In All Things Familiar
“Ganun talaga, Art,” I told him, wearing false confidence disguised in condescension. I looked over to where he was sitting next to me, my eyes cladded in the perfect armor of social cues and age-old lessons, to meet his—two infinite pools of self-pity and preemptive rejection. “We can only let ourselves experience the love we know.”
“Ha?” he blurted, a half-scoff escaping from his mouth. “What, like we accept the love we think we deserve, ganun?”
“See, even you had it memorized,” I pointed out.
“Nah,” he dismissed.
“That’s the thing.”
Tonight, he was so beautiful it made my chest physically hurt. A gust of wind disturbed his already tousled hair; the light coming from the inside of the resto generating a halo effect that casted a shadow over his facial features. I sat leveled with the mystery of our friendship, a great deal of distance away: half a meter away from his chair, and a setlist of masquerade music from his heart—just a few more songs before midnight. There I was, good ol’ Cinderella waiting for the clock to strike 12.
“You know how you’re afraid of what could go wrong, you risk the possibility of things being right?” I asked Art. He just stared. He held his gaze to my eyes, like he always did. But this was a game I mastered long ago. And I fixed my eyes at his left browbone as every feeling and every thought melted in the peripherals like soft butter on hot toast, the haze both saving me from overthinking and killing me as he became the focus of this still shot.
“I’m a coward,” he said as he broke eye contact. He looked down at his fingers fidgeting with his lit cigarette. The smoke rising up from the embers looked like the ghosts of all the prayers that found comfort in between his hands clasped together. When he said those words, it was as if truth took its own life and set itself free. Whatever free meant at the moment. Whatever felt like the closest thing to ‘not being where this was.’
“If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here,” I said with a snicker and a head shake for dramatic effect.
He mimicked my actions and added, “True,” to my statement.
The thing was, we’re both cowards. I just noticed my leg had been bouncing from the way I was tapping my foot on the floor. I clutched my hand over my knee, a conscious decision to be a willing participant in this game of ‘I didn’t know.’ The fact was, of course, I knew. I just didn’t want to admit that I was setting myself up for failure when I readily clicked on the play button.
I love him.
I conceded. I was throwing that towel like the shrug my shoulders absently did when I finally let those three words flash themselves into the forefront of my fucking mind like an obnoxious neon signage.
I love you, Art. You stupid asshole.
I shook my head and laughed a little as the thought sunk in.
“What?” Art asked.
“Wala,” I lied. “‘Yan kasi ang hirap ‘pag nafa-fall sa best friend eh.”
Oh, this tale as old as time, as told by that Disney song.
“It’s not the same with you though, and you’re my best friend,” Art continued. “Life’s crazy.”
“I’m your best friend. You’re her best friend,” I pointed out. “It’s kinda different when you really look at it.”
Like I was the fall guy in this sequence, in this dynamic between you and I, Art, I wanted to say. Like you were doing the damages in my narrative as she was in yours.
“Duwag ako, Alice,” he stated, more as a fact than an opinion.
“Duwag na, tanga pa.”
He chuckled bitterly. The ashes from his cigarette fell on his jeans. He had to dust them off before it registered in his head that his stick was almost out. He squished the hell out of that poor stub on the ashtray.
“To hell with that, mate. I don’t think I can ruin our friendship.”
“And that’s exactly what I said. We can only let ourselves experience the love we know.”
He locked eyes with me again, but this time I knew he was just looking for the sake of looking. He was distracting himself from his own thoughts, as if having me there beside him, all ready for him to look at, was like opening a window to let cool air in whenever it started to get suffocating inside his mind.
All I could see was breaking in his eyes, while he searched to find comfort in mine.
To find comfort in mine, I repeated in my head. “Sometimes we mistake comfort with choice. We think that hurting within the safety in all things familiar is better than the possibility of unhurt within risks.”
I looked at him like I was witnessing an entire apartment complex burn. The tenants jumping off great heights from the broken windows; children screaming; fire engulfing concrete as black smoke smudged the walls with ancient calligraphy. There was pain and anguish, and an uncanny sense of gratitude from the fact that I was at a safe distance from all of it, and that none of the things ruined were mine.
Because he was not mine.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Art jeered, trying his best to make light of the situation.
He understood what I was saying, but not what I meant.
“You really don’t get it, huh? Tanga ka nga.”
Midnight was closing in on me. In a few moments, we would go our separate ways and head back home.