After 17

01

Ali and Nic are bound to be best friends.

Because their parents are. Because they've spent almost their whole lives together.

Except Ali thinks of Nic more than just a best friend. Except Nic and his family had to go to the U.S. for some reason. Except when Nic comes back and they meet again, so much had already changed—maybe not Ali's feelings, but Nic himself and everything else.

"Nic!" Ali shouts as soon as she gets off the car and sees the guy at the doorstep. Nic's family invited Ali's for a dinner at their house to celebrate their return home after 3 years. She runs toward him for a tight hug, I missed you. Nic was quite shocked, but he hides it so Ali won't notice.

But Ali always notices, especially if it's about Nic. Just one hug and she notices how he's a lot taller than she is now, when they never really had much of a height difference when they were younger. She notices how he's a lot colder, less playful, more serious, more quiet, and a little distant. But she pretends not to, so Nic won't notice... and he never does.

"So you're gonna stay here for good now, Tita?" Ali asks in delight after she hears Nic's mom mention something about focusing on business here in the Philippines.

"Yes, darling," Tita Josephine answers with a smile and then adds, "Nicholas is going to continue his studies here, too. Same school as yours, actually. He already enrolled." Her smile grows even wider, then shifts gaze to her son who then excuses himself.

"Uh, I'm just—" Ali couldn't finish her sentence but everyone else in the table understands. She then continues to follow where Nic had gone to.

Ali finds him at that spot in the house library, where he always reads books she has no interest about but remembers anyway. "I knew I'd find you here."

"Ali," he calls and it sends a good kind of shiver down her spine. It's the first time she hears him call her name after a very long time.

"How have you been?" Ali tries to start a proper conversation, because they haven't had that ever since he left.

Nic couldn't respond as he usually would, "I have... changed." Ali sure knows that. "We have changed. And I don't think I can have a normal, comfortable conversation with you right now as if we're still the same kids as we were before... I'm sorry."

That's straight forward, Ali thinks. But she already knows that. They have changed. Maybe not much about her, but Nic and everything about him. She's just trying to... reconnect. And she's still trying, so she says, "but we're still kids anyway."

Ali technically has a point but Nic sighs, "that's not— I don't think you understand." But Ali thinks otherwise.

"Look, I'm just trying to reconnect with you," she speaks in a soft serious tone, "it's been years since we last seen each other, and we were... friends."

There comes a long silence. Then Ali walks out, and Nic watches her go away. And the night continues while they keep the silence between them.

But their heads are never really quiet.

Ali thinks of Nic. How he's changed. How their relationship have changed. How she wants to get it back. How she misses him so much. How she will do everything just to be close to him again. But maybe not right now. Then she thinks of when she will be close to him again, and how she's impatient. She thinks of annoying ways to speed the process, but never of giving up and letting it just go.

And Nic, he thinks of the image of Ali's back as she walks away earlier. He thinks of how he might have hurt Ali when he didn't want to. How he's just so annoyed at how she's somehow the same when everything else around him changed and forced him to do so too. He thinks of how he didn't want to leave for U.S. when he was 13 because he likes the life he already had there at that time. How he had no choice but to adapt to a new life. But when he starts to like his new life, he's then forced to come back. He thinks, why do I always have to adapt to change and just go with it? Then he sees Ali who seems to not change at all, and it annoys him so much. Because it seems unfair to him. It seems unfair that she can still be as she was when he can't anymore, even if he wants to.

Why does her voice sound so the same as before? Why is she still so bright? Her eyes still spark and her smile still shines. Why is her laugh still so contagious? Why does she run and walk the same way? Why are her steps still so known to me?

Nic is confronted by Ali with so much nostalgia and familiarity, he kind of hates it.

"Uhm, I guess I'll just see you at school?" Ali bids goodbye and Nic remembers school starts in a week.

"Yeah," he replies. "Bye."

Nic enters the house after seeing Ali's family drive away. Before he gets to his room, his mom calls and reminds him of school. But he already remembers anyway, so he says, "I know, Mom."

He sits on his bed and sighs. Then he looks at his phone and stares at the last message from a certain someone:

Have a safe flight!