The Promise We Couldn't Keep

4

TPWCK:
FOUR

…………

TEARS threatened to fall like water on a cracking dam, just that my eyes were the dam, as I walked by the main deserted road to the park late in the night, but I held them at bay.

Deep breaths. Blinking eyes. Deep breaths and blinking eyes. Take a deep breath, blink your eyes.

No use looking like a dead man walking by the deserted road under flickering streetlights—I wasn’t shooting for a horror movie, or a drama. We could be dead inside but there was no use flaunting it to the public because people didn’t like that as much as they didn’t care. Especially crying. Alfunso told me that crying was for women, and a man knew not to drop waters from his own eyes; mom said nothing and her silence might as well have developed a mouth and tell me she agreed with him.

That monster. Why did he have to come back to our lives when we’d barely managed to chase him away a few months ago? It’d taken my mom and I a few barangay meetings, a restraining order, a few broken bones, swollen cheeks, and purple bruises to get the job done, but at least he was finally out of live. Or so I thought. I couldn’t believe mom was even considering whether to accept him in our lives again or not when we both knew men like him wouldn’t have turned a left within this short a time.

If only she’d listen to me just this once instead of ignoring my existence, it wasn’t like I’d wished to be a son of a cheater. I’d no say in what went down between her and my biological father, so it was unfair for me to receive the short end of the stick.

The world should really go and fuck itself. The cruel fate it sanctioned upon everyone, especially mine in particular, was stretching my patience thin. This world should burn itself to ashes.

Only a few people were in the park when I got there: two guys laying on the grass, a family packing up their belongings while the kids goofed around, and the last person I wanted to see. I didn’t want to face him, not with my current state because he’d know instantly that something was up. Still, my feet began to bring me toward him.

He was sitting under a cement mushroom, facing sideway from me, staring at his phone, so he hadn’t noticed me. Not yet anyway. He was wearing a tight plain ted shirt couple with brownish above-the-knee shorts that fit his muscles tightly. I bit my lip at the memories as the memories of the feel of his solid muscles assaulted me, while I ran my eyes on him from head to toe and back to the head.

I thought about what I should tell him. I’d no reason going to him, nothing to tell him. I’d no purpose coming to him. I’d probably only end up standing in front of him, tongue-tied and unblinking but frowning or, to a certain extent, glaring because a bitch face was effective in masking my fragility, but it wasn’t like I could just order my feet to stop taking another step toward him. He had gravity, and I was once again in his orbit. This time, the pull was getting harder.

Besides, I should thank him for standing up to me even when I didn’t need it. I wasn’t an ungrateful person.

Yes, I should really thank him. I didn’t think I’d thanked him yet.

Raising a hand in the air, I opened my mouth to call his name when suddenly a petite figure stood between us and blocked his side profile from my view.

“Guess who,” the person whisper-yelled quite joyfully, exposing their stab-worthy back to me.

The voice was a familiar sound, and I hated that the first thing I did was denying to myself her identity.

I knew that voice. I knew the owner of that voice. If sirens were real they’d sound exactly like that: charming, and you’d realize too late you were being lured to a heartbreak. She sounded like him in that aspect too. But why was I still debating with myself if she was really the one there talking to him?