Anna gets up and grabs her purse to leave. "Don't ever call me again."
"Don't worry. I wasn't planning to." Singto replies before bringing his glass of wine to his lips. He didn't bother to look her way as she stormed out of the restaurant.
Singto gets up once he sees Anna's reflection disappear through the door from his wine glass. He pulls out his wallet and tosses a few big bills that he knows for sure will be enough to cover the check. He didn't want to stay at the restaurant anymore. His mood and appetite have been completely ruined.
"Krist, what are you going to order? All the salads look heavy."
Krist's face is buried deep between the pages of the menu. He had heard the whole exchange between Singto and his date. It's unbelievable that Anna who seemed so sweet and perfect is such a homophobic bigot. Krist thinks Singto was way too much of a gentleman. If he was in Singto's shoes, he definitely would have used much more colorful language. Krist silently curses Anna with all that he can think of.
"KRIST!" Sofi calls out louder.
Krist peeks over his menu, "shhhhh...what?"
"I've been calling you for the past five minutes. What's wrong with you?"
"Shhhhhhh!" Krist didn't dare to turn around. He just wants Sofi to be quiet and not to draw Singto's attention.
"Krist? Is that you?" Singto asks after hearing the rather skimpily dressed woman call out Krist's name. All the patrons nearby are actually looking over to their table because she's so loud.
Shit! Krist hides further behind the menu hoping Singto would magically walk away.
Sofi looks nervously between Singto and Krist who's now clearly hiding. She's not sure what's going on but she's worried that there's going to be trouble.
Singto frowns and takes another step closer. That's definitely Krist. What's he doing here? On top of that, he's sitting at the next table. Is he also on a date? "Krist Perawat, I know it's you. I can see the rest of you, you know?"
Being caught red-handed, Krist smiles and slowly puts the menu down and turns toward Singto.
"What are you doing here?"
"I... I uh... I'm here for dinner of course. This is my favorite place." Krist replies nervously.
"You said it's your first time here," Sofi says with a confused look on her face.
"Shia!" Krist gives Sofi a murderous glare before he guiltily turns back to Singto.
"So you followed me on my date again?" Singto is beyond irritated. He can't believe Krist is spying on him again just to mock him about another failed soulmate attempt. Just when he thought he's starting to really like Krist as a person, as a colleague, as a friend, and as a... nevermind.
Singto really thought after all these months they've learned to respect each other enough and Krist wouldn't do such childish things to him again. However, that doesn't seem to be the case. Singto turns to leave. He's had enough for the day.
"Singto, it's not what you think," Krist quickly gets up and grabs Singto by the wrist.
Singto brushes Krist's hand away and heads for the door. It's drizzling again this evening but Singto doesn't care.
"Singto! Wait!" Krist chases behind Singto.
Singto turns around, "what do you want, Krist? You already saw what you wanted to see, another failed date. Now, go back to your own date." Singto turns to leave again.
Krist panics. He didn't want Singto to think that's why he's here but what's he supposed to say? What can he say? He was that jerk before. So he watches Singto walk away in the rain.
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"Uncle Sing! Uncle Sing! Wake up!" Kitty straddles and sits on top of her uncle's stomach.
Singto reluctantly peels open his heavy eyelids. The light in his room is too bright making him want to keep his eyes shut. "Kitty, I can't breathe like this," Singto groans with his eyes closed. His head is pounding on top of his airflow restriction.
"Uncle Sing, I'm hungry," Kitty whines.
"Ugh... where's your mom?" Singto pushes himself up which causes Kitty to slide down to his lap. She's quite heavy and definitely not a baby anymore.
"She's outside with your boyfriend's gift. Can you please make sprinkles pancakes now? I really miss them." Kitty pouts.
"Gift? Boyfriend? I don't have a boyfriend." Singto narrows his eyes at Kitty. It's too early for pranks.
"That's what mommy said when she picked up the bag with a note in it," Kitty explains.
Curiosity gets the best of Singto so he gets out of bed. He freshens up and carries Kitty out to the living room to check out his mysterious gift from his mysterious boyfriend.
"Ah... you're up. I picked up your mail and that. It was sitting outside your door." Kat points to a yellow gift bag on the coffee table.
"Thanks." Singto eyes the bag suspiciously and puts Kitty down. Whoever's the person that put it there knows him personally, and must have met the doorman before in order to get up here.
Achoo Achoo Achoo Achoo
Singto feels slightly dizzy after his series of sneezes. He's also feeling a little chilly too. Singto dreads these feelings. He's probably coming down with a cold. Ugh. Just his miserable luck.
Singto picks up the bag and looks inside. There's a thermal with a sticky note stuck to it.
"It's from Krist. I read it already," Kat supplies.
"Thanks, but I know how to read too." Singto rolls his eyes. His family has never heard of something called privacy.
Singto takes the thermal out of the bag and reads the note.
Drink this before a cold settles in. - Krist
Singto unknowingly smiles seeing the note. It's the exact words he told Krist so it's obvious that the thermal contains ginger tea. He wonders when did Krist drop this off. But then he remembers last night and his smile dropped. He proceeds to open and take a sip of the ginger tea that's still warm, and to his surprise, there's a bit of lemon flavor to it. Singto actually likes ginger tea with lemon, but he doesn't always have it on hand. And he didn't when he showed Krist how to make the tea. This only means Krist had known how to make the tea. So he lied to him that day. Liar.
"Did you have a fight with your boyfriend?" Kat asks, seeing the changes in expressions on her baby cousin's face.
"I've already told you he's not my boyfriend and we didn't have a fight," Singto says as he snaps the thermal cap shut in annoyance.
"Oh yeah, then why didn't he call you or ring your doorbell? Why did he leave the bag outside?" Kat smirks raising an eyebrow at Singto.
"Uncle Sing, can you talk about your boyfriend and make sprinkles pancakes at the same time?" Kitty is hungry. Aren't adults good at multitasking?
"Okay, I'll go make them now." Singto heads to the kitchen and proceeds to whip up some sprinkles pancakes.
Kat strolls into the kitchen after turning on the TV for Kitty. "So tell me what's going on with you and Krist. You two obviously like each other." Kat says with a smirk as she bumps her elbow to Singto who's stirring the batter.
"Who told you that we like each other? He's just a colleague."
"Are you kidding me? I should have taken a picture of you when you were reading that little note. You had on the stupidest grin on your face."
"Whatever. None of it means anything." Singto keeps stirring trying his best to not give anything away.
"But it does. It absolutely does. Let me see. Based on the evidence, Krist must have done something wrong. Hence he's too afraid to ring the doorbell and just left whatever that was for you outside. But based on the note, it's probably ginger tea."
"Well, fine. He's probably just trying to make up for something he did wrong. That still doesn't mean he likes me." Singto pours some sprinkles into his batter mixture. The key to making pretty sprinkles pancakes is to add the sprinkles last so their colors don't run and turn the batter into colored goo.
"Seriously? Has any of your other colleagues or even friends gone through the trouble of making ginger tea and delivering it to your door? I mean, I've had fights with friends too. But not many are settled with more than an apology."
Can it really be like what Kat is saying? No, right? Krist himself was on a date last night. Singto frowns upon remembering the skimpily dressed woman and puffs. The whole idea of Krist liking him is absurd. They're polar opposites with almost nothing in common. It's a miracle they haven't killed each other yet.
"Hey! That's too much sprinkles. Kitty likes to drown her pancakes in syrup already. There's no need for extra sugar beyond what's necessary."
"Oops. Sorry. I got carried away." Singto quickly starts heating a pan.
"Just tell me what happened. Why's Krist trying to apologize? What did he do?" Kat starts the coffee and peeks into the living room to see that Kitty is still watching cartoons.
Singto sighs and goes on to tell Kat about his recent dates with Anna and how it crashed and burned unceremoniously. Singto goes on to say that Anna ended up being worse than all the other weird candidates because at least there's no hate after those. Then he explains how he stayed over at Krist's the night before and everything in between and then what happened last night.
Smack
"Ouuu...why did you hit me?" Singto rubs the back of his head where Kat smacked him.
"Because you're so dense! The guy likes you! He was obviously jealous of that bitch, Anna. So he followed you. He even left his date to chase you in the rain and then he made you ginger tea. And he delivered it! I actually feel bad for his date because he did all this instead of being with her." Kat shakes her head. One is dense and the other is selfish for using that poor girl. "So how do you feel about him? Be honest."
"You're just guessing all that."
Kat gives Singto a deadpan look. Like really?
"Fine. Maybe he did do all those things but...I don't know. We have really different perspectives on life and love. Mainly, he doesn't believe in love. So, he probably didn't do all this because he likes me. Maybe it's just an apology and you're reading too much into this." Singto scoops three pancakes from the pan and pours batters in for another batch.
"Uh-huh, and I saw pigs flying on my way here. Pfff. Well, how do you feel about him? Because the last time he was here, you were so attentive to him. It was cute. And what I saw earlier is giving it all away. So don't bother lying to me."
Singto sighs and nods. There's really no point in lying to Kat. She knew him better than himself sometimes. "I don't know. We're really different. At first, I found him unbearably cocky. You know, it's not that easy to get under my skin, but he had no trouble getting on my nerves. He challenges me every chance he gets. Working with Pat all these years, we've never had a fight on air. We had different opinions at times but it never led to arguments. But with Krist, I'm fired up every other day. Yet, after the topic is over we can move on to joke about anything like nothing happened. And I've come to appreciate our differences."
"Well, that's nice, but that's all professional. What about romantically? Do you find him attractive?" Kat wants to get to the point here. Let's not beat around the bush.
"Well, I'm not blind, you know? He's not called Sexy Krist for nothing. So it's obvious that he's sexy, but I think that's just what people see based on his appearance. What they don't see is how adorable he looks when he's still sleepy and kind of quiet before the show starts. People don't see how cute he is while he's sipping on his gigantic cup of pink milk. Or how excited he gets when we talk about something he's passionate about or how he brightens the whole room with his dimple smile. And how playful he can get when he sings along songs that are airing." Singto smiles while thinking about how Krist likes to spin his chair around and sing to him. Sometimes he can't help blushing when Krist stares at him so intensely while singing love songs. But Krist is just teasing him, right? Right.
"Sing! Stop daydreaming. Those are burnt already." Kat smirks while shaking her head. Her baby cousin doesn't even know what hit him.
"Oh shoot!" Singto immediately switches off the stove before the burnt cakes start smoking.
"I think that's enough pancakes for us. So do you see what I see now? You've been so lively and dare I say happy, ever since Krist came along. Even I, as a listener, smile just listening to you guys banter on air. Why don't you give him a chance? You two would look so hot together."
"Are you guys talking about the pancakes or still talking about Uncle Sing's boyfriend?" Kitty settles into a chair at the table with the biggest stack of sprinkles pancakes.
"Uncle's boyfriend. He's still in denial." Kat answers Kitty.
"What does denial mean?" Kitty asks while she's much more interested in squirting as much syrup over her pancakes as possible.
"It means you're too young for this conversation," Singto says as he takes a seat himself.
Kitty turns her nose up and away from her uncle. She's not a baby. She understands everything, just not every word.
"It means that your uncle doesn't want to admit that he likes his boyfriend," Kat says matter of factly.
"Well, that's not nice. You're supposed to love your boyfriend or girlfriend. That's what mommy says."
"Exactly, baby. You're so smart." Kat beams proudly at her daughter.
"For the millionth time, he's not my boyfriend. Pass me the syrup."
"Not yet."
~~~~~~
AN: Sweets, I'm excited to write the next chapter. What do you all think? Should I throw them in a wringer? Make them suffer a bit. 😈
Curtsy,
Lana ❤️