The 100th Guy (English - Uned...

Chapter Eighteen

Happiness for the mean time

Days and nights had been cold for me. I would always wear two shirts and a jacket to warm myself. If only Philippines had winter, for sure it would be lucky to have a fire place. But the coldness was not really from the summer, but from inside of me. At night, I would prepare hot chocolate before I sleep, then cover myself with two blankets over my thick shirts. Sometimes, I would even wear socks and gloves as if Philippines had winter. I sometimes felt numbness too, like I had thick skin and it was hard for me to feel. At the first three nights of the month, I started to vomit every night. It happened usually at 2 a.m., so after the third night, Avril had to wake up at 2 and go to my room to help me.

            I had been a burden to everyone. My Mom and Dad never had an ordinary day. They would have to stay beside me, guided me as I walked or in everything I did. My Lolo sometimes took their place, but he was old and he could only be a guide. He could never do other things for me. And even though I was just seated, I knew everyone was still not at rest, because they had to settle their focus to me and in everything I did. Avril and Flip decided to postpone their honeymoon and live with us instead of having a place of their own. My Mom would tell them almost everyday, “You have to settle somewhere else, not that I don’t want you here. But you are newlyweds, you have to get some lone time.” But Flip would always say, “We’d love to stay with Midori and take care of her. And besides you just got home, I want to know my new family more,” then Avril would add, “I can’t just leave her. Just think she’s our baby.” And they would all laugh then talk of something else, like cars, showbiz or food. It happened everyday, and I would just sit at the terrace to appreciate the sounds that I would hear.

            This morning was different. My usual sickness scene would happen at night or before dawn. But as soon as I woke up, I felt that my body was heavy. I could not open my eyes to meet the sunshine from my window because my eyes felt swollen like I cried last night. It was also cold, my fingers felt like freezing. But I just thought I could be fine if I thought I could be; that it was somehow psychological. So I tried to be energetic, smiled as I rose from bed and started my day with a grateful prayer. I had to be able to stand, at least.

            When I was ready for everything, I suddenly felt like vomiting again. I waited until I felt it lumping on my throat but there was no vomiting that happened. “Mom, can you please get my medicine?” I asked in a loud voice as I started to feel dizzy. I tried to stand from being seated on my bed only to fail in the end. I fell on floor, then I felt the side table to get my medicine, but I just pushed the lamp shade on it. I heard it broke.

            “Oh—” My Mom hurried then helped me stood. I sat on my bed and drank the medicine she handed me. “Are you not feeling well? Are you really sure you’re still coming with Maisen?”

            I breathed deeply and smiled, trying my best to be okay. Maisen asked me on a date today and told me that he had already prepared everything. I did not want to disappoint him. I did not want everything he planned and prepared to go to nothing just because I was sick. I accepted him in my life as I denied all my worries and I would not just let my sickness go between us. I wanted to be normal when I would be with him. I just wanted to be happy whenever he was beside me.

            “I’m okay, Mom,” I answered.

            “Are you sure?” She reached for the glass in my hands. “I don’t think you are. You know, dear, you can go out with him on some other day if you don’t feel okay.”

            “But what if there’s no some other day?” Mom did not speak. I could not see her expression but probably, she was surprised to hear what I said. “What if there’s no more tomorrow for me? Could I still go out with him?”

            “Midori, don’t say that…” she sat beside me and held my shoulder.

            “Mom, if I won’t do today the things that make me happy, then when? If I would always hope that I will get well soon… what if I won’t?” I held her hand on my shoulder and continued. “I don’t want to leave in this world with regrets. There’s no wrong in hoping that I will get better. I was hoping for it, Mom. But what if… Just what if… I won’t?”

            She pulled me close to her and kissed my head. “The saddest phrase that I know… is what if. It destroys all statements of hope and dreaming.” She slowly pulled me away from her as she kissed my hands. “Be happy today, hmm? Live as if there’s no what if.”

            “Thank you, Mom. I’m nothing without you.” She pulled me close to her and we both laughed at our mushiness.

            What would I be if I were to grow in a different family? I could not tell. I could not imagine not spending my whole life with them, even more unimaginable than cancer. I could still remember my high school classmates. They never invited their parents during Family Day, or any other school event that involved their families. I would hear them tell shameful stories about their grandparents and laugh at their uniqueness. I could still remember how some of them would shoo their siblings, they could even shot them just so they could get out of their sight. I could not help but ponder. Why were they like that? They acted like they could live without their family yet I acted like I could not— just being away from them for a night was a misery for me.

            Maybe, people would view “family” at a different pedestal. But whatever it was, I would only believe to one thing: I love my family and whatever happens, I will always be proud of them.

            My Mom shook me when we both heard a ring on the doorbell. We even laughed when he shouted, “Tao po.”

            “Here comes the handsome.” She led me downstairs as she continually shouted “A minute!” to Maisen who was still outside the house. When we stopped, she fixed my hair a bit and whispered, “You’re beautiful.”

*

“Maisen,” I called for his name.

            “Yes?”

            “You don’t have to cover my eyes—”

            “You’re a killjoy. It’s romantic!”

            I put his hands, which were on my eyes, down. “You don’t have to do that. I’m already blind.”

            He shyly apologized, “Sorry, I forgot.”

            I just smiled and asked, “Where are we?”

            “You try to guess.”

            I sensed my surrounding. The nurse in the hospital once told me that people who have sense deficiencies would gain a certain strong point. Some blind persons could have very keen sense of smell. Some mute persons could have strong eyesight. I heard whooshing of water and I smell salt. There were also birds. The wind was warm and I felt sand on my feet. “Sea?”

            He held my hand and put his other hand on my back as we walked. “When I was young and my parents would fight, I used to go here. Once I reached this place, I would just strip off and run to the sea. I’d play with the water, with the fish. I would pretend that, ‘Yay! It’s playtime!’ then spend the day like I was really happy.” I did not speak. No words would come out from my mouth to say something about his sad childhood. “This is a very sad place.”

            “Then why did you bring me here?” I finally asked.

            “I wanted to show this to you. But… I think I can’t. So just imagine.” I did what he said. “There’s this huge crystal blue sea. The dusk is already falling and there are already stars in the sky. There are lots of birds here— in orange, brown, yellow, ash. Then there’s this crystal white sand under our feet. And there’s no one here… but us. A handsome guy who has never believed that love exists. And a plain girl who proved him wrong.”

            “Maisen…” I could not utter anything more. I suddenly felt sad, like crying. When the truth was I should be happy.

            “I had my first girlfriend when I was seventeen. The first day I stepped on college, I was already known. Every girl knew me. They would ask for my name, my number, and sometimes even my address. That’s when my ego started to swell. I felt that time, I own every girl who talks to me. I’m not very good in Statistics, but as I know, four to one is the ration of woman to man. So it does not really matter if we keep changing girls. There were a lot of them, I thought. I don’t how I was able to tolerate that mentality.”

            I almost choked hearing his words. Why was he telling all these things to me?

            “Some were asking me,” he continued. “’Why do you treat girls that way?’ Do I have a bad background when it comes to women? Is my Mom a whore who left us for another guy? They were thinking of every reason why. But the truth is as simple as nothing. I just want to have be like that, and I learned to like that life. There were just things that we do for no very particular reason but we just want to.”

            Trust. That was the only thing that I was holding on. Why did I give my heart to him? Why to someone who I had not known for that long? Why not so someone I had known for a long time? Why him?

            “I got used to that life. Everyday, someone will pull me, kiss me in limelight. There have to be different girls every minute, different girls when I go to parties, to clubs, to school, at home, or somewhere.”

            Honestly, I did not know anything about ‘love’. But now, I think I already knew. Love is not about how long you had known each other or how often had you been together. No matter how many words there were in the dictionary, none of them could exactly define love. Because love is not a word that you give meaning into, but a feeling that would when you least expected it. It’s when the usual beating of your heart started to have meaning, and you felt like everything around you was conspiring everytime your heart would beat like that.

            “I never had a plain girlfriend. Popular, rich, beautiful, sexy, gorgeous. The type of whose beauty would be the talk of the town, of whose prominence would be envied. Most of them were models, actresses, beauty queens, athletes. Elite women.”

            “Why are you saying that to me?” I nervously asked.

            “Why I’m saying this to you? Simple. Because you’re not like them. You’re very far from my ex-girlfriends. You’re not my type. Honestly, you’re not even half of them. You have your own beauty, but it’s just ordinary—”

            “Why are you saying that? You don’t like me, do you?” I held my gripping chest. I was starting to feel shivers. Every minute of my life was important and I was taking a good care of it. But why was he saying these things only now… “You don’t like me, right? Yeah. Why would you like me? You said I’m just ordinary, right?” I turned my back and walked away from him as I posed a fake smile; trying my hardest to cover up the building pain.

            “What are you going to do there?” He shouted at me. “Are you going to swim at the sea?” I stopped walking when I realized that it was the direction of the sea that I was heading to. “How can you go away in that situation? And why would you go away?” I heard his voice growing louder, a sign that he was coming close to me. “I’m not yet through so listen to me first.

            “You’re not my type, but among all the girls that I have met, you’re the only one who made me fall in love. Ever since I met you, I lost my strength to look on other girls. I felt that in everything I do, you’re just at my back, watching me. It’s hard to sleep at night, it’s even harder to eat. Even breathing is hard too. And it’s all because of you. Because you’re different from all of them. Because you are not them.”

            My heart beat fast again. There was that race. And a few seconds more, I felt like something would come out of my chest, run and land on Maisen’s hands.

            “I don’t care how many times we’ve met or how much we know each other. My heart knows very well what I am feeling and no societal boundaries and norms could stop it. Others may call me crazy. If our 온라인카지노게임 would be written and the critics would tell that this 온라인카지노게임 does not make any sense; if our 온라인카지노게임 would be a song and the music-lovers would tell that it’s trash, I don’t really care. They say it’s love-a-first-sight, magnet movement, and whatever people kept calling this thing. But this is just three words. I love you. That’s it.” I felt like my whole world stopped, that everything was just a dream. A big joke. Until I felt his warm embrace from my back as he spoke the soft words right through my ears. “I brought you here because I want to erase all the sad memories of this place and replace them with good memories from one of the most important persons in my life. Can we just be together? Can I not court you and let’s just stay like this until the end of our time? Not that I don’t want to wait, but there’s no assurance of our both our times, Midori.”

            “Are you sure you about this?” I favored him.

            Instead of saying a yes or no, he just held my shoulders and turned me around. “Midori Vivero, I’m kneeling right in front of you. I’m giving you my world, everything that I have. I’m surrendering myself to you. Please… be my girlfriend.”

            I could not speak for a while. There were endless buckets of joy inside my chest pouring all throughout me. We might have met for only a few times, but we had been through  a lot already. I tried to run away from him, to avoid his shadow, to not know him. But destiny destroyed the wall between us and let us found each other again, live with no hesitation at each others arms, and just be happy until our forever.

            I love you, Maisen. And I want to be with you until the end of our time.

            But before I could even utter a word, my whole world stopped. My body fell numb and I could not understand anything. I could not speak. I felt my whole body was shrinking.

            I did not know what happened next. I could only remember Maisen’s shaking voice that kept calling for my name.