Chapter 1
“Aww, that hurts,”
I landed on my butt on a wooden plank floor. My hair’s a mess of a bird’s nest and my pajama was on a war of holes I refused to sew. That was the worst trip I ever had. Before, I could prepare for these types of journeys and I would simply step out, neat and pristine. Clothes were pressed. Never a stray hair in sight. Makeup was sleek, complementing my warm tone. Today was not my lucky day.
I stood up and scanned the room. Polaroid photos filled one side of the wall. Adjacent it was a shelf of neatly piled Candy magazines, a complete set of the Twilight saga, and rows of journals. In the center of the was a single bed and my eyes landed on her.
She was at the foot of the bed, staring out the window in the night sky. The light of the full moon illuminated her. She was on a black empire dress that fit right into her, emphasizing her small waist and big hips. Red roses skimmed through its bodice, blossoming into that garden of love. Roses. Oh roses, Just like the love we were experiencing. Its hypnotizing beauty was a reflection of the giddy goodness of falling in love only to prick our fingers into its thorns. Crying in surprise. Thrashing out in the growing pain of what we thought was an insignificant wound. Shouting how the world is unfair. Why can’t we enjoy love without pain? Why can’t we receive what we give?
With the dress she was wearing, I realized where I went. JS Prom. The one she had with him, her first heartbreak.
She didn’t see me right away. She was in a trance with the alternate gleam and tear in her eyes. It was a night of joy but also a reminder of who she was in his life.
“Hey,” I snapped her into attention.
“Oh, you’re there,” she said, nonchalant.
“How was the prom?”
“As if you didn’t come there,” she shot back, her usual remark when she discovered who I really was.
I laughed. Years may have gone by but snarky comments were always a part of us.
“I want it to come from you, to go through those moments again in your eyes. It is like experiencing them for the second time. The good old days of my life. Our lives,” I corrected myself.
Her face broke into a smile and went on with her story. “It was the most wonderful night,” she started and told me how she spent it with her friends, dancing the night away like tomorrow wouldn’t come. She had her photo taken with him too. I could hear the bliss in her voice. But I realized the sorrow mirrored in her eyes. “But this also cemented that I was nothing to him but a fangirl. One of the many girls who admired him,” She recalled how she caught him on a slow dance with Annie, the prom queen in school.
She remained silent after. Her left thumb pressed into her lips. Her brows furrowed into a frown as she continued to stare at me. I know that look anywhere. A question is brewing in her head.
“What it is,” I coaxed her.
Silence stretched to another heartbeat before she started talking.
“I don’t know if you will answer this or if I want to know but it keeps playing on my mind. I said I would ask this when and if you return.”
I waited, letting her collect what she would say next. I nodded letting her know I was still here, willing to answer whatever question she threw at me.
“How is love for you now,” she asked me.
I winced, as if she made a fresh deep cut on my skin. I remember I used to dream that in my 20’s, I would work a corporate job, get married, and have kids. But here I was, experiencing pain not faraway from what she had. I didn’t want to disappoint her but there is no other way to break it to her. She asked. I promised my answers.
“Broken. Just like you.” I finally answered.
She looked at me. Pain danced in her eyes, like diminishing sparks at the end of the bonfire. Tears started to form in the corner of her eyes but she stopped herself from crying. She never let me see when she was disappointed with her future.
I told her my tale this time. How I never thought I would fall in love where I was. I was busy with my job. I was busy living life. I was afraid to get hurt by love. But I did it again to someone whose heart was taken care of by another. “I didn’t realize it at first. I thought it was just infatuation,” I laughed, trying to mask the pain of my adult unrequited love.
“But the thing is, your friends now will stick with you in the coming decades, no matter what,” I continued. “That’s probably the way of fate to make up for the loss of love you’d experienced.”
That seemed to be satisfying as she went on contemplating her future. My present.
“What is your plan now,” she asked me.
“About what?”
“About love.”
“The years taught me that I will not look for love, but I will find it. Just like your first love. Just like my forbidden love. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t expect it to beat at the time. But it did. It is just that the arrow doesn’t seem to hit right for us. We only have to hope someday that we will find the one we need.”
A silence stretched between us with the gust of the wind and mother’s movements downstairs the only things filling in the quietude.
Could we find the love that could heal us like the way we found love that destroyed us?
Or do we go on living in broken hearts, picking up the million shards and trying to put them together?
