Kit Castille didn't want to be one of the girls who worshiped Matthew Rondillo in college. She doesn't want to be one of the girls in his little black book now. But she gave her heart to Matthew all those years ago. Driven by revenge, she's on a mis...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
My college life was split in half: the one before Matthew and the years after it. When I graduated from college, I told myself I was closing a phase.
Four years later, who would have thought that I never really got out of the same rabbit hole. Am I the same girl he used to know?
Matthew asked me out again the following week. The invite came almost as a surprised irony during one of my ad hoc meetings with the magazine he used to head. It wasn't long before I learned that Matthew was fired by the owner for truancy, three months into the job.
Sometimes, during these meetings, I would hear them say shitty things about him. My resting bitch face usually saves me tons of unwanted drama and questions I don't want them to ever ask.
And just like in college, nobody in the office knows that I know Matthew. Only this time, it seems like I really don't know the 'egotistic, drama queen, ex-editor' they're talking about. At least that's how it seems to me.
In my head, even after all the years in between, Matthew is still the young editor my college professors put on a pedestal, the master writer, the college heartthrob, the university urban myth.
Once again, in the days that followed our reunion at Greenbelt 3, I can feel I'm inching closer and closer to the deep end, the same cliff I dove from all those years ago. Live a little, my inner voice says from time to time. Don't you miss the thrill?
This weekend, Matthew and I are on the road to Tagaytay. The skies were cloudy when we left Manila but being the young and free-spirited young adults we are, we find ourselves finally parking at this hillside restaurant where they serve pumpkin soup and bulalo.
An hour later and I barely tasted the heavy lunch he ordered for the both of us. The rain has stopped but the usually cool Tagaytay breeze feels so unwelcome and unrelenting this time of year.
Wrapped in the only sweater I brought, we make our way to the car and start the short drive to one of those overlooking coffee shops we Googled earlier.
The rain starts again a few kilometers before we reach the cafe. The rain gets heavier by the minute. And just like any other Manileño who visits Tagaytay on a regular basis, we don't have anything to shield us from the rain.
The rain is getting worse. We decide to park at one of those Tagaytay houses along the road with viewing decks on top, anything to get off the slippery road. Matthew kills the engine, grabs a blanket from the backseat and gives it to me to keep warm. Why he has a comforter at the backseat, I'll never know.
We talk about college – Sir Magic Pants, the infamous packed lunch during our baccalaureate mass that gave half of the attendants food poisoning, and the beautiful campus that gave us much solace from the scary outside world of Manila. To my dismay, he does not mention The Literati nor the poem I found at our secret place.
We talk about the present – his new job at this new men's magazine (not the one he was fired from) and my job as a junior designer at this small advertising agency in Makati. He offers no explanation for his sudden disappearance from my client's team, and just like every other unresolved issue I should have brought up a long, long time ago, I do not ask.
