Chapter Eleven

I was drunk. You were drunk. We were walking, swaying next to each other, barely holding our sanity.

"Let's take a cab," you said. I smiled at you, giggling like a little girl. Your face was too red. But I stopped when I caught sight of an empty bench next to a lonely lamppost on the sidewalk. I pulled your arm, without another word, dragging you with me as I sat us together on the seat.

"Let's take a rest first," I told you. My voice swirled with intoxication and coyness. You shook your head playfully at me, naturally displaying those irresistible dimples. I resisted the urge to reach up and pinch your cheek. So I took a deep breath instead, staring up at the night sky.

There were no stars, but the wind was cold, so it felt totally right. Your warmth became a comfort.

"I can't believe we're finally there. We're really graduating college," you commented after a brief silence. I grinned wider, leaning my body against your taller frame. I never knew I could be that bold.

It was the closest thing I could get next to you, and you didn't even mind. You just sat there, not moving at all, as if you were actually just letting me take advantage of the moment.

I knew you knew. I knew that you already guessed what I felt for you all this time. Two years without saying anything, two years of just being good friends, but we made no move.

"Graduation, huh?" I then sighed heavily. It took me a few seconds to realize that this might be the very last time I could talk to you this way. We'll both be in different places soon. We might never even see each other again, and this made me feel completely vulnerable.

I just hope we can stop the time for a while.

"We'll finally become more like adults," you said, staring into a distance.

"Adults," I echoed back. But I didn't feel like I wanted to be one.

I sneaked a glance in your direction and caught you looking at me. And maybe it was the intensity of the moment. Maybe it was the alcohol reeling us closer together because before I knew it, you were already moving your head and leaning down towards me. Our faces barely touched, your nose against mine, and I was immediately pulled into a trance by your intense gaze.

"You'll never forget me, right?" you softly asked. Your face was wearing a sweet expression. And I subconsciously nodded, expecting nothing else, even when I didn't exactly understand what you meant by those words. How could I even forget about you? How could I ever let you go?

You have been the only guy in my mind and I really didn't know how to put a lid on these feelings I had been keeping for you.

And somehow, amid the silence, you slowly closed the distance between us. Then, you started kissing me... shocking me—melting me.

My mind instantly went blank. My body, as if possessed, even moved on its own. I eventually basked in the taste of your lips, hoping that this would never have to end. And perhaps it was the best kiss I ever had... The first and last kiss we ever shared.

And I did what I could just to make it last.

I’m sitting on a table for two. Formal, candlelit dinner. A little too enticing and cozy for a common evening. A singer starts singing, her voice reverberating in a soulful comfort through the speakers, with a faint piano accompanying her under Carpenters’ “Close To You” at the center podium of the restaurant.

I was enjoying myself in a red dress, looking back, laughing at the handsome smiling face of Neil Florence, a slowly-getting-famous novel writer whom I have been seeing lately, as he talks me over the subject of relationship at our age. He was making this witty sarcastic comment about the absurdity of love. Irony, in fact, to the person who is actually getting paid for writing romance as his job. I could not believe he was even appalled about it.

“I don’t get it,” he tells me with this frown and a lopsided smile on his lips, “People get so easily swayed. One minute, they’d be having alcohol-induced sex all night, then the next thing you’d know, they’d be moving in together. Complete cohabitation--conjugated life and such. Then, what? Engagement? Marriage? And all, over just the span of three months!”

I snorted incidentally, couldn’t help it, and laughed out loud at his comical expression. Faces turn at our direction to the noise being summoned.

“Three months!” he emphasizes, his eyes getting rounder, ignoring the growing attention we’ve been getting, “Imagine that! It’s crazy! Irrational and emotionally exaggerated, don’t you think?”

I shook my head back and took my time to let my laughter die down before I gulp a big portion of my drink. “Well, that’s the thing about love. You do things you don’t expect you’d do when it comes to it.”

Neil chuckles, shaking his head, “Yeah. right. I don’t even want to imagine what it’ll be like. But what do you think? How can you say that it’s love? When do you think it’s time? When do you say, ‘Oh, god. This is it. This is the person I am looking for. This is the person I want to be with’?”

I paused, still chuckling, mulling over his words while thinking for a good answer. And honestly, for someone a bit inexperienced like me, who had only come and gone over a couple chances of nearly-falling-in-love-but-didn’t-go-through-it, I don’t think I have the best judgment to this.

“I don’t really know,” I say after a while, shaking my head while I play the rim of my glass with my thumb. “I’m not really sure. I can’t say I’m an expert. But you. What do you

say about it? Considering that words are much your forte compared to me. You, with your very clever way of describing things about love. What do you think about it?”

“Honestly?” his eyebrows raised and he smiles wider, “I think it’s when you finally looked at the mirror and see the face of that person on your reflection.”

That made me laugh more harder, and I considered that a good one. “Maybe.”

“Yeah, or it’s when you begin feeling so exhausted, so tired of that person, that one night you’re just gonna explode, nose flaring, eyes so wild, and all you got to say is; ‘I can’t take this anymore! I don’t want to do this anymore, I’m tired of picking up your undies on the bathroom floor after you take a shower at night’, but still…”

I watched him demonstrate his words with our loud guffaws surrounding our table until he sighs, “You still end up having hot make-up sex later until morning.”

“I could imagine,” I say back, exhaling and biting my cheek to keep the laughter inside.

“Or maybe,” he adds again, “It’s when that person keeps saying the wrong things, keeps hurting your feelings but in the end… You still want to forgive that person. No matter how many shortcomings that person had or how many times that person have to messed up things between the two of you. You still… Keep that person.”

“Might be true,” I commented.

“Crazy. Unreasonable. But it’s love, right?”

I smiled, “Must be. Scary to think that love is just like mental masochism.”

“Exactly,” Neil agrees, chuckling and then he gestures out to me, “So, what do you say? Opinion? Violent reactions about this absurd conclusion?”

I sigh, still letting my chuckles play between the two of us. And I pause for a while as I let my eyes drift away, skimming to what was happening around us. The singer on the podium, the waiter carrying a tray, a family eating few tables back and another couple from a near distance. I stopped, and was suddenly caught by the sweet display of affection between the last scene. Almost same candlelit dinner as we are having. The old man was leaning over the table, reaching out his hand to wipe the side of the lips of the old woman across him, with his thumb. I watch him as he slowly smiles, as if he’s sharing an inside joke with her, then he lays back to his seat, a happy crinkle in his eyes. And that’s when I finally got my answer.