Still Circumspect

She sighed deliberately against the uncomfortable silence. The torture was killing her. Her hair was in strands from the onslaught of sweat that had come to her face and he was looking down the strangely huddled crowd dancing to the tune of who the hell knows what. "Some band named 'Sunflower’, is that what they call it?" she thought, finding some weird conversation-starter to stop this gestalt of frustration. But there were no words to express how she felt right now. Stupid? Yes, she really felt stupid. But on how she was going to say it? "Hey, I really feel stupid when I'm with you. Do you realize that?" She laughed peculiarly at this notion and he looked at her with his eyebrows raised. Now, he would really think she really had gone mental. She sensed that she didn't have to say this weird pretense of thought, if needed be. Her actions were more than enough.

"Did you say something?" He asked.

"No, I-I just laughed." she stuttered.

"You laugh too much." He shrugged and looked at the crowd once more.

'Do I?" she gazed at his sideward silhouette.

He smiled; his eyes boring down below, onto the raucous of people. She imagined if this same pair of orbs would bore at her eyes.

"Look at the audience over there. They dance like it's the end of the world." He pointed somewhere down the basketball court where there were multitudes of people banging themselves on every bit of space they see. The band the school had hired was making the crowd wild. She eased at this and smiled.

"Bit like a rock concert this is turning out to be." She said matter-of-factly to him, while staring at the corner of the court where there were uproar of shouts and catcalls.

"Yeah."

And there was utter silence after that.

The night grew on.

-*-

He imagined she was a short distance away from him. His eyes softly searched her back as she trailed away with her friends. He could still hear her cluck of shoes and her faint voice in his ears. The sound felt good to him.

"You ready for tonight?" one of his friends asked.

He grazed his hair with his hands and told them a few words before running out towards her, silently cursing his sudden desire to strangle someone for this stupid incredulity.

He cut them at the entrance gate. She looked bewildered that he was here. He inwardly wanted to run again and stop until he ran out of air but there was no turning back.

"I just had no one to accompany me back home." He sheepishly excused.

"What? Scared of the dark?" One of her contemporaries proclaimed. They laughed at this and he scratched his head to show he was confused.

"Uhmm, you take the jeepney where I ride, don't you?" She asked.

"Yeah, I did. I mean, I do."

She smiled and nodded as her friends waved them goodbye, some sniggering in delight. They both waited in the wee hours of the night, looking at their wristwatches only to look at each other in passing.

The jeepneys strolled away down the cobbled streets as the lights played illusions down their illustrated headboards. He had read one of them frantically, the sign gleaming at him with colors of yellow and red, and it read;

"Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Lupa." (Love in Plowed Soil)

Classic, he thought.

-*-

The sight of light flickering through the window as they hopped on the last ride back home was the only thing she had been concentrating on. She wanted to forget that he was by her side, that he was looking at her through his glazed orbs of ebony eyes. She wanted to forget everything that was happening. She wanted to forget.

She was fretting all her wits off for words again. But after a moment's torture, she had let it go. And as the wind passed by her hair in a fit, he had grabbed her wrist and told her something she wasn't ready to hear.

"Do you know why things last only a matter of seconds while obtaining it sometimes takes a lifetime?" He asked monotonously to her.

"Wha- I don't think I know why..." She failed a coherent sentence. She was still looking at the window.

"Because love only lasts a fraction of a second and the rest is up to you if you want to continue it." He told her in fast words but she understood it perfectly. It was almost as if it was scripted.

"Is this about something I don't know?" She receded and looked at him and saw that he was holding his cell phone.

"What? No, it's just a text message from my friend. Look, he sent you one too."

Her cell phone beeped in her jeans’ pocket, and she didn't dare took it out knowing what it would contain.

"Oh, ok." She looked into the scenario outside and mentally shook herself. "Stupid. Stupid. Stupid."

-*-

There were two parted roads on the cumbersome Maceda Street where there lay, in the middle of these slender roads, pictures of two estranged teenagers silently fuming over some tragic event. The night was distinct. Only the yellow glow of street lights filled the atmosphere. Unaware of what they were doing, both started pacing in a hurried manner.

"Silly, but my chaperone should've come here 30 minutes ago." She said to no one. She stopped in her tracks and checked her watch. She realized what he was doing. "Why are you pacing too?"

"I've just realized my dorm closes at twelve in the midnight." He stretched his arms and yawned. "And it's already twelve in the midnight."

She looked at him with frustration. "From what I know, your dorm is not in Maceda, right? I think it's just near the campus."

"I- yeah. I mean, no, not in that dorm. I just meant-"

"Why did you go along this far away? What is this about?" She had put her hands on her waist as she said this and was tapping her shoe in fast, loud thumps.

He mocked a feeble shrug and was looking on the ground. When she was not breaking her intent gaze at him, he raised his hands in surrender and said, "Ok. I'm coming clean."

She raised her eyebrows at this.

He got something out of his pocket and let out a handkerchief. "I just wanted to give you your hanky. You dropped this while we were watching that band awhile ago."

"So you went all around with me, just to give my-my handkerchief?" She asked in mock delusion, her tone with a hint of skepticism.

He grinned in spite of himself.

She crossed her arms and studied him. After a while, she laughed hysterically, tears forming in her eyes. She laughed and slapped her knees like she can hardly breathe. She laughed until she cannot laugh anymore.

She looked at him and he tucked a smile in his lips and murmured, "You laugh too much."

She smiled and met his eyes, "Do I?"

-*-

FIN