“What are our Mum’s doing?” I ask, breaking the unbearably awkward silence.
“What?”
“In the kitchen window. What are they doing? But don’t make it obvious you’re looking. Andsmile.”
Smoothly, Marlon reaches up to scratch his ear, glancing subtly toward the kitchen window, before resting his gaze back on mine.
“They’re giggling.”
“Good.”
He turns his attention back to the puto on the ground, and his bottom lip juts out. I roll my eyes.
“Get another one inside you sulk, there’s plenty.”
“But that was agoodone, Garcia,” he mumbles, a childish whine in his voice. He tilts his head toward me, narrowing his eyes, “Tell me again why I lost my perfectly good puto over whatever thehellyou’re doing? Which is what, by the way?”
I open my mouth, ready to explain everything to Marlon, but the words get tangled in my mess of a brain. He shifts his head forward, prodding for me to speak.
There’s no way I could make sense of all of this right now in the middle of this engagement party.
“I - uh,” I stammer, before clearing my throat, “I’ll explain later. Just - Just trust me, please?”
This is the first time I’ve ever pleaded with Marlon.
I don’t like it. It makes me feel all…icky, but I remind myself why I’m doing it.
Marlon lingers on my face, and my cheeks begin to grow warm as humiliation floods over me. All my prior confidence drains itself from my body.
Who was I to think this could work, not when it involved stupid Marlon Salva-
“Okay,” he says, with a rigid nod. “Whatever you say, Garcia.”
Wait, what? Did I hear him right?
He must have caught the surprise on my face, because he lifts a brow.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I mean, I didn’t think you’d agree so easily. Especially with me.”
“Well, you’d definitely never do this in a million years if you didn’t have a desperately good reason why. So for now, I trust you, but you owe me the biggest explanation.”
I nod slowly, uncertain of what to say. Honestly, his compliance is the last thing I thought would happen. Gratefulness settles on me like snow.
“Uh, well, thank you.”
I lift my hands, but pause. If we were friends, I’d reach forward and pat his arm or something, but we’re not, so I pull my hands back and wring them together unnaturally. Marlon notices this and rolls his eyes at my awkwardness.
“Whatever. You owe me, remember that. I’m also throwing in some food with that, so you owe me an explanationandfood.”
Leave it to Marlon to ruin a decent moment. With that, he gets up from the chair making it swing again, and I rock back and forth with it as he goes back inside.
Maybe this could actually work.
For the first time in what feels like ever, Marlon Salvador makes me smile.
Later on, after most of the guests had already trickled out and it was just my family left to assist in the clean up, Ria creeps up on me. I’m in the middle of grabbing a serving of palabok into the takeaway container, when her head pops up beside my shoulder.
