For Every Tear

For Every Tear 

It’s a chilly Friday evening at Starbucks Katipunan. I straightened my collar. I was dressed unusually well that night. I was alone on my table in the smoking area, watching everyone around me reading their books, staring blankly at their laptops, or conversing with their friends. I was comfortable staying in the smoking area, although I never got around to puffing a stick. I resent the taste of nicotine. I just enjoyed the breeze outside, despite the polluted Katipunan air.

  I looked around. On the other table was a man about my age. He was glancing at his mobile phone from time to time and was surveying the area. He must be waiting for someone. I did the same thing. I reached for my pocket and checked my phone. There was still no message. Disappointed, I put my phone back into its place.

After a few more minutes, I realized that waiting this out was rather pointless. I grabbed a book from my bag and started reading.

“Excuse me,” a voice called out. It was a high pitched voice, that of a woman. Suddenly, I felt a surge of uneasiness. I turned to face the person.

“May I borrow this chair?” To my relief, she was not the one I was waiting for.

“I’m sorry,” I replied, letting out a sigh. “I’m expecting someone.”

“Oh,” she said, slightly embarrassed. “Sorry.”

She turned and walked away from me. When I shifted my attention back to my book, I heard my phone ring. Checking who it was, it read, “Hao Min”—my wife.

“Hello?” I said, speaking in Chinese. “What is it?”

“Daryl,” She said, in a semi-serious tone. “Where are you?”

“In an office meeting. I’m sorry for staying past office hours, but we’re in a tight crisis here. I’ll tell you about it when I get home. Anyway, I have to go. I’m sorry for not telling you earlier.”

“Alright,” she submitted. She was never a nagger, and that pleased me greatly about her. “I’ll prepare food for you when you get home. Don’t stay out too late. Bye.”

After putting the call down, I heard another voice. It was a distant, and yet a familiar voice; a voice I will never forget. It was a voice I would take with me to my grave. Miriya is here—finally.

“I’m sorry for being late!” she called, catching a sigh between her words but sounding sweet, still. Her hair was in its typical unruly state, but she was still beautiful.

“It’s okay,” I tried to contain my laughter. “You weren’t that late.”

She pouted as she sat down the chair opposite mine. “Damn traffic.”

Her appearance was not different from how she had always looked in the many years that I have known her. Her hair was the same as ever, long, brown and curly. Her very light skin still bore the same radiance that it had since I met her. Miriya was the same half-American, half-Filipino woman, although the glow of her youth had long disappeared from her grasp.

She grabbed a brown wallet from her black handbag and excused herself to buy a drink. As she walked towards the counter, I thought to myself: So now what. She’s here; I’m here. I was unusually nervous. Miriya has been my closest friend for the past twelve years. I know her well. We spent three years in college dating, until the time came when we had to go separate ways. We broke up for reasons that were out of our control, and so we never failed to keep our friendship intact. Nine years have passed since the day of our graduation. Too much has happened. I was a successful businessman; she was a successful author. She has written a few novels, and although I despise reading, I have gotten around to reading everything she has ever published—twice.

She came back with an espresso. As she sat down, she smiled, although her eyes were showing obvious signs of strain—she has been crying for a while.

“You just came back from the hospital?” I asked her, after sipping from my coffee. Her smile instantly melted away. She shook her head away from my direction. 

“Yes,” she replied. “I’m glad that I did. At least, for one last time, I was able to see him, before—”

She cut her sentence off. She then took a cigarette from her pocket and lit it up. She puffed.

“I’m sorry,” I told her.

“Don’t apologize. It’s no one’s fault that he is… he is…”

“Dead.”

The moment I uttered that word, tears suddenly fell from her eyes. She didn’t care about how many persons would see her when she cried. Avoiding my face, she looked at some random point in a far off place, to the direction of our alma mater.

Six years after I broke up with her, Miriya married another man. Maybe it would not be right to say that she didn’t love him—but she didn’t marry him for love. She married him for peace. She married him for security. She married him only to escape from me. Unfortunately, though, he died of a car accident yesterday. Miriya called me to meet, and of course, I could not dismiss her.

“I don’t cry because he’s dead.” She said, turning to me with a smile, despite all the tears. “I cry because there is no longer anyone to keep me away from you. Here I am, again, running back to you. With every tear that I shed, I know that I’m gonna return to you again and again. He can never replace you. Daryl, that night… at the eve of your wedding, I kissed you. I kissed you because I was losing you to that woman, walking down the aisle, marrying my guy.”

“—and to resist coming back to me is futile.” Sweet, sweet Miriya. She has always loved me. Everyone was aware of that. She embraced another man only because she cannot have me.

I cannot have her as well.

I wanted to hold her in my arms at that very moment.

I loved her. 

I still do.

~o~

Stars—they mean nothing. They say that it’s in the dark that the faintest light shines brightest, but to me, there was nothing on that sky except the vast blanket of darkness. There was nothing. There was only my misery.

“So what are you gonna do now?” I asked Miriya. The grassy plain was beneath our backs, scratching our skin. We were both lying on the football field of our old school. It has been a long time since we were here. It was the evening of my wedding. We returned to the place where we first met, in the walls of this very school.

“I don’t know,” her eyes were fixed on the evening sky. “I’ll write another book. I hope nothing too sad this time.”

“Silly girl,” I tapped the side of her head. “Stop being so emo!”

She quickly sat up and looked at my face. “Then don’t marry her, Daryl.”

            “Oh.” I sat up to face her as well. “Miriya… You know I don’t have a choice.”

She didn’t say any word. Maybe she didn’t have to. She kissed me instead—and that was enough of a substitute for the emptiness of words.

So many emotions filled me; it was as if there was this unknown force eating me from inside. I felt things that I was not allowed to feel. But how can you resist giving yourself to someone who has given everything for you?

Everything was not enough, though. Everything changed the day I swore myself to someone else—the day I completely lost her.

I remember that day well.  I can still taste the food I enjoyed back then; I can still taste the liquor in my mouth. I can still recall every face, and everything that came along with it. I can still hear the wedding bells.

I still memorize the lines I uttered as I swore myself to some other woman. As I spoke the words “I do,” I glanced over to Miriya meters away from me. She was smiling at me, and it was the memory of that smile that killed me so many times. I shifted my gaze to my family, they were all very happy for me. My family had arranged for me to marry another woman. It was the fate that I had to face—and I hated it. I hated tradition—but I have always been powerless against its leash. I hated my family. I hated my heritage. But my hatred was not powerful enough to let me escape from it. My love for Miriya never won over my pitiless leash.

“Lucky boy, being able to find himself a woman like her.” I heard my family say. “She comes from a rich family of Tans you know.”

I will never love her. As our lips touched, I only felt one person in front of me: Miriya.

Never will I experience her tenderness again. Never.

From that day on, every smile that I painted on my lips was just pretension. From that day on, every tear that came from Miriya’s eyes was just a sign that she will always belong to me; and I to her. Yet we, although together, can never be.

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