Inked Heart

Here's To the Fools

Warning: This chapter contains vocabulary and behavior that might be triggering to some people. 

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Here's to the fools who dared to believe in love....

Joanne sat outside her old boarding house once again. It had been about 3 years since she moved back to Zambales to help her parents out with their struggling business. With her brother sick and her parents' age, she was the only one to really help out at home.

After her dad got fed up with their situation, he started gambling at Kapitana's house --- which lead to a downhill spiral that Joanne had to witness herself. Gambling meant they didn't have money to pay for her ading's treatment. Not paying for her ading's treatment meant his health declining and their mom's increased stress. After another episode and debt of the treatment from the hospital, Joanne and their mom's efforts to try and keep him alive weren't enough.

With the loss of her brother, Joanne had resented her parents and the toxic household they had continued to build. Her mother blamed the dad for the loss of their son while the dad blamed the mom for petty things. Eventually, (a blessing in disguise) the mom had found out that he had been using all his winnings from the sugalan on his affair with the woman who lived next door to kapitana.

Joanne's mother said to hell with it all and moved back up north to her sister's, saying that Joanne was old enough to live on her own and find out what to do. Her father? She didn't give two rat's asses what happened to him after all the shit he had put her family through.

So she sat there, wondering what would've happened she never left this place at all. What would've happened if she just stayed at this boarding house and worked in Manila, paycheck to paycheck. Would she still be the same naive girl who believed that true love existed and that pain was avoidable?

And so she sat.... wondering...

Until a figure with a familiar scent came and sat down next to her.

"Long time no see."

Joanne turned to see Gio. He looked the same, but less scrawny. His muscles were covered in more ink than what she remembered he had --- but that had been such a short encounter, she didn't even know which were new and which weren't.

"Naaalala mo ako?"

He chuckled, the sound like nostalgic music to her ears. "I can't forget the girl who basically forced me to give her a tattoo. With the look on your face, I'm surprised you didn't come rushing into the parlor."

She held up the twelve pack of beers next to her to show him. "Sabi ng door, bawal lasing... Hindi ako lasing ngayon, pero pagkatapos na ito, sigurado ako malalasing ako dito."

"Well, maybe not as much," reaching over Joanne to grab himself a bottle. "Wanna talk about it?"

"Wag na. Baka sabihin mo na o/a lang ako."

So they sat there in silence, finishing the 12-pack of beers. When it had gotten late enough, Joanne wobbled up and patted Gio in the back.

"Salamat sa company."

Gio looked back to see her walk into the boarding house, something telling him to be there tomorrow.

And he was.

And the next day too.

And the day after next.

And as the days went on, Joanne realized that he had built up a habit of picking her up from the boarding house to walk her to work and then dropping her back off after work. Sometimes he'd come and stop by on the weekends and sit with her in silence while drinking beers. Sometimes he'd drop off food at her office if he knew she hadn't eaten breakfast.