Sunday morning after your first taste of Manila's nightlife, you're probably still camped in your bed after downing six glasses of "yellow iced tea". It's been five hours since you wished me well and said goodbye but your smile is still etched in every corner of my mind that sleep could not quite overcome me.
I have very few apprehensions about leaving and you have become one of them. After four years of hopelessly stalking you with my eyes, I have finally gotten more than the casual nod.
I could only laugh at the memory of my senior year when I had huddled my friends at the top of the stairs shrieking admiration everytime you scored a ball at the billiards table at the lobby below. Or the time I volunteered the JPIAns to sit in your departmental exams and relished two hours of silently gazing at you while you managed to consume the whole period when your classmates gave up after an hour. And how everytime I'm home for a short vacation I would scour the campus looking for your face even for a brief few seconds of unexplained bliss.
Maybe it was my penchant for elusive men that has me drawn to you. Or maybe it was because I see the face of my favorite Korean TV character in your own. All I know is that you couldn't do anything more to win my heart.
But how to win yours was never an option. Somehow, I never got around to asking God for something I know He wouldn't give me anyway. It didn't help that you are my younger sister's classmate or the fact that you call me "ate".
Nevertheless, it brought back the teen in me to finally be able to exchange a few words with you. Never mind that it was over your glasses of beer and my own regular iced tea. Never mind that I found myself already making excuses for such deviation from my own standards of an ideal man. Never mind if it had only been for a few hours.
Yet I couldn't help but wonder what I would be missing after I go. Saturday afternoon chats with review stories over TV, secret glimpses and exchange of smiles inside the church and maybe videoke nights once in awhile. And I wouldn't be there to personally clasp your hands when you pass the board exam or give you tips on your first job interview.
I would be miles away in another continent, chasing after a dream that's within the grasps of my hands. But I will always be wondering, never quite letting you go, hoping that when I come back I could still catch up with what I have been missing.
There may still be Sunday mornings of hangovers for you, but there will only be hang-ups for me, contemplating on that last goodbye, holding on to that face with a smile that would always be my sweetest memory of the man who will never be mine.
