CHAPTER 16: MAYBE THIS TIME

Today is Rev’s birthday and as he said yesterday, our college gang came over to celebrate. They are still a boisterous bunch. I learned that both Rev and I avoided them in the past 5 years. But since it is Rev’s birthday today, he gave them an immunity and therefore, only I received their ‘punishment’. Punishment is when they keep on pulling prank on someone, and today I am the hapless victim. Even until now, few hours since they arrived, Noelle is still glaring at me. Whenever Sheena pass by me, she would still give me small pinches.

Poor me.

“Hey, are you trying to get drunk again?” Rev commented when he noticed that I’ve been drinking my shots faster than most of them. Our shots are going in rounds, meaning after you drink your shot, you will have to pass on the shot glass to the next person. Whenever we drink, we always follow the ‘leader’, where the first person to drink will always set the amount of alcohol in a shot. The following person cannot go below it. And I was appointed the ‘leader’ today, and I always fill the shot glass to the brim.

“Does anyone want to play truth or dare?” Alexandra jokingly asked. Heat crept up my face and glanced at Rev who quickly averted my gaze when I caught him looking at me as if waiting for my reaction.

“Hahaha! Truth or dare! Reina, would you like me to spin the bottle now? You might still have something you wanna confess?” Kristoff is trying to add fuel to the fire.

Is this still part of their punishment?

“Right, since Jean is not here, anyway. Who knows, Rev might also have something to confess, so let’s go play that again!” another one added.

Why are they ganging up on us?

“You ask Rein, let her confess,” Rev joined in. I glared at him.

“Why me? You first, because you’re the guy here!”

Wait-! That sounds wrong. It makes it appear that I really have something to confess. I cannot admit anything. Not this time..

There’s no other place on earth that I’d wish more than beside Rev. I just know that he is the only one I can love. But am I allowed to? I don’t know. The truth is, I feel confused. I wanted to ask him about what transpired last night, but I am also unsure how to react to whatever his answer would be. Not that I am assuming that it meant something, but I couldn’t help but wish.

I sighed. Maybe it is better not to settle the issue right now because I cannot even fight for him against Auntie Eva. I will just end up hurting Rev again.

Well, that was just me assuming that Rev likes me and would want a relationship with me.

“You can’t pull yourself up?” I turned to Rev.

“Excuse me?”

“You seem so deep in your thoughts, so I thought you needed help to get yourself out of it,” he smiled.

Wait, why is he suddenly beside me?

I voiced out my question.

“Because this is my house?”

I hit the back of his head but he managed to catch my hand and laughed.

I looked at our friends, they seem oblivious of us. Whew!

“Hey..” I leaned on his shoulder.

“Hmm..?”

“It’s weird.”

“What is?”

“It’s your birthday but Auntie Eva is not here.”

“Because we just fought, remember?”

“I don’t think that’s that.”

He raised his brow at me so I explained.

“We’re talking about you’re mother. If you think about it, it’s uncharacteristic of your mother to not grab this opportunity to make up with you and prepare a celebration. She loves you so much so I find it weird that she did not come over or ask you to go home.”

He thought about it and nodded in agreement.

“You’ve got a point.”

“Even if you are not in good terms, if it’s Auntie Eva, she’d jump on this opportunity to reconcile. Unless..”

“Unless..?”

“Unless you hurt her so bad.” ‘Because of me,’ I added in my mind. I bit my lip.

“Don’t do that!”

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t bite your lip!”

“Why?”

“I feel envious.”

“You can just do it too!”

“Really?” his grinned while his eyes sparked with mischief. Why am I getting nervous?

He suddenly brought his face in front of mine.

“Wh-whoa! Wa.. wah.. why?” I choked on my words as I try to keep myself calm. His face is almost touching mine.

“You told me to just do it, too..” he whispered, almost seductively.

“Y-yes.. But.. What are you planning to do?”

“Let me bite it, too,” he said and looked at my lips.

My eyes went round at his insinuation.

“N-No..?”

I said but my eyelids are starting to get heavy. I swallowed as I felt my throat starting to get parched.

Then we heard the sound of the camera shutter. We turned towards it in unison and saw all our friends watching us. Noelle is holding her phone and started uploading photos on her social media where we just added each other’s account earlier.

They started arguing about the caption while everyone excitedly looked on. I took the opportunity to slip away and went to the restroom. I know that what will follow is the endless teasing, and I need some time to recover from what Rev did.

Or almost did. Before our friends disturbed us.

It took me fifteen minutes before I decided to return to the living area where they are gathered. Rev was standing outside the door, looking worried.

“Are you still fine?”

“Yeah,” I answered while avoiding his eyes.

“Your face is read. Maybe you’re already drunk,” he remarked.

‘That’s not it, Rev. You just don’t understand and I just can’t explain that you are the reason I look flushed right now.’

I just shrugged my shoulders and walked to the kitchen area to get some water. That’s when I felt dizzy. Maybe Rev was right after all, I might be more intoxicated than I thought I was.

I grabbed the dining table when my sight grew hazy. Rev promptly held me.

“You should take some rest. You are drunk.”

“No, I am fine. I can still stand up,” I smiled at him. “But I will stay here for a while.”

I glanced at our friends. Sheena is singing a song I am not familiar with while the rest are noisy about something they are talking about. I am thankful for the noise, though. It covers up my absence.

I returned my eyes on Rev. He is still staring at me.

I hauled myself up and sat on the countertop. Rev stood in front of me, in between my legs.

“Uhm.. Rev..”

“Yes?”

“Happy birthday,” I pulled him closer and gave him an embrace. I feels good to embrace him, I don’t want to let him go.

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry I was not able to buy you any gift,” I said regretfully.

He pulled away slightly, I wanted to protest the distance.

“Rein, your presence today is more than enough. I am happy that you are with me. This is the first time ever since you left, that I celebrated my birthday.”

My lips parted to ask him about what Jean told me but I closed them back. I don’t have the courage to ask him yet. Maybe some other day.

“Were you going to say something?”

I shook my head. “Just.. Does Auntie Eva know that I am here?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t tell her.”

Somehow, I feel that his mother knows that I am here. I don’t know how she was able to know even the smallest detail of my flight yesterday, but it only tells me one thing. Auntie Eva’s clout is THAT POWERFUL. And she’s bent on driving me away. I was even half-expecting her to show up today, and the fact that she didn’t made more edgy about it.

I realized that Rev is staring at me again and I simply want to melt at his gaze.

“How’s your relationship with your Dad?” I changed the topic. “Are you close with him?”

Come to think of it, Rev never once told me anything about his Dad.

He shrugged his shoulder. “He’s not my real father. He sort of married my mother and adopted me, so that I will have a father in my birth certificate. He just gave us his name.”

My jaw dropped at his revelation.

He laughed at my expression. “It’s not a big deal. He loved my mother, though. Unfortunately for him, it remained unreciprocated, so they had to separate after a year of marriage.”

“Then, where’s your real father?”

“Dead.”

“Dead??”

“Yeah. He was Mama’s real boyfriend. Then they had a huge fight and Mama was not able to forgive him until he had an accident. He died on the spot.”

“The way you recount the story, it is as if he’s not your father.”

“It’s just that it happened even before I was born, I didn’t even get to know him. I was around ten years old when I learned that Daddy is not my real father, so my biological father’s death did not affect me that much. My mother, on the other hand, never stopped regretting that she did not forgive my father until he died. She had a severe depression back then. That’s when my Dad came to the picture. He helped my mother recover from depression. When Mama found out that she was pregnant, Papa was already dead. Then Dad offered her marriage.”

I recalled the things Mr. Montenegro told me before. Now I understand. And I feel guiltier. I can never say sorry enough for the misery I caused Auntie Eva.

I looked down as I felt a stifling pain upon these realizations. I just know, that one of these days, I will be forced to part ways with Rev again.

“I took after my mother when it comes to love. We only love one person for the rest of our lives.”

I looked in his eyes and instantly got lost in the whirlwind of emotions there. I felt something pulling me closer.

Rev lifted his hand to touch my cheek. I automatically closed my eyes. I leaned on his palm and revel in its warmth. And my tears started rolling down my face.

Still with my eyes closed, I sang him happy birthday.

Don’t even ask me why I am crying, I couldn’t explain. I just felt it is tragic how he’s so damn close to me, and I have every opportunity to ask him about the things I wanna hear, and I wanted to let him feel how much I am in love with him, how tightly I wanna hug him, but I cannot. I should not.

Yes, I can probably just ignore Auntie Eva’s wishes. And if Rev loves me back, he would probably fight for me. But if I do that, I will be pitting them against each other. And they are both important people to me.

I know I kept on saying this, but Auntie Eva has always been a mother to me. I cannot cause her more pain.

I was still so young when my parents left in a relative’s care. But they never treated me as family so I had to leave when I started high school. I worked in a wet market as helper to sustain my studies. In college, I took a part time job in a fast food chain. Then Auntie Eva offered me a part time job at her office. Short of adopting me, she supported me indirectly by giving Rev extra allowance knowing that Rev always pays for my school expenses.

Auntie Eva always makes excuses to buy me things from clothes, school uniforms, supplies, groceries, shoes and bags. She would always say that she just happened to buy these things by mistake, so she just had to give it away to me. But how can someone buy a female uniform by mistake when her own child is male.

“Rein..?”

“Huh?”

“Why are you laughing and crying at the same time? Have you gone mad?”

I blinked several times and touched my face to realize that, indeed, I was crying!

So I laughed more. And cried more.