Fairy Tale Fail

Fairy Tale Fail

Mina V. Esguerra

Smashwords Edition

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

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Copyright © Mina V.
Esguerra, 2010

Contact the author:

[email protected]

minavesguerra.com

Cover for this edition designed by Tania
Arpa

FAIRY TALE FAIL

Mina V. Esguerra

For my superfriends, who
set the bar a tiny bit higher every time.

Chapter 1

That point in a relationship when you
realize that instead of "happily ever after," you're apparently
just a few paragraphs below "once upon a time"? It
sucks.

Sorry I couldn't be more eloquent than
that, but the big reveal came to me on a rainy Saturday morning. I
woke up excited for my planned food trip to Tagaytay with my
boyfriend Don, only mildly concerned by the rain pouring in sheets
outside my window. Then I got the text, becoming all too familiar
already.

Ellie, rain is bad.
Tagaytay next time instead?

I held my breath and
counted to five. One:
It's raining.
Two:
What good would an
outdoor restaurant with a view of Taal Lake be if it's
raining?
Three:
Tagaytay is cold enough as it is. Why bother with cold and
wet?
Four:
I need
sleep anyway.
Five:
I have so many DVDs to catch up on.

Then I texted my
boyfriend:
Sure, no problem. See you on
Monday. Love you.

So far, my six-month-old relationship
with tall, handsome, and all-around good guy Don Padilla was not
what the fairy tales led me to believe. I wasn't exactly an
all-around good girl, but I thought that a guy like him would be
the perfect stabilizing force for someone like me. I was always
restless – wanting to travel, wanting excitement, wanting to change
my hair.

Free
Ellie
, was what my college friends jokingly
called me. The only reason why I managed to stick to one course at
the time was because Communication Arts allowed me to try so many
things. To this day, though, five years in the work force, I still
wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing. My hair now was past
my shoulders and slightly wavy, and I worked in Marketing – but all
of this could change. I still didn't feel like things were
perfectly in place, and I was just waiting for my savings to
recover so I could go on a trip again. The last one I went on was
Hong Kong with my sister. Maybe Bangkok next? I was already
anticipating the next airline ticket sale.

Don, on the other hand, was the very
definition of "steady." He was a slave to his routine, and he had
plotted his career in the office from his first day there. I
thought we would be perfect together: I'd inspire him to loosen up
a bit, and he'd tell me how exactly to be an adult.

Why wasn't it perfect yet? I was
getting impatient.

Of course, I had never told anyone
that. Our common friends assumed that we weren't (couldn't be!)
having problems. One of them went as far as to say that she was
envious of how we got together, and she only wished the same for
herself.

I sighed before retreating
under my blanket.
Be careful what you wish
for.

***

Contrary to what some people
thought, I wasn't
obsessed
with being a fairy tale princess. I was a movie
buff, firstly, and I had a minor in Film back in college. For one
of my classes, though, I did some research on how fairy tale motifs
influenced modern movies, and I was really affected by it. During
that phase in my life I had short, almost spiky hair like Winona
Ryder in
Reality Bites
, but even as my hair changed the fairy tale fascination
didn't go away.

Every story had some sort of fairy
tale template. Even mine.

Don and I worked in the same office, a
large financial services firm in Makati, Metro Manila's biggest
business district. I started in their Marketing department two
years ago, and became fast friends with my teammate
Charisse.

She had been in the company
for years and had a
barkada
there already, about a dozen guys and girls, all
from the eighteenth floor too. I was with them when I learned that
too much vodka gave me a rash, that I got sleepy after Bailey's,
and that after five drinks I remembered most of my childhood
Bisaya.

Don was part of that group.
He was a tall, imposing, cocky-looking guy, and sort of stood as
the group's
kuya
.
At least, that was the impression I got. He seemed very… I don't
know…
important
.

At first, I didn't like
him. It was hard enough to adjust to being new in the office and in
a
barkada
, and he
wasn't making it easier. He didn't make an effort to talk to me,
unlike the others. He made sure to stay out of my way, even when I
was the closest person to him in the room.

"He's kind of aloof that way. If you
want to get to know him, approach him first," Charisse
explained.

So I did. But on my own time. It just
annoyed me that I was receiving a warm welcome from the others, but
not from him. What the hell, right? After a while, I just gave up.
I didn't care anymore if he talked to me or not. I pretended that
we were already friends, and rode along when people teased him
about things.

Then one time – I probably went too
far. I forgot what I said (I had a bad habit of not being able to
filter my thoughts), but it was something about his vanity because
he liked to go to the gym a lot.

Whoa, wrong thing to say to someone
who barely even acknowledged my existence! He glared at me and
avoided me even more, if that was possible. And then, the next day,
he walked up to my desk at work.

"Coffee break?" he offered.

Throughout our twenty-minute trip to
the cafeteria and back, he didn't mention my comment about his gym
habit at all. But he did start talking to me. For some reason, the
same candor that offended him the night before became funny,
because in no time we were laughing about my observations of our
other friends, and people in the office.

Charisse? Was like Regina
George from
Mean Girls
(only because she was quite the Alpha Female, not because she
was awful). My boss? Totally reminded me of a young Janice
Dickinson from
America's Next Top
Model.
Don's boss? Alan Rickman as Severus
Snape. That last one got to him, and he was laughing so hard he
coughed out coffee.

From there it became easier to know
him. Apparently the tough, arrogant exterior was just that – a
shell. Underneath was a layer of classic Good Guy. And I liked Good
Guys. They made sure you got home okay. And they called, and held
doors open for you. Parents liked them too.

Don acted like a
kuya
because he was a
responsible person. Always a good worker, never broke the rules,
and expected integrity from the people he worked with. Also very
family-oriented, and religious, and sensitive, didn't drink (he had
a one-bottle-per-night rule), didn't smoke… it was as if I handed
him a checklist of things my mom would want in my future
boyfriend.

Imagine a really long romance novel
set in high school, with entire chapters just devoted to talking
and getting to know so much about each other. That was us! And I
actually enjoyed it. I believed that the best relationships started
from friendship. Surely it was better to get to know a guy first,
be his friend, and find out all the dirt so I could at least make
an informed decision.

I couldn't tell if he liked me,
though, because he was always there for the other girls in the
group. I mean, he was there for everyone. But then I got my answer
when during an out-of-town trip to Pansol in Laguna, we ended up
alone together on the rest house's second floor balcony and managed
to admit that we were attracted to each other.

"I'm not sure if we should act on it,"
Don said. "Because you're a really good friend. I don't want to
lose this."

This
was a friendship that, though only a few months long, was
actually something I already thought I couldn't do without. I said
things that made him laugh. He made sure I got home all right after
our
barkada
went
out. We didn't work
together
all the time but he'd drop by and ask me to coffee
almost every day, like clockwork because he was a creature of
habit, and I looked forward to it.

But I was being typical Ellie Manuel.
Restless. Ready for the next step, always.

"But… why limit ourselves when we
could be so much better? I think it's worth risking," I said,
playing the part of the romantic.

Maybe it was the lighting. We were
half in shadows on that balcony, half in the bright lights from the
pool area. He touched the ends of my hair, already long by then,
and gently twirled them around his fingertips.

"Were you always this beautiful?" he
said, and then he kissed me, and the decision was made for both of
us.

So tell me. Aloof and
arrogant guy gets over himself and reveals his other side –
sensitive, caring and responsible. How is that
not
Beauty and the Beast?

***

I knew I shouldn't complain, but I
just thought that a relationship with a guy I had such a great time
with as friends would be… easier.

Instead, we spent so much time
"working" on it.

Did I change? Did he? So why did I
feel like I had to set an appointment if I wanted more time with
him? Why did I feel like he was canceling too many of our dates,
with only the slightest provocation?

Sure, it really was raining
like crazy out there. But that didn't explain the time he was "too
tired" to go with me to Mall of Asia, or having a "busy week" to
have dinner with me on a random Wednesday. Sorry, did I have to
book him two weeks in advance or something? I thought I was
the
girlfriend
.

Little things like this had been
happening for the past six months, but it was only on that
Saturday, when Tagaytay was canceled, that I finally accepted it.
Something was wrong, and I wasn't even close to "happily ever
after."

Chapter 2

"Rock Star, two o'clock," Charisse
said discreetly.

"My two o'clock or yours?"

"Mine, duh."

I pretended to check the doorway of
the cafeteria, expecting a friend maybe, but peeked at the guy we
referred to as Rock Star. He was sitting a few tables down from us,
having pork steak and salad greens. A girl we recognized was
sitting in front of him.

"Did he see you?" Charisse
pressed.

"No, I don't think so."

"He's having lunch with Sandra from
Client Services," Charisse said casually, pretending not to look
too. She was so good at that. "Is she his girlfriend now or
something?"

His name wasn't really Rock Star, of
course, but Lucas Haresco. He was one of our officemates, an
assistant manager at the Wealth Management team up on the
twenty-second floor. Charisse and I found him cute in that Office
Celebrity kind of way – sure he worked in the same building, and
the same company, but we weren't friends. Instead we nudged each
other when we saw him nearby, commented on what he was wearing, and
wondered about the girls we saw him with. He was our Office
Crush.