Chapter 9 - Best of Friends

It was as if everything happened in a dream.

Eight years ago, I graduated from college and everything has changed. After I got my license, I worked at a hospital abroad and saved some money for my future and sent some to help my parents with their day to day expenses even if they don’t want me and my sister to give them money. They always insist that the money we’re sending them was for our future kids. After a while we we’re able to buy some land at my Mum’s hometown and after two years, the land became a ranch. My Mum always wanted a quiet life in a farm and having her own ranch. It wasn’t that big actually and its maintenance wasn’t that cheap either. But when I was working abroad, I met and befriended with a resident doctor on the hospital I used to work on. Dr. Lance Vergara, together with my sister and I, founded a school for mentally challenge kids which gives us a lot of problems as much as it gives us income.

Now, I have my own house here at the city, far from my family and friends. My sister got married three years ago and I’m single… again. I had a girlfriend three years after the graduation, but we broke up after two years because of some misunderstanding. Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe it’s because I can’t give my whole heart to a person when a part of it belongs to somebody. Aside from change, I believe that love is another thing that is permanent.

I haven’t heard anything about Jeremy or Amanda all these years, and now I received an invitation from the two of them three weeks ago. They’re getting married… today. So, as a good friend, I drove back to our old place and meet the two of them. After eight years of zero communication, it was as if nothing has changed. The worst part of this is I’m the groom’s best man.

“I think I know how it feels,” Lance told me. “I was supposed to be the best man in my brother’s wedding few years ago.”

“What happened?” I asked.

He didn’t answer and just smiled at me.

*     *     *

I’m now sitting at the pews of the church, the girl I love standing at in front beside my best friend. I’m happy for them, but of course I can still feel the pain. I think the pain won’t leave for quite some time, but I want to believe that sooner or later, even if the feeling won’t fade, the pain won’t be that overwhelming.

I can’t help to think what could have happened if I told Amanda that I love her? I have no idea actually. Is she going to break up with Jeremy? If she did, then I’ll lose my best friend. Friendship and love are two things that go hand in hand, but sometimes you have to choose one because you can never have both.

After they exchange their vows and wore their wedding rings, Jeremy kissed Amanda and people clapped. Amanda’s aunt and uncle went to the newly wedded couple to congratulate them, followed by Jer’s parents. People are now crowding around the two of them, but I stayed where I am and I was thinking how to say goodbye, thinking for a good excuse. I was thinking of saying that I need to baby sit my sister’s baby but then I forgot about it when I saw Amanda walking towards me, grinning wide.

“Hiya Ben!” she said gleefully.

“Hullo Amanda,” I said.

“I’m so happy to see you, it’s been so long! How are you? I heard you had a girlfriend? How is she? Why didn’t you bring her here? Are you planning to get married soon? Or are you married already? Why didn’t you invite us? Man, are you working out? You look great, I see you’re biceps grew bigger!”

“Slow down Amanda! One question at a time,” I said. “Yes, I had a girlfriend, but we broke up three years ago, and no, I’m not married and I don’t think I will soon.”

She didn’t answer, she stared at me and just smiled. Her eyes, it seems like they’re saying something.

“And yes, I am working out.” I said when she didn’t say anything.

She put her arms around me and kissed my cheeks, “Thank you for coming. You’re my very best friend!” I put my arms around her too and she added “Nothing has ever changed.”

I let go of her and so did she. Jeremy came and he playfully punched my arm. “You came!”

“I came,” I said.

“You’re actually here!”

“Yeah,” I said. “Hey, listen, I need to go now because I need to go to school.”

“You’re studying again?” they both asked.

“No, what I mean is the school we’re running,” I said and explained what it is.

“This makes me feel like we didn’t see each other for years,” Jeremy said.

“It’s been eight years, actually,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, right.”

After saying goodbye, I left the church and went back to my car. As I turn the key and the car started, I remembered what Amanda said when she hugged me. Nothing has ever changed, I don’t want to think what she meant about it.

*     *     *

Five Years Later…

“Papa!” Beth shouted. She ran towards me, her brown, curly hair waving behind her. I lifted her small body when she got close to me and kissed her cheek. “Papa, look at this. Mama gave me a star.” She showed me her hand with a blue star stamped on it.

“Wow, that’s great Beth. I hope you didn’t use your charm to get a star from Mama. Your Mom wouldn’t like that,” I said.

“No, I answered a math equation right so Mama gave me this.”

“Aw, look at my little baby, growing up like his Papa.”

Beth was my sister and Karlo's daughter; she calls me papa and her teacher mama. Don’t laugh okay, her teacher is my wife.  I met Elaine few months after Amanda and Jeremy’s wedding. After four years of being together, we got married last month. Elaine was five years younger than me. I met her on the hospital when she took her friend whom she suspects that is having a heart attack. Her friend can’t move her fingers and is having shallow breaths. After I did my assessment, I gave her friend a brown bag.

“Ma’am, breathe on this brown bag for a few minutes,” I told her.

“Hey what?” Elaine reacted.  “My best friend is having a heart attack and you’re giving her a brown bag and just saying she has to breathe on that?”

I just stared at her as she ranted on me and other patients looked at me. “Ma’am, she’s just having a hyperventilation. Not a heart attack.”

After I explained what was her friend’s condition is, she just smiled and sat beside her friend – looking embarrassed.

After my shift, I went out of the hospital and waited for a cab, my car had all its tires flat. And I don’t know why. A silver car stopped in front of me. The window was open and I saw that it was Elaine who’s driving. 

“Hey,” she said like she’s some friend I was suppose to meet that night.

“Hello,” I said, feeling weird, and looking at her with a weird gaze.

“Want a ride home?” she asked.

“Uh, no,” I said casually.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know you and —”

“—and your parents told you not to talk to strangers?”

“When I was a kid, yes, but now that I’m an adult, no. I was about to say that you just embarrassed me six hours ago inside the ER and now I’m having a ride home in your car, I have feelings young lady.”

“That’s why I’m offering you to have a ride home in my car because I know what I did. And I’m sorry.”

I whistled on a cab that’s passing by. It stopped in front of her car and I ignored her.

The next day, I received a box of chocolate and a sorry note, and I received a box of chocolate everyday for two weeks. I don’t know if I’m going to laugh or think that she’s one desperate woman. After that, I asked her to come and watch a movie with me. Believe it or not, I didn’t court her at all, and she didn’t court me either. One day we woke up and realized that we’re already in a relationship.

After four years, I asked her to marry me and she agreed. And we lived happily ever after… in one month. Well, we’re newly wedded couple.

*      *     *

Two years later…

“Look at that little angel of yours inside mommy’s tummy,” the OB said. Elaine almost cried when she saw the baby on the monitor. Elaine is six months pregnant and she almost tripped when she discovered it. After her first check-up with her OB, she wants us to buy baby clothes and other stuff for the baby and she wants to decorate the baby’s room as soon as we got home.

“The baby won’t come out in nine months Elaine,” I reminded her.

“I know, but I want to make sure that her room is finished by the time she comes,”

“Her? Are you sure that the baby will be a girl?”

“I can feel it, call it a mother’s instinct.”

She was so excited for the baby. On the third month, I told her I’m going to hire an interior decorator so that we can start to decorate the baby’s room. She objected and said that she wants us to decorate the room ourselves. We painted the walls white and put different colors of mat in the floor, walls, and ceiling, the kind of mat you see on a preschool where kids roll, play and lay.

We filled the cabinets with baby clothes and put a couch beside the crib. We filled the couch with stuffed animals. Elaine always buys baby clothes whenever I took her out for a date. We make sure that we always have a date once a month, and soon I was hoping that after three months after, well have a date with our baby, but then it was impossible.

On her second month of pregnancy, the doctor told us that Elaine has a weak heart and she can’t have a baby. That devastated us both, but Elaine was determined. She wants to keep the baby.

“Elaine, if we continue, it might kill you,” I told her.

“I don’t care Ben. I want to have this baby.”

“It doesn’t matter if you deliver the baby because you might die in the end.”

“Might, there’s still that small possibility that I’ll live Ben, and I want to grab that possibility. No matter how small that chance is I still want to grab it. I want to give you a child, someone to look after you when you grow old, someone who’ll take care of you.”

I kissed her lips and held her close to me, and our thoughts drifted into nothing and let our hearts own the night.