“Des, please stop calling me ma’am.” Mara sighed. “I’m not that scary.”
“Nah, Ate. You’re scary,” Mabel reminded her, grabbing her paper bag from Des. Mara opened her mouth to protest, but Mabel was quicker. “Of course we all know it’s what’s best, and you’re almost always right.”
“As you guys should.”
“Still scary, though. Meme-worthy kind of scary.” It took her sister two seconds to switch out her shoes for sandals, and she zipped back into the venue before Mara could say anything.
“A meme? Oh my god. That’s why your face was so familiar.” Des gasped, and Mara had to hand it to her. Marina’s wedding planner didn’t miss a trick. “You’re the eldest Asian daughter.”
Great.So, new plan. Mara was going to change shoes, find David’s friend (Jay Montinola, cord sponsor, bane of her existence), glare at him with the fire of the deepest pits of hell until he spontaneously combusted into fine dust, and then get ice cream.
Good plan.
TWO
Somewhere in the parking lot of Luisa’s, Jay Montinola sneezed so hard he tripped on his own two feet. The sneeze was loud enough that he caught the attention of some of the other guests making their way to the ballroom—sorry, the casita where they were supposed to waitbeforethey got to enter the ballroom—at the designated reception venue for #DavidPutsMaringOnIt. The struggle for clever hashtags was too real.
Close by, he heard a gasp.
“Oh my god, isn’t that—”
“Girl, go up to him! I swear the kiss thing is real. Remember Jam got married last year, just because she accidentally kissed him during mass?”
“I’m notthatdesperate.”
“Even if it means findingthe One?”
“That was a huge sneeze,” Mon Mendoza, groomsman number six and wedding lector, commented beside Jay, falling into step between him and the gossipy wedding guests as they continued to walk down the slope of the large parking lot. “Someone’s thinking of you.”
“Me?” he said incredulously, but laughed anyway. “God, that sounds ominous.”
“Quick, think of a number between one and twenty-eight!” Scott Sabio—also a groomsman but at a higher billing as he was in charge of the array—chimed in, walking behind them. Jay didn’t miss his friend closing ranks, hands in his pockets and looking for all the world like a lord surveying his land. He held in the urge to give them both hugs and smiled instead, playing along.
“Aren’t there only twenty-six letters in the alphabet?”
“Duh, we’re including ñ and ng. It’s only proper.”
“I want tacos,” Jay announced suddenly, just as their little trio finally arrived in the ballroom. As crowded as the room had become, it was easier to blend in like this. Most of the guests were already at the pre-reception venue, and they were lucky enough to find seats toward the back, in the covered veranda. “Do you think there will be tacos?”
“It’s Luisa’s—they’re definitely going to have tacos. David wouldn’tnotget tacos. Wouldn’t not? Is that grammatically correct?”
“It’s a double negative,” Mon explained. “Grammatically correct, but sounds like you’re obfuscating your words.”
“Obfuscate?” Jay echoed in a high-pitched voice, teasing. Mon, cool as ever, simply raised a brow at him.
“We’re going to be here for a while yet, Jay,” Scott chortled, crossing one leg over the other and flipping his hair. A couple of people turned their heads, because it was hard to miss seeing a handsome man flip his hair, but Scott didn’t seem to notice. “We can talk about you being back from Hong Kong.”
“I’ve been back for four years! Pose,” Jay pointed out, holding up his camera and snapping a casual photo of Scott. Then another. And another. Scott, being Scott, changed up his poses every time. Even pretended to hold a drink that he definitely didn’t have.
“Yes, but we lost almost three of them to the stupid pandemic. So you’re like a fresh balikbayan!” Scott enthused, making Jay laugh. He’d spent most of his post-college life in wealth management at a private bank in Hong Kong. He came home for the Lunar New Year one year, in 2020, and then…he couldn’t go back. Then “couldn’t” turned into “didn’t really much want to.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” he agreed. “Although I do miss having balikbayan money. For this wedding, I’m down, what, one thousand pesos in toll fees, two thousand on gas, two thousand more for a wedding gift?”
“You’re only giving them two thousand as a wedding gift?” Mon, who was sitting beside Jay, wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Don’t you work in finance?”
“Consulting now, actually. And now we’re stuck here for the next several hours because we like Davidthatmuch.”
“Didn’t David let you cheat off of him on the math final in senior year?”
