It was Summer when we decided to break up. We promised to never see each other again the moment you decided to get out of the door.
That day was a completely perfect day. Earlier we went to the cathedral, lit candles, and had rosary. There was no hint of rain that day as we walked home. It was warm, noisy, and people were walking to and fro in the plaza and icecream vendors were everywhere.
It was completely a perfect day. The day I am accustomed to whenever I was with you. You always wore Summer on your sleeves. Whenever we went out, it never rains, even when the weather forecast predicted a storm coming in.
I always remember that: the sunset was one of the best that I had seen. The clouds were pink cotton candies inside a blue Japanese paper, and we were some couple framed at the end of a romantic film dancing and smiling forever.
It was all true, except that it was not yet the end of the tale. It was just the middle of a book, a calm before a bomb explodes, the eye of the storm.
That night, I decided to cook you humbà, your favorite pork dish, especially with a lot of onions. You always loved onions, so I chopped and chopped a couple of them.
While I was on the kitchen, you came slowly to me and rubbed my back and kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you,” you said. “Thank you for everything.”
I did not say anything. I left the kitchen and went straight to bed.
You followed, stared at me for a moment, and finally left.
Five days ago, you told me that he had come back, your first love, the one you promised you would marry when you were younger. The one who took you five years to moved on from when he left.
And all those years I patiently helped you heal — and become better. To stand on your own feet, to smile, and to love again.
In early years of our relationship and whenever I managed to make you smile, I could still see the empty space in your eyes. There was always something that you needed but afraid to ask. You wanted him to do the things I did — to hug you, to kiss you, to love you.
I knew you still love him. I always knew.
But we did become happy, didn’t we? I did make you love me somehow, right?
Or didn’t I? I do not know.
All I knew now is that, that night there was a forecast of rain as a tropical depression was about to landfall.
So when the noise of your shoes was gone, I asked the heaven to give me a sign. A rain. That if ever there was a chance, and I was only begging for one, that you would come back, let there be a rain, thinking that I could cheat on fate.
So the hours went slow, I waited and waited for the rain. Funny how time goes slow when we are waiting for love and goes fast when we are in love.
At four o’clock, the storm started to form. Twenty minutes later, strong winds came in the open windows as waves from the coast; and quarter to five, lightning strikes here and there and a heavy rain soon followed as the light went out.
I buried myself in my bed and covered my eyes with my onion-smelling hands.
The next day, I woke up only to realize that I slept for twelve hours straight, the windows closed, the sky was the ever pink cotton candy like the perfect day before, and the street was Summer dry.
But it sure did rain inside the room.
