Stuck in Love

Chapter 30

Am I dreaming? I thought.

That is so good for a dream, yet it’s also too good to be true. Sandro is here on my birthday. He’s strumming that guitar with our high school band.

“Every time our eyes meet, this feeling inside me…is almost more than I can take,” he sings.

My heart beats faster than it ever has been in the past few minutes. Seeing him face to face during the most unexpected time is the best surprise. But what is he doing here? He’s in Australia. How come…

It rattles my mind. But I’m tongue-tied and I cannot move a muscle. All I know is he’s singing in front of me and the whole crowd. He’s staring straight at me and I feel the sensation from his voice. Then I recall his last words in the video, “Can I just put my message in a song?”

What does he exactly mean? Is this his message to me?

“I’ve never been this close to anyone or anything. I can hear your thoughts, I can see your dreams…I don’t know how you do what you do. I’m so in love with you. It just keeps getting better…”

He’s what? He’s so in love with me? “I don’t understand.”

But the words of the song and how he sings them, they pierce me. It’s full of emotions and passion. It’s like I can see through his heart and hear the words it beats. This is a complete astonishment. My chest just wants to explode in agitation. But what’s weirder is that I happen to imagine the moment we’ve spent in his every line.

“The smell of your skin, the taste of your kiss, the way you whisper in the dark…”

He slowly steps down the stage and walks closer and closer to me.

“Your hair wrapped around me, baby you surround me. You touch every place in my heart.”

He looks behind me. I take the glimpse of the screen. There are pictures of me including some I didn’t know were taken. Stolen shots. The Binondo trip, the day I overslept after I rescued him from the bar, the play rehearsals, the Tagaytay trip, the moment he saw me ordering at the coffee shop, the day he caught me writing his name on my notebook, the technical dress rehearsals, and the moments I didn’t know he was watching me before he left for Australia. There were a lot of them.

“What is all of these,” I mumbled in amazement. My tears are starting to build up on my eyes. I want to cry but I hold them back. I bow my head and when I look up, he’s already facing me and we’re a meter apart. Are you really…in love with me? Since when? How? And why? I need some explanation.

“I want you for the rest of my life, here by my side, forever and ever. Every little thing that you do. Oh, every little thing that you do…baby I’m amazed by you…” he ends the song.

I wait for him to speak first. But his mouth is shut and this eye-to-eye contact with him is…heating me up. The crowd is yelling but I don’t mind them.

I speak first, “What are you doing?”

He takes a deep breath. “Happy birthday.”

“Is this some kind of a joke?”

It took him a few seconds before he answers, “No, Liz. This is no joke.”

The first tear falls from my eye. I quickly wipe it away. “Then what is this? The video, the surprise appearance, the song number, the pictures? God, you really are a stalker!”

“Yup! A professional one. And a good photographer,” he smirks and I get irritated with that humor because he gets too cute again. Ganu’n naman siya, eh. ‘Pag naho-hotseat, ang hilig magpa-cute.