PART THREE: I Am Finally Seeing Why I Was The One Worth Leaving
I was making brownies for Hin when someone knocked on our apartment door. “Hin, could you get that?” I called. I saw him stand from the living room couch he was in, where he was reading his book, and heard when he opened the door. There was no clear view of it from the kitchen, but since I heard it close, I called again, “Hin, who was it?” I was busy whisking the brownie mixture that I didn’t notice Gun walking towards me. I looked up and smiled when I saw him.
“My pet!” I exclaimed. The last time I saw Gun was almost six months ago. I was truly excited to see him again. But it felt like the feeling wasn’t mutual. Over the last months we hadn’t seen each other, he got a little thinner. But it wasn’t the weight loss that made his face look grim that morning in our apartment kitchen. I dropped the bowl on the counter, wiped my hands on the pink apron Hin got me, and walked to Gun who was standing by the dining table. I hugged him and said, “Buddy, I missed you!” But he didn’t hug me back.
I looked at him and asked, “What’s up? Long time no see!” He sighed and replied, “You call him Hin?” He said this in a low, but pointed voice. I was glad Hin wasn’t around to hear it. He was probably back in the living room, with the book he was reading. I didn’t say anything. Instead, I went back to the counter and prepared my mixture.
Gun pulled a chair from the dining table and sat on it in front of the counter, opposite me. He kept on catching my look, but I was intent on staring at the mixture that seemed to be over-whisked already. “Tay,” he called, his voice softer now. “How long are you going to play house with him?” I dropped the bowl I was holding and the clang it made was loud enough to attract Hin from the living room. Fortunately, it didn’t break. “Te, everything okay?” Hin said cautiously as he looked at me, at Gun, and back at me again. I forced a smile and said, “Yes, Hin. Gun and I were just having a private chat.” Hin lingered and finally went back to the other room.
“And he even calls you that nickname,” Gun commented. “Tay, you should stop this.”
“Why are you here?” I snapped. He didn’t flinch at all. He probably expected that we’d come to this. “Haven’t you and your boyfriend cut me off from your life? Haven’t I stopped being your friend?”
“That’s unfair, Tay. You were the one who told Off to leave you alone.”
“And nobody even bothered to check up on me?”
“I did, didn’t I?!”
“Yeah, in the first month or so. Then you stopped messaging me. Did your boyfriend tell you to do that?”
“Tay. We’re just concerned.”
I hate it when Gun’s voice softened to this seemingly concerned, but condescending tone. He even looked at me pitifully. Gun and Hin were best friends, alright. They had that same look. I remembered that doleful eyes filled with pity when he was leaving for Italy.
“Tay,” Gun started again after a long silence came between us. “I talked to New and he said he’s willing to talk to you about this. I told him the situation and—”
“You what?!” I shouted.
“This is for your own good. You’re becoming too obsessed with this guy.”
This time, the bowl got broken when I threw it to the floor in rage. I heard Hin ran towards the kitchen, but before he could speak, I cut him off. “Hin, please!” I yelled. “Gun and I are having a private conversation. Leave us alone.”
“But, Te—”
“New!” My voice was louder than I wanted it to be and that startled him. He left the kitchen with his head down.
I picked up the shards on the floor and threw it loudly on the kitchen sink. The brownie mixture was sticking all over the place, but I left it there for now.
“Don’t you want me to be happy? Huh, Gun?” I said.
He still had that same pitied eyes and I hated it.
“I do, but not this way.”
“Gun, I love him.” I was exasperated. All my rage was drained out of me and it left me feeling terribly exhausted.
He reached for my hand and looked up at me. “You don’t love him. You love the memory of him. You love who he reminds you of. But not him—not really him.”
My face felt raw and wet because of the tears. I was gasping and crying. Gun stood from his chair, walked towards me, and gave me a hug. He kept on rubbing the small of my back as I wet his shirt with tears. I couldn’t stop sobbing. The pain caused by New leaving me for someone else came back, but this time, it felt so much stronger. It’s as if every day marked an additional ounce of pain and three years later, I was carrying almost a ton in my heart that would never, ever be alleviated.
How do you move on from someone who told you you’re simply not good enough for him? How does someone recover from that? I’d rather if he broke up with me because of external circumstances or something we had no control of. But he broke up with me because I wasn’t good enough. For five years, I tried to be the best man for New and I thought I was. I cooked for him, gifted him things he liked, took him to places he wanted to go to, and gave him my unconditional love, affection, and support. I loved him more than I had ever loved myself. And still, that wasn’t enough. Still, along the five years we’d been together and lived together, he still found someone better than me. I didn’t see the signs. I didn’t notice the warnings. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact date and time when he had changed. I just realized when he had his things packed and told me he was going to Italy. I was totally blinded by my love for him, that I didn’t see anything else.
It was accidental, when I found that he was about to leave. I was in Iloilo for a conference that was supposed to last a week. But certain circumstances cut it short and after just five days, I was on the plane back to Manila. I didn’t tell him I was going back early because I wanted to surprise him. I had a bag filled with pasalubongs—barquillos, napoleones, and his favorite piayas. When I got home at 11PM, he was out, but I saw the suitcases by the bed. I saw the passport, the Visa, and the plane ticket on the bedside drawer. I was holding those when he came home at three in the morning. I couldn’t sleep. My brain was filled with questions. I didn’t shout when he walked in the room, neither did he. New sat on the floor in front of me and then he got the passport and the Visa from me and replaced it on the top drawer. He held my hands and rubbed his thumbs against it, just like he always did. When he spoke, his voice cracked.
“Tay, I’m sorry,” he started. “I didn’t want to go through all this mess. I’m sorry.”
“Is that why you decided to simply leave?” My voice was cold when it escaped my lips.
New didn’t answer that—he didn’t need to, I saw the evidence. He sobbed to my hands and tears were flowing heavily down my face.
“Why were you leaving, Hin?” I asked. But it seemed pointless to even ask that.
I could only hear my name as his crying muffled the words he was saying. I suddenly felt exhausted. I slid down to the floor and sat in front of him. I held his face, but he wasn’t looking at me. This was the first time that New lost a staring contest. It was always me who lost, simply because I couldn’t look at his beauty for too long. I wiped the tears on his face, but it continued to flow. I pushed his hair back and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Despite everything, I still loved taking care of him. And I planned to take care of him every day of our lives, if he would let me.
“Do you still love me, Hin?” I asked. For a moment he stopped crying and looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot and I noticed that the bags under it were darker. He was silent as he tried to find the words, but his silence was already the answer. “I don’t know,” he finally spoke.
I could feel the tears, but I stopped it from flowing, lest my message wouldn’t be as clearly expressed as I wanted it to be. I grabbed his hands and kissed them both. I loved doing that and he adored it, too. But this time, that gesture had a whole different meaning.
“New, I know I love you the first time I saw you. And that love only became stronger each day as I got to know you more. You’re one of the best people I know. You’re kind, you’re patient. You’re smart. You’re loving and caring. You’re always there when I mess up, even though I know I could get tiring at times. You always made sure that I had something to eat and that I wouldn’t miss a meal. You gave me surprises and gifts that I’d forever cherish. You take care of me. And you love me.” I paused. The tears were already flowing and the lodge of my throat was growing bigger, making it harder to speak. But I willed myself to talk.
“We promised each other, remember? That we’d grow old together, have kids. And that you won’t leave me even though I could be really careless with my actions and my words. And that I won’t leave you even though you could be cold and distant. Hin, we promised to choose each other every day, remember? So please, choose me now. Don’t leave. I’ll court you every day, I swear. I’ll bring you flowers and chocolates. I’ll buy you brownies and we can only eat those for days and days until we get stomach aches. I’ll let you eat as many desserts as you want. Every night, we’ll go out or stay in and watch a movie. I’ll make love to you for as many times as we can, in as many places as you want. You wanted to try a threesome, right? Let’s do that! I’ll even let you choose the third person. Hin, I’ll do everything just promise you won’t leave. Just tell me what it is and I’ll do it.”
Both our eyes were dry, but red, when I was done. We didn’t speak for a long time. Hin just kept on rubbing his thumbs against the back of my hands.
“Tay, I’m sorry, but I had to leave. I had already bought the tickets and Kay and I had the whole thing planned already,” he said. “Kay?” I asked. He didn’t reply. Again, he didn’t need to. I didn’t know that you could actually feel heartbreak. I only found out about it then when a name shattered my heart to pieces.
In the end, I lost. All my pleading and begging and bargaining were all for nothing. In the end, when the sun rose, he was gone. I cried on the floor, fell asleep on it, and sobbed some more when I woke up by dusk. I couldn’t remember for how long I was in that same spot, but I thought it was days. Until Gun dropped by and asked my landlord to open my apartment. They found me there, wet from all the tears and sweat and piss, on the floor where New had left me.
It took a while before I got up on my feet again, literally and metaphorically. After he found me there, Gun decided to move into my apartment to take care of me, with Off. I spent my days on the bed, hugging a picture of New.
It took a while, but I did finally get up from the bed and stood on my two feet. But my two best friends insisted on staying with me for a couple more weeks. And they did. We spent almost every night watching movies or drinking or crying. About a month and a half later, they moved out. On the first night alone, I crawled back to the same spot on the floor because it was only then did I realize that the apartment was so vast, yet so empty. The difference that time was when the morning came, I was up on my feet. It was difficult, but I had to do it. New had taken most of his things with him, but almost every inch of this apartment he touched, so I renovated. I changed the floorings and the wallpapers. I bought new furniture and sold the old ones. I threw away the shoebox filled with our five-year long memories: ticket stubs; receipts of things we gave each other; handwritten letters; condom packets; keychains and bracelets. It took a while, but I was moving on. I was forgetting.
Then three years later, when Off, Gun, and I were walking home from the restaurant we just had dinner in, I saw him again. He was standing on the other side of the road and was looking at me. I froze on my tracks and that pain from before came back. Every memory I repressed, every heartbreak I tried to ignore, and every ounce of sadness I tried to dismiss, it all came back when I saw him there, smiling.
I thought, was he really back from Italy? Was he going to ask me to get back with him? What would I say? I watched him cross the street and I noticed something different about him. When he spoke, I realized that he wasn’t really New.
“You’re...Tay...right?” Off and Gun saw him, too, and was surprised. Gun even hugged him, but realized something was different.
I finally let go of Gun. I went to the kitchen sink, took the wet rag from it, and wiped the brownie mixture that stuck to the floor. Gun was watching me quietly. When I was done, he spoke. “You have to talk to him.” I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. But he still called me. I turned to Gun and said, “I know. And I will talk to him.”
It was only later did I find out that all this time, Hin was on the other side of the wall, listening to everything Gun and I were talking about.
Read Part Four here.
 Part Three){kind=link}
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