“Last year, I decided that it was time to really put myself out there. My life was going really well, and maybe it was a good time to open myself up to other people, widen my circles a bit. Maybe even find love.” God, she’d sounded so optimistic then. Everything seemed brighter that time, and anything she wanted felt completely possible. How rare was that, in her world? In her country? In this economy?
“All good things,” Cal agreed, nodding. “How long?”
“I gave myself a year. One year to find more people to add to the list of people close to me, to really put myself out there, and find whatever it was I was looking for.” She was gesturing wildly the entire time, and Cal was genuinely captivated, because the hurt in her eyes was still there, so something definitely happened.
“What happened in that last year?” Cal asked.
“To be honest, I don’t know.” Lia shook her head. “I lost my job, my sister got married and moved away toAlabangand then had a baby.People I tried to genuinely reconnect with and tried to be present for didn’t do the same for me. And those…those were fine. I chalked it up to just life, you know?”
“Life sucks,” Cal agreed.
“But then there was my birthday dinner.”
He said nothing, but nodded for her to continue.
“To be fair to Megan—no, I’m going to judge this, I’m just going to tell you what happened.” She shook her head and sat up too, because she needed to concentrate, needed to say this correctly. “I made plans for my birthday for me and Megan, my best friend. I made plans to have dinner with her. There was a horror movie she really wanted to watch with me. And no matter how many times I said I hated horror movies, she insisted. So I said we were going to have a nice dinner first.”
“Sounds like a good birthday plan.”
“It was. But she…” Lia wrinkled her nose and made a ‘huff’ because she hated saying this out loud, even if she knew she needed to. She hated reliving what happened because it made her remember how it made her feel. “She stood me up. She lived in BGC, I was in Pasig, and she just…didn’t go. She said, ‘Tinatamad ako, ang traffic.’”
And there were so many things she could say in her defense, and in Megan’s—that BGC was one bridge away from Pasig, rightnext to each other, what the fuck. But also that traffic in Manila was bad, that her friend had a job and that maybe she was tired, but it was Lia’s birthday. How odd that Megan knew, yet did not knowhowmuch Lia hated horror movies, how uncomfortable they made her. On her birthday. But she was trying not to judge her friend. It was guaranteed to launch her into a spiral, and she was tired of that.
“That’s all?”
“That’s what she said. Traffic. And I looked at my empty apartment on my birthday and wondered why the hell I even bothered trying to let anyone in my life, if nobody thought I was worth braving traffic for.”
“Oh.” Lia’s stomach dropped at the pity in his voice, and she wanted to shy away from it as much as she wanted to live in it for a little while. “Lia.”
“It’sstupid—” She pressed her lips together. Nope. No judgments. “It hurts. That first session, my therapist and I talked about just feeling bad. About how it sucks to want love and still be disappointed. And in the session, we did this thing where I’m not judging myself for my thoughts, even as I kind of…note that I am.” She wrinkled her nose because she didn’t know what else to do. Cal passed her a tissue and she wiped the corners of her eyes with it. “I’m usually bad at trying to understand my own feelings, and I resisted therapy for a while. But now that I did it, I had to ask myself why the hell I kept resisting, because I really needed it.”
Then she sighed, because she didn’t want to dwell on this feeling anymore.
“So I wanted to go up to Namsan and…I don’t know. Tell myself that the girl who was there ten years ago can still find better friends, better relationships. That it’s okay to hate horror movies and, like… things I used to like. It’s just going to take a little longer.”
It felt a little bit like failure, even if her therapist had reframed it as “not having a deadline.” But she felt she needed to dosomethingabout this revelation, to mark it for herself somehow. And taking a cable car to stand at a spot two thousand six hundred and twenty miles from Manila was a good start.
“I’m happy you got help,” Cal said, and she was so lost in her own thoughts that she almost missed it. “Can I…can I hug you?”
“Yes,” she said. Not because he was her bias, or because he was handsome, but because he was there for her. He was being kind, and Lia needed that bit of kindness.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get the love you wanted,” he told her, and the last of her tears burst out of her eyes, because god, she was sorry too.
“This sucks. I’m not the crier in the family. I can be fun, you know.”
“I know.”
“I can,” she insisted, looking up at him with a red nose and still wet eyes. She was determined to get herself through this and to just let herself feel it all for a bit. But god, she wanted to have fun again. She missed it. “I’m great at karaoke and making my nephew laugh. Although I’m terrible at drinking games.”
“Me too.” He chuckled. “How are you at Tong Its?”
“I’m better at Uno.”
“I’ll get a set.”
And in that moment, as she smiled at him, still in his arms, she…forgot. Forgot that all she’d asked for was a hug, a physical reassurance that she was still here. That it was all she needed Cal for.
“Do you think I can take a taxi to Namsan tower?”
