It would be like the first, second, third time he spent the night – the air thick with nicotine smoke and our words slurred with drunkenness. It filled me with unmistakable euphoric lust, especially thinking about how he pushed me down the coffee-colored couch, the back of my head hitting the armrest dully, and how he kissed me – my then sharp eyes watching his clouded, drunk ones, closed with passion, or from disgust, and how he began exploring my body with his steady and sure hands that had also touched Andrea. I was sobered up from the shock of the unprecedented events, but I was helplessly enjoying every touch, every trace, and every kiss. With his steady hands, I shriveled; with his full lips, I swelled. It was a whole night of passion and aggression but as the daylight came, he was gone. I called him but he spoke to me with the same nonchalance and claimed that he couldn’t remember anything that had happened. But it repeated, it happened again for the second, third time. He would bombard me with kisses that would turn into bruises when he told me that he was too wasted to remember. And he was drunk that first night – but not on the second and the third, I noticed. His eyes were sharp with sobriety, but his words slurred to fake the presence of alcohol.
I wanted it to stop. He had a girlfriend, Andrea. And that night when we, three, met in an art show, 24 hours after that second night, I saw how he clutched Andrea’s waist tighter and pulled her closer to his body when I was looking and how he whispered playful lewdness to her ear, loud enough for me to hear. I hated him for that, for fucking me one night and whispering how he would like to fuck her on the other. I wished I knew how to say no, but I didn’t. I was too in love and these secret and intoxicated affairs were the closest thing to love that I would ever receive from him.
We grew up together, him and I. Our Moms were best friends who decided to live next to each other. We’re practically born to be the best of friends. But when we were twelve, I started to tell him more jokes just so he would show me his precious, rabbit smile and I would ask Dad to buy me the latest video games so I could invite him over and play. I slept every night then, imagining how warm his hands would be and woke up every morning smiling from dreams about him. He was my first and last thought and I was his best friend.
When we were nineteen, he and his Mom told my family that they would move abroad where he would study Art. Their departure hurt my Mom, but it devastated me. I lived for his smile, breathed for his laugh and moved for his words. He was positive about it all, though. “We can email each other,” he told me and we did. It was a weekly correspondence at the first three months. He told me all about the new cities and towns he had reached, the new friends he had met, and the beautiful girls he had wished was his girlfriend. But the weekly emails dwindled to once-in-a-full-moon messages of How have you been, until I stopped logging on my Gmail account because I knew there would be no new email from him. But I didn’t forget him. I tried to, but at night, at that moment when I slowly slip from the cliff of reality to the sea of dreams, his image would pop – a picture of his 12-year old self with the boyish grin and child-like innocence.
I didn’t forget him until seven years later, when I checked my old Gmail account after I hastily gave my old email address to my professor that I saw a brand new message from him. Its letters black and bold and its date were at three days prior with the clear subject: “I’m coming home!” My heart thrashed inside my ribcage and I was at dazed. My right hand trembled as I grabbed the mouse to click the email open. I barely understood the message because my vision was then crystallized with tears I didn’t notice were there. I just knew that he was coming home after seven years.
I met him at the airport, a week after I received that correspondence, and on that crowd of people, he stood out with his chic clothes and his European aura. His hair was shorter and closer to the crop and he was taller and more built, but the smile he gave me still pained my chest. It was the same boyish grin with mischief and pranks. When he hugged me, I held him a little bit closer, a little bit tighter. I missed you so much, I wanted to tell him, but I settled with “I almost didn’t recognize you!” And when he laughed, giddiness bubbled inside me. He complimented my nice maturation as he put his arms on my shoulder and rode a taxi home.
My Mom was all smiles and kisses when she met us at front of our house. And he received it all with respect and love. He told us about his life abroad over cups of black coffee and pan de coco (“I missed these!” he exclaimed when Mom pulled out a plate of the coconut-filled bread.) and I clung to every words as I watched how his full lips move around his altered, new teeth. I told him that and he got embarrassed. “I can’t be Rabbit Teeth all my life,” he said with a laugh. I loved your cute rabbit teeth, I almost said, but I compressed the words with a smile. My Mom insisted that he slept in our house for the night, but he declined and said he would check in a hotel instead. Then my Mom asked him to, at least, stay for dinner to which he agreed to.
At dinner, he asked me about my life and I told him that I was studying for my Master’s degree in Psychology and I would move out in three months. “His room is getting smaller for him,” Mom joked. He then asked me to see my room. We went there after dinner. I apologized for the clutter and he waved it off. He sat at the edge of my bed and we were 12 years old again, trading Yu-Gi-Oh cards and ghost stories, playing video games and board games. We were 12 again, the time when he smiled at me and my heart beat irrationally fast for the first time. “So how many girls have been here, eh?” he asked, breaking the nostalgia. There were no girls, but there were some boys that had been here, posing as college classmates but spent the night as anonymous lovers. “Uh, no girl,” I replied with a nervous laughter. “I never had a girlfriend.” He asked why. Because I was in love with you. I shrugged and said, “I’m career-oriented, I guess.” He guffawed and yelled, “Loosen up!”
I walked with him to our subdivision’s main gate and waited until his scheduled taxi came. He was silent the whole walk, probably because when he asked to see their old house, it was no longer there. Five months after they went abroad, a young couple moved in and reinvented the whole house. “It’s good to see you, man,” I said when the taxi stopped in front of us. “Drop by again sometime.”He smiled at me and replied, “Sure, I will.” I cried myself to sleep that night.
We went out a lot of times after that. He took me to art exhibits and I took him to the movies and theaters. When I finally moved in to my condo unit in the Metro, a group of friends held a housewarming party for me and he was there, with a beautiful girl hooked at his arm. Andrea was stunning, with her high nose and big eyes. She was sophisticated but still fun and she genuinely smiled a lot. I beamed at them, even though I was already crippled with pain inside. I drowned myself with glasses of wine and plates of hors d’oeuvre. I couldn’t remember much of that evening – I was wasted at my own party. Andrea liked me; he told me the next time we met. Yes, I thought, that was what I was aiming for, to be liked by my love’s girlfriend.
I busied myself with my practice and busied myself further when I got a job as a part-time instructor in a university. I rarely went out with him then, until that first night when he knocked at my door, bearing beers and cigarettes.
I stood from my couch and went to the shower. I would tell him that we could no longer do this. It’s unfair for Andrea and even more unfair to me. It would break me a little more every time he would claim that he couldn’t remember what had happened between us. But I didn’t want to stop this affair. I would take meaningless sex just so I could touch him, kiss him, and sleep next to him. These were the closest thing to love that he could give me and I was willing to take it. He came at my unit at 9PM, carrying the usual bags. What started out as a boys’ night-out at my coffee-colored couch turned to a passionate tryst on my king-size bed. It was like the other nights. He tasted like beer and cigarette smoke with his innate sweetness as aftertaste. His touches were hot and still and his kisses, fiery and wet. I drank him in, inhaled him in. He was my addiction, he was my sin. It was like the other nights. He feigned intoxication and slurred his sentences. His eyes were clear and focused with sobriety. He would deny it all tomorrow morning. “What happened?” he would ask. “I was too wasted to remember.” I was his dusty skeleton in the closet, his dirty, slutty, little secret. I belonged to the night when the darkness obscured everything.
That night, as we lay on bed next to each other with our breathing heavy with exhaustion and slumber, I told him the words that had lived inside me, that had completely grew inside my chest. “I love you,” I said. I expected the words to quiver, but it didn’t. It was full and certain and longing. I sounded sad when I said those words. His body stilled and I thought he had fallen asleep. I was already slipping from the cliff of reality when he whispered, “I’m sorry.” It was sharp as a knife’s edge. It was not slurred and hurried. But his voice and his words were sadder than my own. He never said anything during these nights. It was his first words. Tears streamed down my face, to my bed sheets that were already soaked from sweat and other fluid. And I smiled at the darkness as I fell down the sea of dreams.
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