005 The Answer Is Yes

She got the signature she wanted.

I wouldn’t have come out for a coffee with Mateo, if I didn’t see how he smiled at that girl, knowing that would get her all smitten before he signed on her white hat. The same old womanizer, as usual. I needed to get him out of there before he hit on every one of my smitten colleagues.

What to do when you have a peacock as a best friend?

“I can’t believe you really married that iceberg,” Mateo lets out a plaint, grinning at me over his caramel cappuccino. His is just like his favorite -- sweet but poisonous. Except unlike his coffee, he doesn’t make you fat. He steals your heart.

Damien has his coffee only black.

“Same here. Can’t believe you actually became the big star you always said you would,” I taunt back, “Cheap soap opera?”

“Blockbuster movie!” He protests with a huff, but his fake pout couldn’t hide his gloating grin, “A little golden man sitting in my house right now, the real deal.”

I cock my eyebrows, and that frowns him again.

“Just this year! Seriously? Didn’t you watch the Oscars every year?” He rolls his eyes exaggeratedly, “Where was the girl who told me to meet her at Hollywood?”

I let out a light laugh at my old self. It feels like another life now.

Even if I saw the news, I probably have forgotten. But I guess I did say that. At one point in my life, I wanted to be an actress. I thought it was really cool to experience all sorts of different lives through different characters, laugh their laughs, shed their tears.

By one point, I mean my whole life until I met Damien. He knew he was going to be a doctor, and attending the same classes with him was the closest I could get to him.

“You told me you were going to LA,” Mateo snorts sourly, “and guess what I found there?”

“Gold?” I play cute. A harmless smile with innocent curiosity. He tries to throw a sharp glare, but it turns into a laugh with a sigh in the middle.

We were going to chase our acting dream together, then I texted him about my offer from the medical school.

“I thought you were never going to talk to me again,” I try to paint the past years as a joke, but I really thought the silence was going to last forever.

He hmphs. Not answering, he just clicks his phone before shoving it in my face--

[I’m sorry, I can’t go because I want to give myself a chance with him. See you when we both make something out of ourselves?]

That was my last text to him, years ago. How many years is a blurry to me now.

“Who still keeps old texts now?!” I let out a dry laugh, looking away, “...lame!”

He lets out an angry laugh, snorting coldly. I want to leave him hanging, but guilt pushes me to break the ice: “That was just a figure of speech! Did you just ghost me for years because of that?”

“I, ghosted, you?!” He protests with his eyes shocked open. He raises a finger to poke me, but I pull my arm off the table fast enough so his poke lands on my phone instead.

Fine, I might have ghosted everyone in my life when I was dying in medical school. “But you could have reached out, couldn’t you?”

He looks like he wants to eat me alive, and I wave the white flag before he does: “It’s okay, I forgive you in this matter that we should both take half responsibility for. Truce?”

He lets out a loud grumble, falling into the back of the couch, heavily.

“You are so horrible. You are the worst. I condemn you,” He mumbles to himself with a desperate, pitiful look, “Why do I tolerate you so?”

Drama king.

There is a reason that two people so different like us could become friends: drama class.

“Puss In Boots!” I call the show he took that line from, laughing at his self-pity act, “Seriously, what brought you here?”

“You are just like before,” He sighs, shaking his head, “calling out movie names, writing notes, and...loving him.”

Yeah, the notes...That was a new habit, for a whole new different reason. I dared to challenge myself with medical school because my mind was my most proud asset.

But now...

“What’s with that bitter smile? Trouble in heaven?” He taunts with a playful smirk, putting down his phone as he sit straight, suddenly get serious, “The answer is yes.”

“What answer?”

“‘Should I Leave him?’” He sips my words with a taunting smirk, “The answer is yes.”

He saw what I wrote???!

“Aurora, I left because I knew I didn’t have a chance with you, not when you were in love with him,” Mateo looks at me right into my eyes, “And I’m taking your line now: I’m here, because I want to give myself a chance, with you.”