Work Text:
It started with a phone call.
Sometimes, it came late in the middle of the night. Other times, the call came at the most random hour, like when they were on the couch trying to spend as much time as they could together before he went back to Makati.
Whenever that call came, Sherwin always made sure he answered. It didn’t matter whether he was in the middle of doing something—perusing a document, editing a draft, playing with the dogs, cooking her dinner, even showering. He always dropped everything and tried to answer the call as fast as he could.
He’s never failed to answer that call. Not even once.
At first, she thought it was a work thing. Sherwin was the biggest workaholic she knew, a man who joyfully spent his days toiling with purpose permanently cemented to his shoulders. He never strayed from his routines, hated even just the thought of it. (A fact she knows intimately after a night of drinking and passing out and making him late for a work meeting.) She expected that call to come from an assistant who had the handle to all his schedules and responsibilities, one who he cannot risk ignoring lest he wanted his work ruined and in disarray.
She would later find out that she had been right. At least, in part.
Sherwin’s phone rings again, and she knows it's from that caller because of the specific ring tone. She watches him from the corner of her eye, trying to be subtle as best as she could, and discreetly looks into the contact name flashed on his screen.
心肝
Miffed, she leans away as Sherwin stands and walks outside the room without so much as a word to her. After seeing the unfamiliar characters, she entertains the idea that the call might have been from a close family member rather than a coworker. Maybe she should finally go to that Chinese school he’s mentioned a couple of times, if only to appease her curiosity. (And more importantly, so she’d actually have conversations with his mother that lasted longer than ten minutes.)
She can’t hear anything in the room, not even a mumble, so she decides to let curiosity take over and follows Sherwin into the hall.
“Yes, I did. I can send it to you after this call.” She hears him say into the phone when she’s within earshot and she smiles, a devilish thought popping into her head. With how busy he was the past few weeks, they haven’t had any fun in ages. She wanted to see how long he’d last.
Slowly, she drags a light hand from his bicep, trailing it across his shoulder and down his chest where she presses a gentle kiss. She snakes her other arm around his torso, pushing herself flush against him, and daintily looks up at Sherwin through her eyelashes.
He raises a brow in warning.
She ignores it.
Standing on the tips of her toes, she lands a wet kiss on his neck and tightens her arm around him, but instead of leaning into her like she expected, Sherwin uses his free hand to remove her arm. He points to his phone, frowning, and backs away from her slightly.
She knew what he was trying to say. She knew it would be best for her to return to her room and wait for him there, but he went out for that damn caller again. She’s being sidelined, again, in her own home, for a person she doesn’t even know.
Jealousy burns through her. It makes her stomp towards him and redo the kiss she planted on his neck, confident that he would give in.
He does the opposite.
“Punyeta! Ano ba!” Sherwin snaps, pulling away from her with a scowl. He covers his phone to muffle the microphone. “Can’t you see I’m on the phone?”
She looks at him in disbelief. A second later, tears start forming in her eyes, and she silently thanks the acting gigs she’s scored in the past.
Comfort me. Drop that call and hug me.
But Sherwin doesn’t give her anything. He turns his back to her, not even bothering to placate her with sweet apologies like he used to at the first sight of her pouting. All she could do was watch his back, frozen, as he ignored her and walked away.
“Sorry. No, I wasn’t talking to you. Someone else. Yeah. No one important—“
His voice trails off when he turns a corner, before completely disappearing out of sight.
-
They haven’t spoken in days.
To be fair, it didn’t bother her much. It was becoming their usual the last couple of months or, dare she say, even the entire year. She was used to it. They’ve already gone many weeks with little contact before, but there were also little signs of him sprinkled throughout such periods—a like on one of her new posts during dawn, or money sent to her account when she hints she wants something in her Instagram stories. Little reminders of him that were just enough to push their relationship forward, to keep it alive.
But there’s been nothing at all from him. No good morning texts. No bank notifications. No call attempts.
She bites her lip. Maybe she went too far last time. He prioritized his work above else, she knew that. She promised never to be in his way, and she was doing so good until she let that caller under her skin.
She breaks, fingers already dialing up his number.
Sherwin doesn’t answer until the sixth ring.
“Yes?” There’s a steely edge to his tone that was never there before. She swallows her pride, trembling.
“When are you coming back?” She asks, voice sad and lonely and hurt. All she hears is a sigh on the other line.
It takes him more than a few seconds to reply, if one could even call it that. His answer was short, clipped, like he had better things to do than entertain her whims.
“I’m busy. Call you later.”
The call drops.
Her phone continues to stay silent for the next three days.
-
“What the hell were you thinking!” His glasses were off, slammed into the table a few minutes into their fight. She has never seen him look so angry.
“I get that you’re younger than me. But this—this is inexcusable. You’re not only embarrassing yourself, you’re embarrassing me.”
Her lips tremble and she tries to stop herself from crying, but his deep frown and hard glare only drive more tears out of her eyes. She sobs loudly, turning away from him.
“I was drunk!” She retaliates, but her wailing only deepens the scowl on Sherwin’s face, “You know how I get when I’m drunk! I lose my head and forget where I am! I don’t even remember my actions—“
“That’s the fucking point! You know what alcohol does to you, and yet you keep drinking to the point of forgetting yourself!”
Sherwin paces back and forth in the living room of her apartment. His hair is a mess from the amount of times he has run his fingers through them, the top buttons of his crisp white shirt undone. He hasn’t touched her at all since he arrived, not even a hug, and much less a kiss. Their screaming match had started the second he walked in.
“This is your last chance.” He finally says after a long period of terse silence. “I love you. I do. But sometimes I don’t think you love me the same way.”
She hiccups, turning her tear-streaked face towards him. She knows she looks like shit with all the mascara running down her cheeks. Slowly, she reaches a hand out to him. An olive branch.
He takes it.
Sherwin pulls her to him, tucking her head into his neck. She wraps herself around him as sobs continue to wrack her body.
His voice is back in the familiar gentle tone that he reserved solely for her.
“I’m sorry for shouting.”
Instead of replying, she clutches his shirt tighter. She couldn’t apologize, not when she didn’t mean it.
She couldn’t tell him she loved him back, too, because she no longer did. At least, not in the way she did before.
Unbeknownst to her, Sherwin didn’t mean what he said either.
-
“Behave.” Sherwin whispers to her before they enter the auditorium, “There are people watching.”
She nods mutedly, allowing herself to be guided into one of the chairs arranged around the conference table. People were indeed watching, but that was to be expected. After her “nasty nightclub incident”, as Sherwin called it, he rarely ever brought her to the kind of functions where rigid behavior was a requirement.
She tried not to think too much about its implications. She cared little for formalities, anyway.
She looks around the room. People in similar garb were milling about, faces plastered with practiced smiles and watchful gazes, as if sizing up whoever their eyes landed on. The more she studied the people surrounding her, the more inadequate she feels. Yes, she was dressed in the same sparkly make-up and wearing similarly expensive jewels, but the way that these people held themselves was something she thinks she could never achieve.
Before Sherwin settles into the seat beside her, he squeezes her shoulder. A warning.
She stays seated primly, a fake smile on her lips.
“Sherwin!”
She looks to the side to see an unfamiliar woman (perhaps Sherwin’s coworker?) approach him, and he responds with a huge smile. He stands from his seat and quickly envelopes her in a hug, pressing his lips to her cheek in a quick peck.
“Hello, Ris. It’s good to see you.”
A tiny thought appears in her head at the sight of his smile. When was the last time Sherwin greeted me that excitedly?
She continues watching them, interest piqued.
“How was the trip? Pang-ilang commencement speech mo na ba ‘yon? I heard you’re receiving invites left and right. The people love you.”
“Ris” laughs bashfully. “It was good, as always. I always feel thankful that they want me present during such special events. How about you? How was the visit to Valenzuela? I trust Tita and Tito are doing okay?”
She froze. Tita and Tito? She met Sherwin’s parents already? Then why doesn’t she recognize this woman?
The two continue conversing as if they were the only ones in the room.
“They’re good, they’re good. Kinakamusta ka rin nila, actually. I shared quite a bit of your recent life happenings, if that’s okay with you.”
The woman laughed, “Why don’t I just invite you all over for dinner? Para naman sa akin na mismo galing ang chika. I’ll set a date and inform you.”
Sherwin grins at her, pulling her chair out and helping her get seated. “That’s the plan. Sure akong matutuwa sila mama when I tell them we’re coming over.”
Their conversation gets cut short as the host starts doing a sound check. She thought they would no longer interact during the rest of the event, but it was Sherwin himself who kept leaning towards her and whispering in her ear even as the event started.
Even when the lights were dimmed for certain video presentations, Sherwin continued to talk to the woman, continued laughing and discussing topics that were a touch too personal for her liking.
By the end of the event, she gets a sickening realization.
Sherwin didn’t pay her any mind the whole time.
-
The sun was shining so bright outside.
She puts on a pair of dark sunglasses before grabbing her purse and leaving the apartment. She had a feeling that it was going to be a great day today, and with how clear the skies were, it was basically a sin to stay indoors and not enjoy the sun.
When she arrives at the cafe she frequented, she winks at the hot barista that was manning the counter. The barista was one of the reasons why she loved this place. The good coffee was only an added bonus.
“Good morning,” the barista greets with a flirty smile, “Your usual?”
“You know it.” She says, giving him a smile of her own.
After paying, she chooses to sit on the far corner of the cafe with the best view of the streets outside. She loved people watching, especially during bright and sunny days like this when people usually dressed better and bolder. They were a walking Pinterest fashion board if she ever saw one.
When the barista comes with her coffee and sits on the chair opposite hers, she tries to act shocked. They’ve been giving hints to each other for a few weeks now, it was high time for them to spend a date outside the cafe.
“Aren’t you going to get scolded?” She whispers, making a show of looking around for his manager.
The barista gives her a dazzling smile, “Baby, I am the manager.”
She gasps for effect, even if she already knew the fact. Leaning in closer, she bites her lip and stares at him coyly, “Does the manager offer free drinks to loyal customers?”
The barista laughs. She’s about to pull back when a familiar flash of white fur dashes across the window, and when she looks outside, her heart constricts in fear of being caught.
It was Purdelle and Paprika.
“Shit,” she says under her breath, ducking her head and turning away from the window.
The barista frowns, confused at the sudden change in her demeanor. “What is it? Is something wrong?”
“No, don’t worry.” She gives him a smile, “Why don’t we try some of the cakes you’ve got on display?”
The barista goes off to do her bidding.
Discreetly, she stares outside and starts to look for Sherwin. She had told him that she was sick and wanted nothing to do but sleep in the apartment. She even told him not to come since she feared about transmitting her disease to him, and he agreed almost immediately. He said he had an important session coming up and didn’t want to risk being absent.
But her search didn’t end like she expected. It wasn’t Sherwin who she saw. Instead, she saw her.
Ris. Risa. Sherwin mentioned her name in passing once. A fellow senator.
She frowned. Why were the dogs with her?
She takes her sunglasses off her face, confused at what she is seeing. The dogs were vying for her attention like she wasn’t a stranger, which was unexpected. They took a long time to warm up to new faces, and so their obvious affection only meant one thing: she’s been around the dogs before.
She continues observing the woman. She’s in a modest white summer dress and beach sandals. Her hair was tied back in a sort of half-bun, and her cheeks were covered in a fresh natural blush. She was busy trying to give both dogs attention when he appeared.
Her boyfriend. Sherwin.
He’s dressed in khaki shorts and a white polo shirt, a green cap on his head and his favorite boat shoes covering his feet. On one hand, he held two cones of ice cream and on the other, two bottles of water. He hands one cone to Risa who accepts it with a grateful smile.
The two then start walking side by side with the dogs in tow, and she assumes they’re headed towards the boardwalk that was near her apartment building. She watches them until they disappear from view.
“Which one do you want to try first?”
She looks up to see the barista holding two plates of cake, one chocolate and the other carrot-flavored. She pretends to think with her lip between her teeth. The barista follows the action with an almost hungry gaze. She tries hard not to smirk.
“Carrot cake,” she decides, and when the barista sets the plate in front of her, she finds the thought of her boyfriend with another woman gone from her head.
-
He’s been on the phone their whole date.
She stares at Sherwin with passive eyes, pushing her pasta back and forth with her fork. Instead of his usually stern expression when answering work-related texts, his eyes were unusually bright, his countenance relaxed. It wouldn’t have been so strange if she were the reason he was being that way, but she’s not.
It must be that caller again.
Sherwin continues tapping away on his phone screen, food abandoned and cold. She thinks he hasn’t even had more than three bites. She wants to say a snarky remark but thinks better of it, letting the words die before they leave her lips.
He was always lecturing her about food, about how many children were starving on the streets. The least they could do, he said, was not waste a single grain of rice. He always wanted both their plates clean when they were done eating, but look who still had a full plate a whole hour into their date?
Hypocrite.
She clears her throat. “Aren’t you going to eat? Your food’s gone cold. Is work that bad tonight?”
Sherwin glanced up briefly before continuing to focus on his phone. He shakes his head once, “This isn’t work.”
Her heart drops to her stomach.
“If it isn’t, can you put your phone away then?” She suggests sarcastically, eyes rolling, “Is this even a date at this point? We haven’t gone out in weeks, Sherwin, yet you’re more engaged with your phone than you are with me. Seriously, you really are—“
His phone rings.
She narrows her eyes, daring him to pick up.
It doesn’t even take him a second to answer the call.
“Yes?” His voice is in that tone, the one she thought was reserved only for her. Her heart drops even further down as dread fills her stomach. “No, I’m not busy. Did you need anything?”
She lets her fork fall loudly against the plate, leaning back into her chair with her arms crossed. Sherwin is uncaring of her obvious tantrum, he continues speaking with all his attention focused on the call.
As if nothing else mattered. As if she herself didn’t matter.
“I’m around the area, yes. Anything else? Alright. I’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
He ends the call, pocketing his phone before she could get a glimpse at the contact name on the screen. She has a sneaking suspicion that it would have displayed certain Chinese characters, ones she briefly saw many, many moons ago.
Sherwin looks at her then, probably the first time the whole evening, but the frown on her lips doesn’t budge. She keeps it pasted on her face, its depth marring her perfect make-up. Sherwin slides a card towards her, already standing up.
“Sorry,” he says, even when he’s not feeling any kind of remorse, “A friend asked me for a favor. I’ll go ahead. You can go shopping after you eat, if you like. No limit.”
He leaves. Her frown gives way to a feeling of emptiness, like she’d been punched so many times she was no longer able to feel anything but numbness.
What a waste of perfectly good food.
She stares at the credit card, picks it up, and walks away from the table, ignoring the pitiful glances a few waiters throw her way.
-
The bed creaks with added weight.
She sits up with a soft groan, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She knows it’s probably still the early hours after midnight, way past the time Sherwin said he’d come over.
“Hey, how was work?” She shifts closer, reaching up to rub his back. “Ang tagal niyong natapos ngayon.”
“Same old. I can’t wait for all this to be finished. Kulang nalang mag-Chinese na kami ni Risa kay Guo. Laging walang saysay mga sagot niya. Nakakapagod.”
He was sitting on the spot beside her, hunched over and looking at his wrist where a bracelet she’s never seen before glinted in the dim light. It was a simple braided piece with a single bead in the center, the type of gift children gave their parents after an arts and crafts class in school.
The bracelet didn’t look right on his wrist. She was used to seeing it adorned with expensive silver watches, not cheap-looking handmade souvenirs. If she were being honest, it looked childish.
But Sherwin was watching it so intently, and there was a soft smile on his lips.
“Where’s that from?” She asks him, laying her head against his shoulder. “It’s cute. Feels out of place on you, though.”
“It is cute.” Sherwin agrees. “It’s from Risa’s daughter, said it wards away evil or something. It’s kinda funny actually, I really do feel protected.”
His subsequent laugh is soft and genuine, like he was absolutely in awe at the bracelet’s symbolism.
When they settle into bed together, Sherwin slightly shifts to create more distance between them. His hand reaches towards and fiddles with the bracelet almost absentmindedly, like it was a mannerism he could not outgrow.
“Aren’t you going to take that off?” She says aloud, closing her eyes.
“No.”
She drifts into sleep.
Sherwin does the same, his back turned to her all night.
-
This is it, she thinks, watching Sherwin pack his clothes into a duffel bag.
She can’t believe that after four years of being together, all his belongings could fit inside a single gym bag. It’s only now that she’s realizing how little he revealed himself to her, how rare and slight to the point of insignificance.
Did she ever truly know him? Deep down, she knows they both know the answer, but she refuses to acknowledge it. Accepting the answer means all the years they spent together, every bite of food and every trip out of town, and all the nights they laid beside each other were a huge waste of time.
Four years down the drain, with nothing to show for it but a single duffel bag.
Sherwin straightens up, fixing his gaze to hers. There wasn’t any warmth left in his eyes anymore. She wonders when it disappeared, or if it was even there at all.
She keeps the blame locked within her, but it’s struggling to get out. Their end was written in a single message that meant nothing and everything, all at once. Six simple words that conveyed her frustrations at the sorry state of her relationship, of her feelings exhausted with constantly staying on Sherwin's back burner.
He’s not here. He’s in Val—
She takes note of the slight downturn of his mouth, the mild crease between his furrowed brows. At one point in the past, she might have found them endearing. Now, it only made her chest hurt in anger and disappointment.
She refuses to say the apology at the tip of her tongue.
For one last time, just give in. She pleads in her head, hands clenched into tight fists with how hard she was thinking. Just this once. For me.
Sherwin looks away, slings the bag over his shoulder, and walks out the door without any hesitation in his steps. It clicks shut a few moments later, and she’s left in her apartment with a deafening silence.
The fact that they were over that quick isn’t the reason why she collapses into the couch sobbing. No, not at all. She preferred it that way, even. Swift. Delivered with the least amount of pain possible.
She cries because it feels like nothing has changed. Her shelves weren’t empty. There’s nothing missing in any nook or cranny. Her things were still perfectly arranged, no single object bereft.
She and Sherwin were no more, but she couldn’t feel any emptiness.
The apartment still looked the same, as if nothing was ever gone in the first place.
-
She’s doing well.
At least, that’s what she says in interviews.
She doesn’t feel well most times. She regrets how they ended, but a small part of her thinks that it was for the best. He was too stern, too serious, and she was too busy enjoying her youth to really consider anything else outside her pleasures.
Long story short, they simply didn’t match. Their story is now just a part of the list of her relationships that didn’t work out.
She’s moved on enough not to feel a sting at the mention of Sherwin’s name, but sometimes she can’t help reminiscing. She sees pictures of Purdelle and Paprika on his account, and she admits that she misses them. She remembers how they used to bounce up and down in joy whenever she came home from a party, how they stared at her with their puppy-dog eyes when they were eager for a treat.
Sometimes, she finds herself opening Sherwin’s chat window, fingers hovering over her keyboard. She always ends up deleting her message, never pressing send.
She spends her days that way. Sometimes healed, and sometimes not. She’s almost completely over everything that had happened when her phone pings with a notification one random Tuesday morning. When she clicks on it, her expression stays neutral and impassive.
It’s another one of their videos.
They’ve been trending a lot lately, Sherwin and Risa. Apparently, they had the kind of chemistry that couldn’t be manufactured, the type of work relationship that had the potential to spill over and be something more. Videos of their interactions garner thousands and thousands of reactions every single day, with Sherwin even commenting on a few of them.
She presses play.
It’s a simple compilation of their moments working in the Senate. She doesn’t think it was anything special, until she sees them—the little things. A gentle hand guiding the way, the obvious tilt of a head, the intensity of a gaze, the crinkling of eyes as they laughed over something only they understood.
Sherwin was never that expressive during their time together. He laughed and he smiled, yes, but he never stuttered nor tripped over his words. The video showed her a version of Sherwin she has never met, someone so unfamiliar that seeing him felt alien. He looked like a school boy with a crush, a man oblivious to how his heart was on his sleeve for all people to witness.
The way they acted, it was as if they had been together for a very long time. Like old friends without any secrets, like destined lovers who knew each other’s souls, both tethered so tightly with a red string they had willingly sewn between them.
She puts the phone down. For the first time since their breakup, she thinks of the truth that she’s been trying to ignore for months.
Maybe it had started long before that phone call.