No Other You

Eric

Author's Note:

Hi guys! 

Unang una sa lahat, gusto ko lang magpasalamat sa lahat ng mga bumasa't nagmahal sa
No Other You. When I was first conceptualizing this fic, hindi ko po talaga akalain na may mga magbabasa nito, considering how relatively small the KathDen fandom is as compared sa ibang mga LTs, pero thank you so much kasi my fic has gained some attention and has stayed in the #1 spot sa Kathryn tag for quite some time now. 

As NOY nears its end, sana po patuloy pa rin kayong magbasa at mag-support nito. Sobrang naaaliw talaga ako sa mga comments nila @HiddenNarrative, @HoldMeThrillMe at ni Miss Judith Dela Rosa. Flattered po ako sa attachment niyo kina Jaimie at Eric and my characters love you just as much as you love them. 

So eto na po. Sorry sa mahabang AN. I hope you like this chapter! Don't forget to follow me on Twitter, @faulkernette.

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I laid in bed that night with thoughts of Jaimie.

Actually, this wasn't the first night that I had thought of her so deeply.

This had been going on ever since that incident by the elevator where she let out the words, "I'm your best friend. I'm just your best friend. 'Yun ang problema natin dito."

So many questions started popping out of nowhere, but the one that kept me awake at night was: what must've pushed her to say this?

For the longest time, I was always the one who saw Jaimie as someone who was more than just a best friend.

Having known her for more than 10 years, I've seen her at her most beautiful to her most flawed, and falling for her was simply inevitable.

I'm going to lie if I said that I didn't expect for her to love me back, but when she told me that she didn't see me the way I did, I chose to respect her decision even if it was so difficult for me, because having my heart broken was something that I could bear rather than having to lose her.

But then, this had to come along. Jaimie finds out that I'm about to get married, and everything starts to change between us.

Suddenly, she seems to be sending me mixed signals, and I'm not quite sure what to make out of it.

We've never really talked about what was happening between the both of us, but one thing's for sure; the situation was starting to get complicated, and I was in a state of confusion. 'Yung parang, hindi ko na alam kung ano ba talaga 'yung gusto ko, kung tama ba 'tong ginagawa kong pagpapakasal.

As I shifted into another position, I suddenly thought about Andrew and his intention of courting Jaimie.

My blood boiled at the idea of it, and it was then that I realized, that I was jealous.

I was jealous because I didn't want her attention to be shifted towards him. I was jealous because I didn't want him to win the heart of her family. I was jealous because after all this time, I still loved Jaimie and I didn't want her to fall for someone else.

But even if my gut feeling was telling me that now was the perfect time for my feelings to be reciprocated, it just wasn't that easy anymore.

Everybody knew that I was about to get married and that Jaimie was our wedding planner.

What would they think if I suddenly called it off to be with her? Wala akong pakialam sa sasabihin ng ibang tao tungkol sa 'kin, but I cared too much about what people would think of Jaimie. I didn't want to put her in a bad light because of me. She worked way too hard to be where she is today and I wasn't going to let all of that be flushed down the drain.

I loved her too much to see her suffer merely because of my choice to be with her.

And Natali... she deserved to know the truth. That I couldn't chain her to a marriage that felt forced, that was more of something that I "owed" her because she had saved me from my brokenness.

Natali deserved someone else, someone better and that someone wasn't me.

I knew this was going to be another sleepless night for me yet again, but at least I was sure of my choices now. It was just a matter of orchestrating everything at the right place, and at the right time.

I wasn't just doing this for me. But for Natali, and most importantly, for Jaimie, so that finally, we can all just set ourselves free.