After The Fall GxG)

Chapter 5

Favi POV

I'm now on the L-train going to Brooklyn. I look at my watch and it's about quarter to nine in the morning. Good. I still have 15 minutes to go before our meeting. It's not a bad commute really. It will just take me a couple of minutes. I'm just one stop away from my destination.

I'm meeting up with Kai at the site where our restaurant is being remodeled. It used to be an old Italian bakery on Bedford Ave. Brooklyn before I bought the entire walk-up apartment building and the one next to it.  I'm renovating the whole building actually and merging both ground floors into one to accommodate our restaurant space. 

Two separate entrances for the two walk ups.  There'll be like eight apartments.  Four units on each building and I will be leasing out the 2nd and 3rd floors. But this time, I'll put elevators for easy access and marketability.

The entire first floor will be Kai and I's restaurant.  I've asked her to move in on the second floor of the first apartment building if she wants. 

She and Sab can have the entire floor of the walk up.  Meaning they can occupy two units and will have the contractor renovate it into a one unit flat with probably three bedrooms and two bathrooms.  I'm thinking of doing the same on the third floor and make it into my own space. 

I look at the people inside the train, some are standing and holding on to the overhead rails; while others are seated on the long benches on the side of the train.

People of different races, shapes, color, age, sizes and social status converge on trains like this. It's like the social equalizer.

Everyone's on equal footing inside this loud car. Some are going to work, some going home after their shifts, some are visiting friends and family and some I'd assume are tourists.

As I get off the train and into the platform, I made my way up the stairs and onto the busy streets of the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. I make my way on N 7th Street going towards Bedford Ave. to buy some of my favorite bagels before going to the restaurant.

I'm still hungry. Although I've had a croissant that Elle left for me at the table with coffee and orange juice as she was rushing off earlier to go to work, I'm still famished.

I bought 2 poppy seed bagels with cream cheese and lox and two cappuccino to go. I'll give the other one to Kai so we can have breakfast while having that meeting.

As I enter the renovation site, Kai is there already laying out plans on a make shift table on the left side corner of the restaurant.

I look around the place and it's still bare. It needs paint, light fixtures and other finishing touches. I zone in on Kai and walk towards her.

Kai is a tall, lean, sexy morena beauty with long wavy jet black hair. Her jaw and cheekbones are so defined that she's always mistaken for a model. Dagdag mo pa yung maangas niyang aura, na akala laging nasa runway ang dating. Fierce. That's one word to describe my other best friend.

She's a stem (stud femme) lesbian and she comes from a prominent family of restaurateurs in Manila. We met in culinary school in Turino in Italy years ago. We clicked and became great friends.

We're super close and super lambing din niya. That's why people think na were a couple.  Lalo na when we go out just the two us. Sa Italy nga daming naka lagpas na girls kasi they thought we're together. Dami din panghinayang ni Kai doon. She calls me taco whacko pag wala siya nakaka flirt every time we go to a club.

That's why on our last year in Italy, talagang every time we went out clubbing, she'd leave me by the door and go on her own in pursuit of the next Italian dish—in her own words—that she's tasting that night.