December’s July

It’s almost 7:30 PM. I look around the restaurant and try to make sense of the flood of conversations from tables aside from mine. A couple sitting across mytable looks like they are celebrating an anniversary. They look lovely: the man is in a dark blue suit complementary to the woman’s choice of a cream-colored dress that runs down to just a little below her knees. They exchange glances in a way one would deem that they are truly in love. How his eyes are fixated on her while she says some things that are barely audible in my side, no matter how simple the gesture is, may just be a proof of an honest, unadulterated love for the other.

The restaurant is quite busy today. I chose this as a meeting place because there wasn’t much of a commotion when I last visited about a few months back. It was a weekday back then, a warm Thursday. This Thursday was warm too, and a bit harsh on that note. However, there’s so much more people now, just like how there’s a a huge crowd waiting for a grand opening, a major event, a revelation of some sort. It is to me, just that. A night I would remember for the rest of my life. A grand revelation.

If she would just show up.

I met her six years ago. An online meeting would not be considered an actual meeting, but I did get to know her over a Domo and a piano. I still wonder how I got her to talk to me, because I rarely get people to talk to me over electronic chats. I have this uncanny gift of making a woman hate me in the first 30 seconds of a conversation. I’m always guessing she just didn’t have anyone to talk to a lot of times.

I was a better option than, maybe, talking to a wall.

She likes reading books. Sometimes I would catch her in the middle of reading one. I loved how she would sometimes answer my call when she’s about to eat. There is something about her telling me that she would have another McDonald’s burger and fries or a Jollibee burger steak for breakfast, lunch or dinner that made me want to come over and cook a decent meal for her. She sometimes draws that feeling out of you, like you would want to take care of her.

I think I was a friend to her. I like to think I am. We had a couple of fights, mostly me just forgetting that despite how tough she acts, she can be fairly sensitive to words aimed to mock or hurt her, even jokingly. I went too far a good couple of times, which made me try harder to make things a little better with her, at least with my words.

Sometimes, weeks and even months will pass before I talk to her after the last. Maybe it’s just me taking the notion of “absence makes the heart grow fonder” to heart but, in truth, it’s just me being lazy or too engrossed in a video game that I forget to talk to anyone. I would then pop out of nowhere and say something crazy to her and indeed, like a good friend, she would talk to me like it was just yesterday.

The clock ticks. It has been an excruciating 2 hours of wait. There aren’t that many people now. 9:30 is usually the time people go to sleep on a weekday in the big city. I was starting to worry that I may just have wasted one of my rare days off waiting on this mahogany chair that’s starting to feel a little uncomfortable. It wasn’t a pleasant company for the past 2 hours.

I was about to pass out. 9:30. I usually sleep at 8pm. It is way past my bedtime and I’m feeling really sleepy. I was tired from the long trip coming here and the porterhouse steak I ordered just made the idea of sleeping in the table a lovely one. I pushed the plates aside, and started to doze off. Yeah, I do that.

“So…tutulugan mo ako? Dito mismo?”

I looked up at her with a pout. It was the first time I saw her face; that pale, pretty face in that delicate, small frame of hers. December 17, 2017. A day that would go down on history…at least in mine. I looked around and there was no one else aside from the staff probably impatiently waiting for us to get the hell out of there.

“Hi…July…”