On A Lazy Sunday Afternoon...

It was one of those days when you just want to be alone – maybe add around 500 calories to that already overflowing jar of calories you call your body by leisurely chugging down 16 ounces of pure ice cream blended into fine perfection that is Javanilla, probably the best fat elixir you’ve ever tasted, with a pack of reds and a nice book, or maybe drive along the fast becoming busy roads of Laguna via the south expressway to tagaytay, something you already consider a roadtrip, with your favorite 50 first dates soundtrack tape (yes, you are among those forsaken ones who do not enjoy the privilege of not having to rewind the tape to your favorite song, love song by 311), with a pack of reds and a carefully contemplated half tank of gas (read: funds are low).

You lie on your bed for another hour deciding on what to do. Then finally, you get up, take a bath and decide to leave your roadtrip to next week after payday.

After a light breakfast made up of reheated leftovers from last night’s dinner and 2 glasses of ice-filled nestea, donning your ‘Ms. Intellectual’ look – black mock turtleneck, glasses and your hair tightly wound in a bun – of course along with your ‘pa-sexy pants’ (the black low cut jeans that magically makes your almost non-existent ass look worthy) just in case, you drive along the almost deserted streets of Better, out to the expressway and into westgate, to the ever memorable Café Breton (Javanilla would have to wait, for now you’re craving for an equally fattening treat, your favorite La Pinay of Breton) with HP6 on the passenger seat (you usually leave more intellectual reads to school days. For days like this one, a light but definitely entertaining book it is!).

So there you are on one of the seats outside, looking like a glutton for fat greedily enjoying your La Pinay (with an extra scoop of vanilla ice cream), eating it like there’s no tomorrow (hello the ice cream is fast melting because you’re under the early afternoon sun!) not minding what the sun can visibly do to your skin as you never really cared about getting dark (you still will look the same anyway). While trying to act demure, reading a paragraph or two from HP6, which you’ve read for the nth time, in between bites, you see him. Your heart jumped at the first sight of his back…you thought he was somebody else but turns out, he just has a really close resemblance to this other person – same built and grunge-y laidback look. He was wearing a striped green and another color which you don’t recognize sweater (though it was sunny it was cool that day) and khaki pants. Pulse racing and eyes inadvertently switching from your book to the direction he was coming from, you try to act like its just another lazy Sunday afternoon (you’re best at that). Much to your dismay (because from where it looks like he was heading, he was sure to hear your heart thumping) and kilig, he sits on the seat directly fronting you. Hello drumbeats!

With your feet on the chair in front of you, reds on one hand and your book on the other, you pretend to read but it’s been 15 minutes since you last turned the page. With your eyes shifting from the overread page 317 to his direction, you watch his every move, alert enough to look away or pretend you’re looking at something behind him whenever he glances your way. This is as near as you can get to him, might as well savor it.

It was as if time stopped. All worries out of your mind you sat there, wondering what his name was. You amuse yourself, while pretending to read, with ideas of how you can meet him. You think of the most daring (sending the server with a free drink for the man like what they do in the movies) to the most straightforward (‘can I borrow your lighter?’ sabay flash your sweetest seldomly used smile) and laugh at yourself for even wasting your neurons coming up with ideas that you know will never see the light of day. Then, as if on cue, he gets up, puffs his last, ditches his yosi and leaves. Oh the drama of wasted ‘what could’ve beens’!

With your Breton stranger gone, you contemplate on what to do next. Stay or leave? But hey, you realize, it’s a lazy Sunday afternoon, YOUR lazy Sunday afternoon, so you decide to savor it. This -- reading your favorite book at your favorite café with more than a half pack of reds and your favorite treat swimming in melted ice cream -- is the main dish. The stranger was merely the cherry on top of your dessert.

So there. You smile to yourself as you think, who knows, that man could just as well be thinking “what is that woman in black mock turtleneck, black-rimmed glasses and hair sexily tied in a knot’s name? When will I see her again?” Seeing him again may be nothing but wishful thinking but he definitely deserves a space on your friendster’s “who I want to meet” field or probably a page on your blog, once you start it. (Mae100605)