Coming home to the Philippines only for several reasons now feels strange, but I make do as it makes sense. My life is not here anymore, not much anyway. But remnants of my heart lay here: my mother, my dogs, and Rina. My sweet, sweet Rina.
"Are you going to celebrate your birthday salubong with Ina?" My mum asked and I winced at the mere mention of her name. Only my mum gets to call Rina, 'Ina' and only Rina gets to call my Mum 'Tita Mama'.
"Baka," I mumbled.
"Sige na. That's the reason why you come home, anak. I know."
"What do you mean?" With how my mum delivered her response, consider my curiosity piqued.
"Lian... I wasn't born yesterday," Her Filipino accent became stronger and more pristine as she spoke. "The reason why I adore Ina is that I see how you look at her. You've loved her since you laid your eyes on her, Anak. I know, because I used to look at your father that way..."
At the age of fifty-two, I felt as though I was reduced to being a teenager once again; someone who just got home and getting a bit of love advice, as if at this state, I hadn't spent most of her waking years trying to recover from my marriage falling out and yearning from a long lost love.
"You love her because I do?" I asked. Wondering if all this time she knew.
"No, I love her because of what she is as a person and how she was as a friend to you, but as your friendship became deeper... I saw. I saw the way that you looked at her—it's as if she was a genie and she could grant you infinite wishes."
My mother rocked her chair profusely. "I thought you'll elope! I thought you'll move to the United States and try to settle down..."
Every bit of every word hurt me like a knife because I felt just how much my mother knew me. Everything she'd been saying was thoughts that used to only linger in my mind.
"I didn't speak of it, because I know that you and Ina are smart women, capable of deciding for yourselves..." She paused, gulping water from the coffee table across her. "I was just by the sidelines, praying for both of you and your hearts' desires. But if you married her? I would still be the happiest Abu alive, whether you guys give me a Beverly or a Niall."
I couldn't bear the pain of the truth that I was confronted with. I loved Rina so much that it was and always has been visible just by my merely looking at her. It breaks my heart because we could have had it all but we didn't; we were too chicken to take a bet on our love. We forgot that it was us who weren't rooting for our pair. We were anchors pulling our love down the sea, leaving us yearning for a life of what could have been.
"Is this why you always made sure that when I come home, I get to spend time with Rina even if it cuts short my time with you? All this time?" I asked, seeing my mother in a different light, feeling a tad feeble and vulnerable at the same time.
"Yes," She gave me her brightest smile, one that I would receive whenever I come home from school or when she would pick me up at the airport coming from New York. "And it doesn't cut your time with me. I've had a good chunk of my life spent with you, Anak..."
"Kung saan ka masaya, Lian, that's where I am, too."
I beamed a smile at her, too, but the difference was tears brimmed from my eyes and I felt a chunk of my heart screaming 'pain!!!' like tiny needles were being stabbed in it repeatedly.
"We were supposed to elope, Ma. We..." My voice quaked. "You were right. We were... something."
Flashback...
"Miss Saigon at eighteen and you were my understudy. I won the Tony, you were cast as Maria Clara in Noli Me Tangere The Musical. I did more of Saigon, you did more concerts. We loved each other so much... distance was just a concept and then we came home to each other's arms..." Rina's sobs were quiet. We were sitting just by the ELJ building, waiting for our respective pickups. I leave for Los Angeles tomorrow, next week, I become someone's missus and she... is with someone.
Goodbyes are glamorous in movies, why must we be confronted by each other's feelings clad in post-taping clothes; makeup so murky it could be deemed remnants of charcoal.
"We were doing so good, my love. How did we end up like this?" I asked. Hoping whatever answer was given to me would wane all our problems away.
"Mahal kita... Lian. Mahal na mahal kita." She said it out loud like a vow; like we were getting married and the bench that we were sitting on were chairs just by the Eyes of God. What sounded like a vow, felt like an oath of bidding adieu. And just like that, my tears were pulled right out of my eyes. "Pero kailangan natin 'to. Kailangan natin 'yung trabaho natin. Are we going to waste it just because?"
Just because. Who knew two words could hurt that much?
"I love you, Rina. I—" I knew it in my core that I had to let the words linger as my feelings try to hide in the gaps of my soul, seeping their way in wherever it was comfortable.
"I know I shouldn't," I followed up. "Just... just let it linger. I just need to say it out loud. So I can... I can take it out of my system."
I could see it in her eyes, the words she has been trying to repress. Her eyes say I love you and I look at them deeply as if to say, 'I see you, I know. I love you. I love you so much I wish there was another universe where you and I end up together'.
She took my hand. "It'll... pass." Two words that might have seemed shallow to others but meant like a vow to the both of us.
It'll pass, she said.
It'll pass, I prayed.
