Buko Pie

Infidelity.


I was online one night with my default websites opened: Facebook, yahoomail, and Guyrony. I opened my inbox in yahoomail and saw someone sent me a personal message. The name, familiar, I swallowed a huge lump of saliva down my throat.


It turned out I was right. The current boyfriend of my first ex-boyfriend messaged me.


From the first few lines I knew what was going on, he caught his boyfriend cheating on him. I wasn't able to read the entire e-mail.


Honestly, the whole thought of him cheating was stressing me out.


You see my first ex-boyfriend and I first interacted through Yahoo messenger. We chatted mostly about random stuffs, some of my encounters, and him, just mostly listening and providing insights. A few months passed and we became good friends, and then best friends. It was one of the best experiences that has happened to me.


Later on, we fell for each other.


From the time I knew him he already has a unique personality - undefinable. Although I have something like this too, we never get it on our way.


But of course one thing that made me fall for him was him being loyal and honest. We were still both students then, him studying at UPLB and I, studying in Manila. It was not so much a struggle to be faithful to each other, we were in love and when that's the case, temptations are only short-lived, barely even.


We would talk long in the wee hours of the night even though we have classes the next day. We would talk how we spent our day and how was our day overall.


Everyday we would celebrate it as if it is our monthly anniversary, greeting each other daily like happy 156th day or happy 231st day. We were like that. Nuts over each other.


I can still remember how his effort just swoons me over and makes me fall for him more. Once a month, we would take a trip to Los Banos. Coming from Los Banos, he would take a trip towards Alabang where we would meet and then go together to Los Banos. At that time, trips going from Alabang to Los Banos seemed pretty surreal, I kid you not. The gesture was simple but that's the thing, his effort exudes an applause.


We would go to Pansol or bring me to his dorm inside campus, he would take me to Chowking to Vega Arcade, we would lip-lock in places around UPLB, and we would stay somewhere for the night. All of those I remember, all of what he did to me, I have still kept like treasures.


Of course there were moments too that I would play the tour guide for him here in Manila. We would go around Intramuros, walk around its wondrous and old yet majestic walls, stroll around Divisoria just for randomness, and go to Binondo to find a temple, which I still have not found one up till this time.


From those, I have built this perspective of him as a person of honesty, trust, and thoughtfulness. That is why I had a hard time trying to finish reading the e-mail of his boyfriend...


Because he changed. He used to be someone I thought I knew, but now I barely know him anymore.


Perhaps that is life, with every little thing changing with the blink of an eye, it was inevitable, I was just blinded by my denial.


He is a changed man now, I am too. A part of me wants to think he was the same old boy I fell in love with years ago, yet realistically, he is not.


But different as he may be, he will always be my buko pie no matter what.

Distraught

It's weird how we want people to stay the same while we unconsciously change...

Zoom

"I can't believe you're getting married." I told my cousin while we were smoking at a nearby store.


"G, come on, we all know it would happen..." She said while patting me at the back.


"Yeah, but so soon?"


"25 isn't soon. I think it's perfect."


"Well, what more can I say?" I replied and shut up.


Walking back to our grandmother's house, I was suddenly having a few flashbacks of our time together when we were younger.


We were born in the same year. We grew up going to each other's house, playing volleyball, hide and seek, eating everything.


We grew up reading Archie's comics, watching The Lifestyle Network, and pretty much goofing off everytime we see each other.


Their house was the first vacation place I had ever been to without my parents staying for the night. I remembered I was crying that night when I told my mom earlier that I am brave enough to stay at my cousin's place. I was holding my X-men notebook bought from The Landmark.


She comforted me the whole night.


Their place felt near to home, that was what I remembered the most. I never felt like a visitor nor an intruder. heck, they loved me there! She, especially, because her older brother is about four years older so they do have a small gap. Plus the fact that they do vary in more ways than a teenage girl could think of with an adolescent brother.


So we clicked. We bonded. We had fun everytime. We never had any major argument, that's how we loved each other.


I think the only time she became pissed off of me was when I told her Leonardo sucked in Titanic in which she slammed the door and locked herself up in one of the rooms of our grandparents' ancestral house.  


But those were great moments nevertheless. The moments where I would hitchhike with them to Pangasinan whenever there would be a reunion. Earlier in my years, I would even spend Christmas and New Year with them.


Of course that had to end, but perhaps that's the confusing about preparedness, it is that sometimes you're not.


But I am her cousin, the most supportive one, I wish her the best. That is the best that I could do.


In the end, she getting married is one of the greatest thing that has happened to her.


"Well Sam, I wish you and your husband-to-be happiness." I told her while I placed my arm around her shoulder.


She smiled while we entered our grandmother's house.

Ah, ah, ah...

Why, dear, you might have forgotten who you were.

What you were.

Getting thinner doesn't mean getting prettier.

My, my your confident level must have sky-rocketed.

But I suggest you drop the attitude, it doesn't suit you.

Remember where you are in the food chain.

Always.