t he meet those targets?
And just when Jay started to scream and want to get out, asking the empty air for his mystery partner to help him out, the door would burst open, and Carmi Martin as Jeanette Bayag fromFour Sisters and A Weddingwould walk in, saying, “Vanjour! Halu halu halu!”
That always managed to wake him up in a cold sweat.
“The nightmare lives on because you let it,” Alex pointed out, shaking her head. “And it felt like bad vibes to put the wedding sort of in your hands.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in vibes,” Jay muttered. He was a little hurt by the concern. “Alex. Just because I don’t believe it for me, doesn’t mean I don’t believe in it for you.”
One of the easier lessons he’d learned in his adulthood was to let people be people. That included who they wanted to be with, what they enjoyed and what they chose to do with their lives. Mostly because it had nothing to do with him, and good for them, if that was what they wanted.
And if he was asked to help, then he was going to make use of every skill he had to help them out.
What he learned recently, after his long Tagaytay back and forth, after seeing Mara’s determination for her sister, was that having a wedding was a call for support. Asking people to come to your table and celebrate what they had. So when Alex told him she was getting married, he gave her his full self, his full support. Because his friend deserved nothing less than what made her the most happy.
It was that easy.
“I am here because I am your friend. If you said you wanted an Under the Sea themed wedding I would have asked if you preferred to be the Little Mermaid or Ursula the Sea Witch,” he said. Still pouting. He pulled Alex up from where they were sitting, each of them retrieving a bucket of flowers as he led her to his room. “What made you change your mind?”
“Because I wanted you to be here, duh,” Alex said, hiding a small smile. “And because you might be leaving.”
He didn’t deny that. After several emails and negotiations, a couple of video calls, Jay was offered his old job at a higher salary, to start sometime around Q3 if he wanted. His official word back to the bank was, “I’m considering the proposal,” and it was enough to maybe buy him some time. Some time for what, he had no idea.
But if his gut feeling told him “not yet,” he was going to listen. Maybe it was finding out he would have to pay 25 percent more on his old apartment if he wanted the old place back. Maybe it was something else he really hadn’t figured out yet.
“Also I wanted a cute flower girl.”
“Lunaisthe cutest. Can’t get cuter than my inaanak,” Jay said. He knew Alex was going to be fine, and if she wasn’t, then he was going to be there either way. “We practiced.”
