Sweet Downfall (29 page)

His forefinger traced the lines of her face gently, stopping at her lower lip. “I have the most beautiful angel in my life.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. The look in his eyes was pure ol’ Jaq. God, how she missed him looking at her like that, like she was the only woman in the world for him. “You think she will be enough for your everything?”

“Sure, I’m a simple guy. I don’t need much. Just a lot of sex.”

She laughed and lightly slapped his chest. “You think she can give you all the sex that you need?”

“Sure.”

“Like how much sex are we talking about here?”

“Uhhh, three times a day is a good dosage. With an option for afternoon or midnight snack.”

“That’s gluttony,” she said, feeling like they’d had this conversation before.

He squeezed her derriere. “I’d gladly fry in hell for that sin.”

She grinned. “It’s a very addicting sin. So…I’m on.”

He kissed her then. It was gentle, cherishing, reverent. Her old Jaq.

“Why do you think you can’t have everything?” he asked her.

She drew circles on his chest. She was never as articulate as him, never as artistic in her expression. But her old Jaq always got her simplicity. “Because life is so tricky. It doesn’t really give you everything. Just when you think you have it all, you lose something.”

“What are you afraid to lose the most?”

She evaded his eyes and laced their fingers together. She stared at their joined hands, controlling her emotions. “You.”

“Why are you afraid?”

She met his eyes again, uncaring now if he saw through her. She smiled at him wanly. “Because you’re so wonderful. So alive. So beautiful.”

“Is that bad?”

“No. You’re perfect. But life isn’t. Life always ruins perfection.”

His eyes had a moist sheen in them now. Was he feeling what she was feeling?

“Life is beautiful when it is first given to us and its beauty is always in the eye of the beholder. In all its forms, it is perfection itself. It’s our actions that destroy it. In our lives, we make decisions. We choose who to keep and who to let go so that we’ll have the freedom inside us to achieve our own idea of perfection. It’s never easy to choose. But in order to be free, we have to be brave.”

Her tears threatened to fall now.

“You won’t lose me, angel.”

“I just gotta be brave?”

“Yes.”

“Make love to me again.”

They let their bodies communicate the rest of their feelings. They made love until they couldn’t move anymore from exhaustion.

He took her back several hours later to the Empress Hotel.
She asked him to drop her at the same spot where he’d picked her up.

“Angie…” he started softly.

She turned to look at him.

“I…” he sighed harshly, his hands gripping the steering wheel hard his knuckles stood out. His profile was etched in hard lines. He looked at her and she saw the naked turmoil in his eyes. “Why are you marrying him?”

God knew she was sick of asking herself the same question. And she was sick of her own sane, safe, right answers. “Why not?” she countered.

He slammed his fists on the steering wheel the truck honked. “I cannot believe you’re still going to marry him after what just happened?!”

“What happened, Jaq?”

“Us! Us happened again, Angie! Us!”

Her throat constricted tightly. She was barely holding on to her own emotions and he was talking like this, giving her hope.

Hope was dangerous with this man. “Is there an us, Jaq?”

“Yes! There is an us!” He grasped her shoulders. “Leave him. Come with me. To America.”

“Oh Jaq…”

“We can start anew. I don’t care what happened in the past anymore, Angie. All I want is you. I want you in my life again.”

Oh God, please, don’t do this to me. Don’t make him say these things and end up lying.
“Jaq…”

“I know you want me.”

She shook her head. “Sex is not enough.”

“What do you want to hear? Love? Promises? I think we both learned the hard lessons from the past. Let’s get real here. Eight years have passed. We have gone our separate ways, have grown apart. I thought I would have stopped wanting you. But I still do. I don’t know what’s this I feel for you now. I need time to sort out my feelings for you. But there’s one thing I’m sure of. I do care about you, Angie. I care for your happiness. You’re not happy with Jordan. I can see. He will never make you happy.”

“You want to make me happy?”

“Yes.”

“Will I make you happy?”

“You already do. Now. Just being with you now makes me happy. It can grow from here. Let’s take it one step at a time, Angie. Leave him. Leave your family. Leave everything. Come with me. We’ll start a new life together—”

She put her forefinger to his lips. “Shhh.”

His eyes were tender. Emotional. Imploring. “Please.”

This scenario happened before. He’d asked her to run away with him. She threw caution to the wind. But everything ended badly. Could she do it again? Risk everything for this man? Because if it would end badly again, she was afraid she would never recover. “My life is in shambles right now, Jaq. I need to make things right with Jordan. I need to make a lot of things right with my family, too, before I can start a new one with you.”

“You will break up with him?”

“Give me time.”

“Dammit, you won’t marry him! I won’t let you. I will crash your wedding, I swear, Angie.”

She kissed him hard on the lips.

He embraced her and he deepened the kiss.

“Promise me you won’t marry him. Promise me, Angie.”

“I promise. God, I don’t know how, but I promise. I promise.”

He hugged her tight again. “I don’t want to let you go.”

“I must. I will come back.”

“Promise to call me.”

“I will. I promise.”

He finally let her go.

She quietly alighted from his vehicle and walked towards the hotel.

Jaq joined his friends in one of the Lothario game rooms.
Alexis, Jonty, Rydon, Diegs and Tommy were there, gathered in a table.

Rydon had a bottle of beer waiting for him. “Drink up, man.”

He took the bottle and was about to quaff it when he noticed Kit drinking alone in a corner nearby. This was not the first time he’d seen Kit staring out in space, looking lost.

He was about to go to Kit but Alexis stopped him.

“Let him be, Jaq.”

“Is he okay? What’s wrong with him?”

Alexis gestured for him to occupy a seat. “Just having a rough patch. How are you? No date tonight? The rest of the world is celebrating this stupid day.”

He made a grumbling sound. “Same ol’ shit
.”

“Who invented Valentine’s Day anyway?” Diegs asked.

“Some dork who couldn’t get a decent lay or some brilliant ass who wanted to make tons of money,” X aswered.

“We could do an orgy. The geisha’s would love a Valentine fest,” Rydon suggested.

“I’ll pass,” Alexis said in a bored tone.

“Me, too. I have a date tonight,” Jonty said with a surprisingly happy disposition. “Leaving in a bit.”

“Back in the banging circuit, man?” Alexis asked Jonty.

Jonty just shrugged.

“Judging from that stupid smile you have there, Jon, I take it this is no ordinary date with an ordinary bitch. Make sure you don’t end up in the ring with some jealous bloke, like Jaq,” Tommy snickered.

Diegs latched on the subject, too. “Damn, never seen anything like that. Almost thirty minutes of non-stop action. I was surprised you were still both alive after.”

“Was that a draw?” Jonty asked.

“No way! He went down first!” Jaq protested.

“You went down only three seconds later,” Alexis disagreed, chuckling. “In my book, it was a draw.”

“Yeah, no one was knocked out. You both went down from lack of gas,” agreed Rydon.

Jaq was seriously pissed off. “I demand for a rematch then. I’ll make it a clean knock out next time.”

His friends laughed at him.

Alexis shook his head. “You’re really losing it, man.”

“Maybe it’s you who’s losing it, X,” he retorted.

“Me?”

“Yeah. About this ‘clothes in the closet thing’ you’ve been telling me about? Wait until you lose access to your favorite clothes, man.”

“You mean you wore it again?”

He grinned. “Many times. Fit just fine and felt really good, too.”

Alexis shook his head again. “Tsk, tsk, tsk, I predict a bloody rematch.”

“What the fuck are you two talking about?” Jonty interjected.

“Nothing, man. Just good ol’ clothes.” Jaq drank his beer.

His phone rang. It was Lulu. He took the call. “Hey, Lu, whazzup?”

“Jaq! Where are you?”

“Some place with old friends. Why?”

“Get to a TV. AZN channel. Right now.”

“Why?”

“Just do it. Call you again later. Bye.”

When Lulu called with a tone like that, it was usually bad news. There was huge, flat TV screen hanging from a wall, facing them. He glanced at the bar. “Hey, Cleo, can you switch to AZN for a bit?” he asked the geisha manning the bar. She smiled and did his request.

The huge screen was full of Angie’s lovely face.

His friends stopped talking and watched, too.

Acid seemed to pour all over him. His skin heated up so much his sweat broke out despite the building’s chilly, centralized air-conditioning.

The show’s title was, “Wedding of the Decade”.

He didn’t know why he sat there, frozen, quietly watching. Maybe he needed more confirmation of what he already knew. Maybe he refused to believe it was true.

Jordan lifted Angie’s hand to show the interviewer her engagement ring, a huge stone that must have cost a fortune. Angie sat there, a fixed smile on her beautiful face as Jordan held her hand, occasionally kissing it.

The date had been announced. They would be married two months from now.

He stood up and left the club without a word.

Angie went to work early that morning.

Most of their employees hadn’t even arrived for the day yet.

Her phone rang. It was Darry.

“Hello, Angie?” she said without her usual happy greeting. “Girl, bad news!”

“What...?”

“You’re in the tabs again!”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I’m on my way to your office. Ten minutes!”

Darry ended the call.

“Okay...” She was puzzled.

Her phone rang again. It made her jump.

Two successive calls, and this time from Rad was alarming.

She hesitantly answered the phone.

“When will you learn?! Huh?!” were his immediate, angry words.

“
K-kuya?
What–?”

“Come back here. Now, Angie.”

Rad cut the call.

Oh God, this must be bad! What happened?

It was probably the longest ten minutes of her life. She was already on edge when Darry arrived.

“What happened?!”

Darry wordlessly showed her the cover of a popular tabloid.

“Angelina Yulo and Jaq Montero in a Motel?!”

She nearly fainted in shock. Below the headline was her picture flanked by Jaq’s and Jordan’s. The other smaller pictures contained her and Jaq as she was getting inside his truck. It was taken on the day she met him up on the street near the Empress Hotel.

With shaking hands, she read the article.

It seems that engaged to be married Angelina Yulo cannot make up her mind between her fiancé media mogul Jordan Lavega and her ex-lover multi-awarded film director Jaq Montero. The ex-lovers, (or is it ex, really?) were sighted meeting up on a street beside the Empress Hotel where Angie works as the PR Manager for her family’s giant hotel chain. Our photographer tailed Jaq’s pick-up (we have a shot of the plate number) and lo and behold, it disappeared inside the gate of a... guess what? A motel! Ohhh. We wonder what Angie’s fiancé would say about this. Aren’t they tying the knot soon?

The tabloids had perfect timing. For greater impact, they let the wedding special air first before dropping this bomb.

“Girl, is this really you?”

“I have to call Jordan.”

“What will you tell him? ‘Honey, I’m calling to tell you I just publicly embarrassed you again’?”

“But…”

“Trust me, Ange, this is something you should leave to him to deal with in his own way. Wait for his call. And what on earth were you doing, girl? Meeting Jaq in busy road in broad daylight? You well know the paps are always hot on your trail? They’re always watching you and Jaq!”