Table for Two Read online

  But one night, seven months and six days ago, you asked me to tell you the truth, and I did. The truth was this: I couldn’t stop thinking about you and that kiss we shared once and never spoke of again. Every moment was a moment further from the one where I leaned towards you and you pulled me in close. Every thought of you brought back that moment, our moment—the feel of your lips brushing against mine for the first time, for the last time. The truth was, at that moment, we were caught in the same place, breathing in the same air, which was why I couldn’t understand how it meant the world to me while it meant nothing to you at all.

  You looked at me for a long time before you finally said, “I’m sorry I even asked. I just wanted to make sure you were okay with this.”

  “With what?”

  “I don’t know. This.”

  You untangled your arm from mine and told me, “I’m sorry it meant something to you.” I said, “I’m sorry it meant something to me, too.”

  From “This Closure”

  Table for Two

  Marla Miniano

  SUMMIT BOOKS

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, some places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Summit Books are published by

  Summit Media

  6th floor, Robinsons Cybergate Tower 3

  Robinsons Pioneer Complex, Pioneer St.

  Mandaluyong City 1550, Philippines

  Copyright © 2010 by Marla Miniano

  Book design by Studio Dialogo

  Cover illustration by Ariel Santillan

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  www.femalenetwork.com/summit-books

  For Chris and Ley, who make me

  believe in real-life love stories.

  Thank you for sharing your happy

  ending with me. Congratulations!

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  9 | Fresh

  35 | Timeout

  55 | All the Best

  87 | This Closure

  111 | Table for Two

  FRESH

  1

  My boyfriend Tristan is late again, and I am not surprised.

  I am sitting at our favorite spot, a table for two by the window, in our favorite coffee shop. Not many people know about Café Carmelo—it is sandwiched between a Korean grocery and an appliance service center, along a street fifteen minutes away from a major road housing three universities and more than a dozen big-name coffee shops. People drive past it every day, on the way to school or work, but nobody ever really notices. And with its unassuming exterior and a sign you have to squint to read, it almost seems like it doesn’t want to be noticed.

  It was my idea to make this our regular meeting place. I figured it would be less embarrassing to be kept waiting for an hour and a half, or to be completely flaked on, when your only witnesses are a couple of bored baristas and a law student burning a hole through a mountain of handouts. Tristan used to say I was being paranoid, that when he stood me up in Starbucks or Seattle’s Best, nobody could even tell I had just been stood up. Of course they could tell. There is an unmistakable vibe independent people give off, an enviable confidence that allows them to eat alone and sit alone and hang out at a coffee shop alone without looking pathetic. I am not an independent person. I do not give off that “I’m alone and I’m okay” vibe. What I give off, clearly, is an “I got stood up by my boyfriend so now I’m loitering and trying to pretend that I’m okay” vibe.

  I open my bag and pull out the envelope containing my resumés, cover letters, and 1x1 ID pictures. Today is my first day—our first day—as official members of the real world. I now understand why it is more common to say “fresh” graduates rather than “new” or “recent” graduates. I feel invigorated and energized, free from the burden of research papers and long exams and thesis proposals, and ready to dive into the adult world of job-hunting and panel screenings and salary negotiations. I feel eager and enthusiastic. I feel, well, fresh.

  “Are we yuppies now?” my best friend Diane asked me several days ago.

  “Yup,” I replied. “Yuppies.”

  “I hate that word,” she said. “It makes me think of little people running around. Like boylets.”

  I said, “It makes me think of puppies.”

  She shook her head at me. “Sometimes I wonder why I put up with you, Mandy. I mean, you’re obviously so much smarter than me. You have all these insights that are like, really deep, you know?”

  I grinned. “Fine. Let’s call ourselves something else then. Fresh. Fresh graduates.”

  “Fresh,” she repeated, mulling it over. “I like it.”

  “Does it make you think of orange juice?”

  “No,” she replied. “Okay. Yes. Yes, it does. But I still like it.”

  We both laughed. “Fresh it is, then.”

  I arrange my cover letters in alphabetical order, according to the companies’ names, and line up my ID pictures in neat rows on the table. Forty minutes pass and I feel my freshness deflating. My boyfriend Tristan is late. Again. I am always waiting for him to show up, and even though we’ve been together for three years, I still feel sick to my stomach every single time, like I am about to go on a blind date with a complete stranger who may or may not decide at the last minute to back out. You’d think I’d be able to brush off his punctuality problems by now. I imagine this is what it would feel like on our wedding day, as I sit inside the bridal car, a bundle of nerves, and wait for someone to tell me that the groom has arrived and the ceremony is about to start—that nervous, clammy uncertainty gnawing away at my high hopes until there is nothing left but fear and distrust.

  Except we’re never getting married, because today, we are going to break up.

  Tristan walks through the door, no doubt with a good excuse for his tardiness: He came home late from a graduation party with his block mates, or his mom made him run a million errands. Or he lost his phone, or he couldn’t find his keys. Or his car wouldn’t start, or his alarm didn’t go off. Or he overslept.

  And all I will hear is, Look, Mandy, I just don’t care enough about you anymore.

  2

  As he approaches, I try to seem as detached and disinterested as possible.

  “Hi,” he says, keeping his voice low and his smile shy. Tristan is always pretending to be more timid than he actually is—the guy version of a girl trying to be demure, trying to project that Maria Clara-ness that has become so rare these days. I don’t know why he does this. Girls don’t like shy guys; they think they do, but they always end up with the ones who speak up and assert themselves and win people over with the grandest of gestures. Girls don’t notice shy guys, and it is ironic that Tristan’s attempt to be a shy guy is secretly a call for attention: he only does it around his crushes, or in a room full of beautiful strangers he’d like to charm. Or with me, when I’m mad and trying to ignore him. He only does it to stand out.

  “Hi,” he repeats, and I tell him, “You’re late.”

  He says, “I know,” and sits beside me, but not close to me. The space between does not allow our shoulders to touch, and I do not feel the satin smoothness of his varsity jacket on my bare arm. There are so many things I cannot touch and feel right now. He tries to make eye contact, but I concentrate on studying my resumé. There is a speck of red ink, barely noticeable, on the upper right corner of the page, just above the photo of a very prim-and-proper me. I want to swipe at i
t with a correction pen, but a) I don’t have one with me, and b) doing so would only draw more attention to the flaw, as most cover-up attempts do. I flip it over so that I am left with a blank white sheet, which I can no longer pretend to be concentrating on.

  “I forgot to give you this,” he says, and hands me a copy of his yearbook photo. He is bright-eyed and at ease, wearing a navy blue toga and smiling widely, almost goofily, for the camera. At the back, he has written in all caps, Dear Mandy, I’ll make a wish for you and hope it will come true... If you lose your way, think back on yesterday. Remember me this way, remember this way. Love, Tristan. The “o” in “love” is a heart, and I look up to see him grinning expectantly at me. He thinks the clever cheesiness and the ‘90s movie reference make up for the fact that this is the exact same thing he wrote on the copies he gave out to everyone else days ago. He seems to find it funny. I don’t.

  I force a smile. What else have you forgotten?

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks, moving to tuck a stray strand of my hair behind my ear. I try not to flinch, consciously arranging my face into something resembling receptiveness, but my hand involuntarily reaches up to swat his misguided affection away. It is hard to imagine that, three years ago, this was the very gesture that made me fall in love with him. It was the end of freshman year, and we were hauling dusty boxes of old files from our org’s room to the common storage room. He was trying to convince me to tag along with his block to the beach, but the way he was trying was just not enough for me—he was being annoyingly coy, playing it safe, not really saying what he was supposed to be saying.

  “I hate the beach,” he told me, kicking the door of the storage room open with his foot and letting me through. With my back to him, he continued, “It’s full of sweaty guys who try to show off their abs—you know, one ab per dude.”

  “It’s also full of sweaty girls who show off their boobs,” I reminded him. “Two boobs per chick, no doubt about that.”

  “Yeah, okay. But it’ll be really hot.”

  “Of course it’ll be hot, you idiot,” I snapped, getting more irritated by the minute. “I think that’s kind of the point.”

  “And I hate getting sand in my flip-flops. And in my shorts. And in my underwear.”

  “Tristan. I don’t think I needed to hear that last one.”

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, and I thought I had been harsh enough to make him stop, but he went on, “The thing is, the whole block is going. I can’t not go.”

  “Of course you can. Nobody can force you to go.” I felt guilty for calling him an idiot and turned around to smile at him. “Fight for your rights, man.”

  He smiled back. “I could use some company.”

  I didn’t answer until we had gone back to the org room and picked up one big box each, letting his unspoken invitation hang in the air between us, making him tense and insecure. “It’s a good thing you’ll have your block mates, then,” I told him, but as I watched his face fall, I was surprised that I didn’t derive any form of satisfaction from it. We had been playing The Game for months, and maybe it was time to quit. The question was, what was the definition of quitting in that scenario? Giving up the game to make way for something genuine? Or giving up on each other to play the game with someone else?

  He walked ahead of me, and I felt like maybe I should say something—not exactly apologize, but at least make him feel a bit better about himself and his moves, or lack thereof. “Wait,” I said. He turned back to see me clutching the heavy box with both hands, the struggle to come up with something substantial enough to say after “wait” completely visible on my face. A sudden gust of wind blew across the corridor, and I blinked as shorter strands of my hair escaped from my ponytail and poked my eyes. “A thousand yellow daisies,” I blurted out, quoting Lorelai Gilmore. There should be a thousand yellow daisies...it should be more than this.

  He reached out to tuck the stray strands behind my ear and told me, “It’s okay, Mandy. I get it.”

  We walked silently to the storage room and set down our boxes. Outside, the sky was getting dark, and the din of voices was steadily fading—we should probably move fast if we both wanted to get home in time for dinner. He stepped towards the door, but I found myself sitting on the floor, grabbing his hand, and pulling him down. “Get what?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  I scowled. “Get what?” I repeated, elbowing his ribs.

  “That you don’t like me,” he replied.

  “Are you serious? Of course I like you.”

  “But you treat me like crap.”

  I laughed. “Of course I treat you like crap. Didn’t you ever do this in kindergarten? Didn’t you ever call your crush names, or steal her crayons, or pull her pigtails?”

  “But we’re not in kindergarten.”

  He was right. We were in college, and we were good friends. Or at least he was a good friend to me. The past few months paraded themselves in front of me: him waiting for me outside my classroom, offering to spend my long breaks with me, volunteering to return my books to the library, walking me to the parking lot. It wasn’t a game; I was never a game to him.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but he stood and said, “We can finish this tomorrow. Come on, I’ll drive you home.”

  The next morning, he showed up at my doorstep with coffee, bacon, and waffles swimming in syrup. And then he tucked my hair behind my ear and handed me a bouquet of yellow daisies.

  “It’s not a thousand,” he said. “But I hope it’s enough. And I hope it’s not too late.” He said it with confidence and conviction and undeniable sincerity. He said it like he meant it.

  Now, three years later, he asks me what’s wrong, and what I want to tell him is that I don’t even know what’s right anymore.

  3

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I reply. When we first got together, we promised we would always be honest with each other. We promised we wouldn’t play games, and we promised we would always say what we mean and mean what we say. But that was three years ago, back when we were eager to love and be loved, back when we were willing to spend time and energy on learning to give and take. That was three years ago, back when the novelty of a first relationship was enough, back when companionship and comfortable familiarity kept the pieces together. Back when the momentum was strong enough to keep us in motion. That was three years ago.

  He says, “I meant to get here earlier,” and I say, “No, you didn’t.” I want him to argue with me, I want him to tell me to stop acting like I know every single thing he’s thinking and feeling and doing. But he just says, “Fine,” and makes his way to the counter to get himself a drink.

  “How long has this been going on?” Diane asked me last year, when Tristan began showing up late for each and every one of our dates.

  “About two weeks, since he started his internship at his dad’s office.” I said. “I don’t get it. I didn’t mind waiting for him before, when he’d be late from time to time, but this is ridiculous. He can’t be late ALL the time. It’s just not acceptable.”

  “But you’re putting up with it, aren’t you?” It sounded less like a question and more like a statement.

  “What do you want me to do, break up with him?” I paused. “I can’t.”

  “You can’t?” she repeated. “Are you serious? Can you even hear yourself right now?”

  “I’m really upset,” I admitted. “But that doesn’t mean I want to throw this all away. We’ll fix this. I’ll talk to him.”

  “When?”

  “After his internship,” I said. “He’s busy. I guess there’s extra pressure on him because he’s working for his dad. I don’t want to stress him out now. But I’ll do something about it, I swear.”

  “All right,” she said. It sounded less like “okay” and more like “you better.”

  When Tristan comes back from the counter, a drink in hand and his mind obviously somewhere else, I tell him, “We need to talk.”

  He nods. He
doesn’t seem surprised. He doesn’t even make an effort to look curious. He just nods, waiting for me to go on, waiting for me to get it over with. Waiting for me to seal our story with a single sentence.

  So I do. “This isn’t working anymore.”

  He says, “I know,” and this hurts me more than I want it to. I should be grateful he’s neither making a scene nor pretending that everything’s happy and rosy. I should be grateful that he seems to want a fresh start as much as I do, even if our fresh starts do not belong together.

  “What do you know?” I ask him. “Do you know how I feel? Do you know that you’ve been consistently late for the past year? Do you know how much you’ve changed since you went through that internship?” I am telling him, See, that was where it all went wrong. But I’m not saying it so we can go back and undo the damage.

  “Don’t blame the internship,” he says. “It’s not my fault I enjoyed it. I learned a lot of things I needed to learn. I proved myself to my dad, and made him proud enough to invite me to join the company right after graduation. I made new friends. My world became bigger. How is that wrong?”

  It’s wrong because your bigger world is spinning too fast and leaving me out, I want to reply. But we’ve talked about this before: I didn’t like his new friends, he didn’t like the fact that I didn’t like them. I didn’t like the fact that he was trying so hard to please his dad, he didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t even trying to be supportive. I didn’t like how I had to catch up with him, he didn’t like how he had to slow down for me. We’ve had this conversation before, about me feeling dispensable and him needing space, and we’ve promised to sort it out. A year later, we still haven’t.