Muli (An Agnes-Jerry fic)

PROLOGUE

It's 10 AM and there are other things Agnes should be doing.

For one, she should be arriving by this time to a brunch meeting with an important client, which they had to set on a weekend after postponing it a few times. There are files she was planning to pick up from the office after that. And then she was supposed to drive to her mom's place, where she's spending the rest of the weekend break.

Yet there she sits at her work desk at home, still in an oversized button-down shirt she loves sleeping in, feet up on the swivel chair. Her glasses ride halfway down the bridge of her nose, a mug of steaming coffee - her third - cupped in her hands.

She hasn't slept.

She pries a hand away from the mug and grabs the mouse, guiding the cursor back to the 'Friend Requests' icon on Facebook's blue bar. She lets the cursor hover over the first name on the list as she thinks. For the nth time. Confirm or Not Now.

It should be an easy choice to make.

But she hasn't slept. And it's David, who she bumped into on the way out of work last night.

Yes, her former boss David. "Siya ang nakakita ng potential ko sa sales" David. "You know how I feel about you, Agnes" David. Friendzoned David. Then fallback David, "Can we start over?" David, boyfriend and (eventually) husband David...

Ex-husband David for the past six years.

It would've been fine, except that bumping into David again after a few years meant also meeting his two little girls and his new and younger wife, whose maxi dress couldn't hide the bump announcing another one on the way.

That would've been okay, too, but seeing it in the flesh was something else, because it meant being told about the family that once was hers, too, as his wife looked on and with a daughter clasping each hand, just as they were planning many moons ago.

It meant seeing him happy again, the way he was before their troubles got in the way. It meant looking at the life she could've had - that she dreamed of having - with him, knowing that she realized it with someone else.

She wanted to be glad for him, and in a way she is. But to know that the fault lies in her end sucks. That she was never really able to give David back all that he had given her, that she held back. That it was her own undoing.

She clicks the icon again for the list to disappear. Then her eyes fall on the status bar.

"What's on your mind?"

What a dangerous question to be asked when you're on your third cup of strong brew.

I thought I was okay. And then you prove me wrong.

She clicks 'Post' and sighs as the status appears on the News Feed. On a normal day, with a normal mindset, she wouldn't have done this (she doesn't believe in being emotional online, either), but it does feel good.