A piece of the past...

"Because I am walking the two of you home doesn't mean anything at all," Troy said to Jackie while stealing a glance toward Danica who was walking silently beside her friend, her head bent.

"You've been walking us home for like two weeks now," Jackie pointed out. She eyed him suspiciously and said, "Have you done something?"

He scoffed and looked at her incredulously. "Whatever crazy idea you have, that's not it."

"You've probably had a deal with some gang and placed us as bets," Jackie continued with her remarkably wild imagination, gesturing with her hands in the air. "George is always safe because their driver picks her up. So that leaves me and Dannie here." She gasped and whipped her head toward him. "Are we in danger? Is that why you're making sure we get home safe? That's it, isn't it? Who are they, Troy? Tell me and we'll go to the police right now!"

He stopped in his track and looked at Jackie with wonder, shaking his head. "Wow. Your imagination is really out of control." He started walking again and as he caught up, he squeezed between them and wound his arms over the two girls. He instantly noticed the difference in their reactions. Jackie did nothing at first but eventually slapped his arm off her shoulders while Danica literally froze. He took his arm away from her and pretended nothing happened. "Anyway, I am just doing this because I do care for my lady friends."

"Don't your parents look for you?" Jackie asked.

"They know what I am doing and they are proud of it," he retorted, glancing at Danica. She looked pale, but she was trying to act normal—if deliberately being a mute was normal.

"This is me," Jackie said later as they passed by her house.

He continued to follow Danica after waving goodbye to Jackie, his hands deep in his pockets.

"You don't have to do this," Danica said in a low voice.

"Come on, Danica, you've been telling me that for two weeks now. I just want to do this as part of my practice to becoming a real gentleman."

She scoffed, but he saw a smile form on her lips.

"I'll get going then," he said thirty minutes later. They had reached the block that led to her neighborhood and she had never wanted him to take her outside her home. He never insisted.

"Troy," Danica called when he was a few meters away. He stopped and eagerly turned. "Thanks," she said with a small smile and disappeared into the small alleyway.

Troy beamed to his ears and leisurely walked his way to the jeepney terminal nearby. His parents would freak out if they found out where he'd usually go after school, but he didn't care. For the first time in the two weeks that he had been taking her home, Danica had said 'thank you'.

PRESENT DAY

Dannie baby climbed off me after Brady tried countless of times to start me up. She was squinting against the glare of the sun while her hands were on her hips as she gave me a look of scrutiny.

Baby, don't look at me like that. It's embarrassing! I should be capable of going home. We should go home ASAP but why the hell are we stuck here of all time?

It was no question that this time, ALL of us wanted to go home. Brady was no longer dragging the time. He was not even suggesting we stay the day. As a matter of fact, he was still trying to turn my engine on with the key. Dude, that thing is gonna break if you don't stop. I'm telling you, bring me to a mechanic now!

"Problem?" the man from the other table earlier had stood up from his chair and approached us. His lady companion was looking at us from her chair, her wide brim hat shadowing her face.

Brady stuck his head out my window and said to the guy, "It won't start."

"Need any help?" the man offered.

"Yes," Brady immediately replied, opening my door and squeezed out. "This old car needs a lot of help and I am not a mechanic so I am willing to get whatever help we can get."

WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY? OLD?! HEY, I KNOW I AM OLD, BUT I AM THE ONLY ONE WITH THE RIGHT TO SAY THAT I AM, YOU FOOL!

As I screamed the remaining of my air out my exhaust, Brady had turned to Dannie and followed her with his gaze. She was walking toward the guy with a shy smile.

"We can surely find a place to help us. You don't have to bother—"

"No, it's okay," said the guy with a big grin.

Don't you dare say no, Danica! I am feeling so hot right now I might die. This is one of the rare moments when I am literally feeling hot—not the other kind of hot because I am that too.

"Thanks, man," Brady said to the guy. "I have not encountered this problem before. I should have brought Tata with me," he added to Dannie baby.

WHAT?! Oh, you are not so gonna get inside me ever again the moment I roll your asses back in Bacolod! Never!

Dannie just frowned at him and dismissed his remark about Tata. Brady turned to the man and held out his hand. "Troy."

"Erik," the man said, taking Brady's hand.

"And this is Danica," the ugly Filipino-American I've been rooting for until yesterday said.

"Hi," Dannie said, taking the man's hand.

"I'm with my wife," he said, he pointed over his shoulder with his thumb at the lady sitting in her chair a few meters away.

Dannie eyed the guy with recognition. "I think I saw you guys before we left for Siquijor. You guys also came from Dinagsa Festival?"

Erik chuckled with mirth. "Yeah. Long story, though. I kidnapped her so we can get away for a while. So," he said, turning back to Brady, "let's get started?"

"Yeah. And if we can't make this thing start in a few minutes, I'll let you go and find professional help."

I'd rather you look for it now, Brady! DON'T TOUCH ME! I screamed when he opened my hood.

"Danica, you can sit by my wife as we work on this," Erik said before he joined Brady under my hood.

When Dannie did not move, Troy looked over his shoulder at her and seriously said, "Danica, it's hot out here. Go sit with Erik's wife while we work on this."

Dannie baby nodded and walked to the lady sitting in the shade.

*****

The lady was already smiling up at her as she approached.

"Hi, I'm Steph, short for Stephanie," the lady with Chinese eyes said. She and her husband were speaking in Hiligaynon and Dannie figured they were also from Bacolod.

"Hi, I'm Danica. I'm sorry about—"

"Don't worry about it. My husband likes to help people and it's not like we're in such a hurry," Steph cut in. "Sit down before you grow another limb."

She took the seat on Steph's right and looked over to where Erik and Troy were working on Toto.

"Isn't he cool?" Steph asked with astonishment in her voice.

Dannie frowned. "Who?"

Steph rolled her eyes. "Of course, you must have thought about your man over there. I was talking about my husband."

"Troy's not my man. He's...he's a friend," she explained.

Steph looked at her with doubt. "Well, you better hurry before someone snatches him out of your grasps."

She shook her head. There was no point telling her about the convent or her complicated relationship with Troy.

"Can I tell you a secret?" Steph asked, leaning over conspiratorially.

Dannie nodded and leaned closer to the lady.

"My husband is no expert on mechanical stuff," Steph whispered.

"Then—"

"Well, that's just my opinion," Steph cut in, leaning back against her chair. "His truck—I call it Meanie with the E and A Meanie—always breaks down on us and he can't seem to fix it. It always chooses the best moment to down. Erik's an engineer but I doubt he knows how to fix a vehicle."

"Then—"

"But I think he can work with yours. Meanie is just mean—thus the name—so maybe it's just her or something. But I hope your car gets better though." Steph was eyeing her with a knowing look.

Dannie just smiled.

"You don't talk much, do you?"

"Yeah."

"Both of you seems to have been on a beach. Where?"

"Siquijor."

"Oh, I love that place. How was your stay?"

She forced a smile on her face. "It was a very beautiful place."

The lady tilted her wide brim hat upward to take a good look at her. "So your trip was a total failure." She sighed and took a sip from her juice. "I know a lot about it, trust me. Been to a lot of crazy stuff one summer with Erik. Long story, though."

Troy looked over where they were sitting and for a moment Dannie expected him to break into one of his usual stupid grins and wave at them like a child, but he did not. He just checked if she was there and went back to work.

"He likes you, doesn't he?" Steph asked.

"We're just friends, really," she answered.

"I know it's not my business, but you know...it's just me being me and I really am dying to know the story between the two of you. I've seen you both the night we got here. You were eating a table away from us."

"You remember that too?"

"Yes, of course. I have an eye for details." Steph took another sip from her drink and looked at Dannie, her eyes narrowing by the second. "He's in love with you and you're in love with him but you are not together because of some stupid shit."

Dannie's eyes widened at the lady's tactlessness. "No, we're just friends and we just went on a trip to—"

"Well, if that's what you want to believe, I'm fine with that."

A long silence followed and Steph shifted in her seat.

"Look, I'm sorry. My imagination was running ahead of me. I'm sure you both have your own stories to tell and I should not have prodded you. I'm sorry."

She smiled. "That's okay. There's nothing much to tell, really. We're just friends."

"You know, I met my husband during my grandmother's wake."

"You did?"

Steph nodded, the reminiscing smile on her face visible. "Oh how I hated him. I hated every word he said. I am a very judgmental person, you know. And the moment I laid eyes on him, I judged him. And I have this stupid pride, you know. I believed I was some big shot city girl from Makati who just came to a province who didn't have anything I needed. But then I just found myself entangled in a crazy adventure because of my grandmother and her lost love." She took a deep breath and sighed with a smile. "And now here I am with a husband and the cutest little boy at home."

"So you stayed?"

Steph shook her head. "No. I went back, actually. I was brokenhearted too. Erik and I did not say the things we wanted to say at the right time and I thought he didn't want me and he thought I was not interested. In short, I came home to Makati and found myself lost. Like...literally lost. I didn't enjoy the same things I enjoyed in the past. But eventually, things came into place and so now I'm here."

Dannie just watched the lady's face turn into something filled with more wonder and she wondered if she'd ever get to feel that same feeling.

"Going back to Makati was the safest option for me. It was the only place of comfort I knew. It was familiar and I thought I would be able to deal with it until I got back to my senses. I never saw myself living in this province. I thought it to be uncomfortable and inconvenient, you know. But I was wrong. I decided to go back because it's the uncomfortable and inconvenient I learned to love and enjoy. You know that feeling?"

Honestly, she didn't. She didn't know what it meant to enjoy the very things you wanted to avoid. She was about to say something when her phone suddenly rang. It was Jackie. "I'm sorry, I have to get this."

"Sure," Steph said with a smile.

"Hey," she said after she answered the call.

"You really need to go home."

"We are going home but Toto sort of just gave in. We're having it fixed now," she explained.

"Do you need help?"

"No, we're good. Dumaguete is not an isolated island, Jackie. We can get by."

"Then you have to make sure you can come back by tomorrow. The catering service has a conflict."

She frowned. "You mean Rock?"

"Yeah. Something to do with the schedule. George is about ready to make a scene earlier, good thing I was able to stop her. You really need to come back. We're cramming here. There are a lot of details to go through. And where the hell is Troy? The prenuptial needs to be attended to! It should have been done weeks ago!"

"He's busy at the moment. Look, I'll call Rock again and fix the schedule, okay?"

"Okay. But get here. We really need you, Dannie."

"Okay."

"And be safe."

"Yeah, you too."

When she placed her phone on the table, Steph was frowning at her. "You know Rock? I mean, the catering service Rocky Food?"

Dannie smiled. "Yes."

Steph gasped dramatically. "What a small world! She's Erik's best friend! And she's the girl who—never mind. It was history. Anyway, I couldn't help but hear earlier...do you have a problem with the catering?"

"It's my friend's wedding in a week but they said there's a problem with Rock's schedule or something."

"Okay, why don't you let me handle that one? That girl has a lot of debt to pay me, you know. She's been missing a lot of my parties."

"No, it's not necessary—"

"I insist. I don't have a lot to do while those two men are fixing your car. So let me do something for a while like piss a friend off, okay?"

Dannie chuckled. "Okay."

What happened after that was like any normal encounter you'd get from a stranger who turned out to have a lot of things in common with you. Apart from knowing the caterer to the wedding, Dannie discovered that Steph had been to a lot of places around Negros. Their talk ranged from that one simple trigger of a common ground to something more personal, though she asked most of the question and Steph was only happy to tell her story. She told Dannie about her grandmother and how she traveled around Negros to get to know the woman, how she fell in love with her husband and the things she experienced during her short stay here before returning to her busy life in Manila.

When her tale was over, she smiled at Dannie with a mixture of sadness and happiness in her eyes. "You know, as I think of all the things I experienced during that time, I can still feel the pain and the heartache I felt."

"How so? Seeing you now, and from what you've told me, you are living your happy ending," Dannie told her.

Steph shrugged. "I don't know. It's not like I am sad, you know. It's just that the pain I felt that time is so real that I can still fill it now. I don't know, maybe we just have this tendency to hang on to the pain of the past. I am happy where I am right now. I have an awesome husband who takes me all of me without question, a wonderful son who's growing up so fast, a career of my own, wonderful friends and so much more. In short, I have this fulfilling life so why do I still feel the pain and the heartache? You know what I mean? Or maybe it's just me and my sentimental nature. I don't know. Maybe it is the same as just relieving the good times, you know. You feel happy. And then you remember the days you spent crying and longing for things that you thought would never turn right for you. And though they did turn out right for me, the pain I felt then is still there."

"Don't you fear that they are going to come back to you in the future?"

Steph looked at her incredulously. "What? Of course not!" When Dannie frowned with confusion, Steph squared her shoulders and said, "Why the hell would I let the pain haunt me to my death? I am happy right now and the pain, though still there, is just...well, it's just there, locked up somewhere safe, reminding me of the bad times I've managed to survive. It's just the matter of how you handle its presence, you know. Having the people you love around you, in my case that's my husband and my kid, makes sure that the pain is locked in the darkest part of your soul or heart or whatever. Who would want to live their lives mourning over their pain, right? I know I wouldn't. It's just freaking history—and a history not worth a student's time in the future." Steph looked over to where Troy and Erik were before turning her attention back to her. "So, what about you? What's your story?"

Dannie shook her head. "Nothing as great as yours."

"Don't patronize me. You know you have this air around you, right? A mysterious one and I have been pulled in from the moment you sat on that chair."

She chuckled and shrugged. "There's really nothing much to tell."

Steph did not push and just nodded her head. "You know pain better than I do. I just know it. I know that those who know more about something are the ones who are quiet." She gave a wink as she finished her sentence.

Before Dannie could say something, Steph was already on her feet. "They're done. Wanna join them and find out if my husband has gotten lucky or not?"

Dannie followed her to join Troy and Erik as they closed Toto's hood.

"I'm just so eager to go home right now," Steph said to her before they reached the two men.

Dannie, on the other hand, wasn't sure where home was.