Chapter 24 - Episode 24 - Meeting the parents, again?

I knew something was up the absolute millisecond I saw my mom's name flash across my phone screen.

"MOMMY 💅👑👩‍⚖️" — yes, that is her literal contact name, and yes, she physically made me input every single one of those aggressive emojis.

"Elara," she said. No "hi," no "good morning, sweetheart," just a straight-up, chilling "Elara" spoken in that specific octave she reserves for when she's either about to give me a classic Birkin or arrest me emotionally.

"Hi, Ma? Is this the version of the phone call where you tell me you love me, or the one where you break it to me that I've permanently disappointed the family lineage again?"

"Come home. Tonight. 7 PM. Bring that boy."

"That boy? What boy?" I asked, even though the entire nation of the Philippines knew exactly which boy she meant.

"Cairo. Bring him. We have a lot to discuss."

And just like that, the call clicked off. 

I knew I was mathematically doomed.

I stood in front of my walk-in closet like a decorated general preparing for a multi-front war. "This is not just a standard family dinner," I muttered to myself, aggressively flipping through hangers. "This is a tactical trap disguised as a tray of lasagna and uncomfortable personal questions."

I immediately speed-dialed Cairo.

"Hey," I said the second his deep voice hit the receiver. "My mom wants to talk. Tonight. At my parents' place. And she explicitly requested your physical presence."

"Talk about what, exactly?"

"I don't know, Cairo! Maybe your long-term financial intentions with her only daughter, or whether your family plans to officially offer twelve healthy cows and a prime hectare of land for my hand in marriage."

"…Twelve cows?"

"Focus, Cairo. This is a high-stakes scenario."

After a brief, agonizing moment of silence, he exhaled. "Okay. I'll come with you."

We arrived at my parents' front door at exactly 6:59 PM, because I refused to give my mother a single reason to look at her luxury watch and say, "You're already late to your own surprise engagement party."

Cairo looked absolutely dashing, of course. 

Like he had just casually stepped off the set of a high-budget K-drama, smelling of expensive sandalwood cologne and quiet internal panic. 

I, on the other hand, looked like a woman who had curled her hair twice out of sheer clinical stress, put on my luckiest gold earrings, and recited three separate novenas before exiting the vehicle.

We rang the doorbell. 

The heavy mahogany door swung open, and there stood my mother—clad in real pearls, power-suit shoulder pads, and raw, unfiltered judgment.

And the very first sentence out of her mouth? "So, when is the wedding?"

Choked. On. Oxygen. 

Cairo completely froze into a statuesque block of ice beside me.

"W-Wedding? Ma, we are still so young and visibly cute," I stammered, already breaking into a cold sweat. "And... we currently love each other in a very aesthetic, highly Instagrammable way. We plan to fully enjoy that phase first before... you know... becoming legally and contractually one."

My dad suddenly appeared from the kitchen doorway, holding a glass of aged red wine like a patriarch in an Italian mafia film. "But if you do get married, sweetheart, I already have a gorgeous vineyard venue in Tuscany in mind."

"Okay!" I clapped my hands together with terrifyingly high energy. "How about we all sit down at the dining table and pretend we are a normal, functioning family?"

The night was already spiraling out of my control when the doorbell chimed for a second time.

And when I say I felt the entire floor collapse beneath my heels, I mean it both metaphorically... and deeply, deeply spiritually.

Standing on the porch, in all their coordinated high-society glory, were Cairo's parents.

"Surprise!" Cairo's mom chirped, gliding past me to air-kiss my mother's cheeks. "We thought it would be absolutely lovely to catch up properly over dinner."

I whipped around to Cairo, my eyes wide enough to swallow the foyer. "DID YOU KICKSTART THIS?!"

"No! I swear on my life," he whispered back frantically. "My mom just told me we had family dinner plans. I thought she meant tomorrow night!"

Then came the cosmic plot twist of the evening.

"Elara?" Cairo's dad blinked, looking at me, then looking past me. "You're… Felicia's daughter?"

Felicia. 

That is my mother's government name. 

Absolutely no one calls her that unless you are a college sorority friend, a major real estate business partner, or someone who personally held her hair back while she vomited premium sangria in the late 1990s.

And then—"Wait," my mom said, her eyes narrowing as she stared at Cairo's dad.

Everyone in the room went completely silent for a solid five seconds.

 Then, like a beautifully clichéd, badly written primetime teleserye, both sets of parents looked at each other and burst into thunderous laughter.

"We go way back!" my mom shrieked, slapping Cairo's mom on the arm. "You guys were literally at our wedding!"

"We were pregnant at the exact same time!" his mom echoed, clapping her hands.

"What is actually happening to my life right now," I muttered under my breath, completely catatonic.

Cairo leaned over his shoulder, his lips brushing my ear. "Is this… some weird, elite royal arranged marriage type of plotline?"

"Oh my god, Cairo, are we childhood sweethearts who just collectively forgot each other's existences?!" I whispered back in a frenzy.

Somehow, the dinner proceeded. 

There was premium pasta, endless laughter, and a continuous flow of red wine. 

Cairo's dad spent a good twenty minutes detailing the embarrassing story of how he once had to physically carry my mother out of a Batangas beach party because she had sprained her ankle violently dancing to the 'Macarena.'

I wanted to crawl under the heavily imported wool rug and never be found by modern archaeology.

—

Later that evening, as Cairo and I walked out of my parents' house—shell-shocked, slightly tipsy, and weighed down by a dozen new embarrassing childhood stories—we decided to take a spontaneous stroll through the neighborhood park to clear our heads.

"Want to walk by the trees?" he asked, tucking his hands into his pockets.

"Is this the exact location where you're planning to surprise propose to me? Because I already sweated out half of my foundation during the Macarena story, and I require cute, high-definition photos for the announcement, okay?"

"No proposal tonight, Elara. Just oxygen. Trees. Maybe a stray squirrel."

We made it to the center of the park, and that is precisely when we spotted him.

Ari. 

My best friend. 

My platonic soulmate. 

My daily gossip hotline.

He was sitting on a secluded park bench. 

With a man. 

Directly holding hands. 

Wearing matching braided bracelets.

"ARI?!" I screamed before my logical brain cells could stop my vocal cords.

He practically jumped out of his skin. "ELARA?!"

"Who is this?!" I demanded, my eyes gleaming with the predatory hunger of a top-tier journalist.

"This is... Kenneth," Ari said, his cheeks turning a bright shade of crimson. "My... boyfriend."

I gasped so hard I inhaled a gnat.

I practically skipped over to their bench like I was actively auditioning for a national toothpaste commercial. 

Cairo followed closely behind me, casually holding two canned drinks he had picked up from a nearby convenience stall because, in his medical words, "hydration is the fundamental foundation of all chaotic decisions."

Ari was still frozen solid in place, looking like a deer caught in high-beams—or in his specific case, like a high-fashion diva caught mid-sneaky romantic rendezvous.

"So," I said, plopping down onto the wooden bench right next to him, "are we going to pretend I didn't just witness you holding hands with this exceptionally fine specimen of a man? Or are we going full, unfiltered confession mode right now?"

"Hi," Cairo greeted politely, nodding at the guy. "I'm Cairo."

"Hi, I'm Kenneth," the man replied, offering an incredibly charming, albeit awkward, smile. "You must be the legendary Elara. I've heard... an immense amount about you."

"Oh? Oh, really?" I smirked, nudging Ari with my elbow. "You've been talking about me behind my back?"

"He mostly said you're, um, highly intense," Kenneth offered carefully.

"Intense?! Ari Elijah Valderrama, you absolute garden snake!" I shrieked.

Ari groaned loudly and buried his face in his hands. "I didn't mean intense like a horror movie, okay! More like... passionate. Animated. Permanently sparkly with rage."

I gasped in mock betrayal. "I am sparkly with poise!"

"You're sparkly with noise," Cairo muttered under his breath, taking a sip of his drink. 

I threw him a lethal side-eye.

Eventually, the four of us migrated down to the fresh grass under a massive, sweeping acacia tree that looked like it had witnessed more historical drama than an entire television network. 

We sat on a large picnic mat that Cairo magically produced from the trunk of his car—seriously, at this point, this man might secretly be Doraemon—and Ari opened his designer tote bag, which was packed with "date snacks" that had obviously been curated with meticulous love. 

There were tiny red velvet cupcakes, artisan white-cheddar popcorn, and an alarming volume of sour gummy worms.

"Okay, cut the corporate fluff—how long have you two been together?" I asked, channeling an interrogator in heels.

Ari looked over at Kenneth, and they exchanged that look. 

You know the one? 

The hyper-specific look people give each other when they're trying desperately not to cry from happiness but also want to scream to the heavens, "I like you so much I could physically implode."

"Two months," Ari said softly.

I blinked. "WHAT?!"

He flinched at my volume.

"You've had a literal boyfriend for two whole months and didn't brief your best friend?! That is like thirty-eight episodes of crucial emotional character development, and I got zero percent of the streaming rights?!"

"I was going to tell you, I swear to God!" he defended himself frantically. "But we weren't officially exclusive until like three weeks ago, and then you got completely swallowed up by your whole 'fall-in-love-with-your-brooding-racecar-neighbor' arc!"

I crossed my arms dramatically. "I could've been your primary flower girl, Ari."

"I haven't even proposed to the man."

"Details."

Cairo leaned his shoulder against mine. "Do you want to plan a double date, or do you want to cause a massive public scene right now? Because honestly, I'm highly invested in both options."

I beamed up at him. "Both it is!"

We ended up playing a digital game of Pictionary on Ari's tablet, which quickly degenerated into a full-blown shouting match that echoed across the park. 

I was naturally paired with Cairo; Ari had Kenneth.

Kenneth, it turned out, could draw with the precision of a Renaissance master. 

Cairo, it turned out, absolutely could not. 

He handed the tablet over to me with a smug expression, showcasing a drawing that looked like a severely deformed chicken trying to perform classical ballet.

"Um… A dancing duck? An angry, cross-eyed goose? A ballet-dancing bird?"

He blinked, completely serious. "It's a 'Black Swan'."

"THAT IS NOT EVEN REMOTELY A SWAN, CAIRO."

"Okay, but look at the intricate wing placement!"

"They look like two burnt flour tortillas!"

We lost that round miserably. 

And the subsequent three rounds. 

Meanwhile, Ari and Kenneth were absolutely killing it on a psychic, telepathic level. 

Ari would draw two simple circles and a squiggly line, and Kenneth would instantly yell, "Oh, that's obviously 'falling in love on a wooden rollercoaster while consuming nachos'!" And they would be 100% correct.

"Stop being disgusting and cute," I told them, throwing a gummy worm at Ari. "This is not a romance novel."

Ari smirked, popping a cupcake into his mouth. "You're just incredibly bitter because you lost."

"No, Ari. I'm bitter because your boyfriend is apparently an undercover art prodigy, and Cairo honestly believes swans look like fried poultry."

—

After an hour of chaotic games, deep laughter, and minor emotional damage, we finally packed up the mat. 

Cairo and I walked a few paces ahead, leaving Ari and Kenneth trailing behind us like a pair of lovesick turtles.

The park had thinned out by midnight. 

The old streetlamps cast a soft, amber glow over the pavement, making everything look a little more romantic, a little more cinematic. 

Cairo's large hand found mine as we strolled, his fingers weaving smoothly between my own.

"Your parents really like me," he said suddenly out of the blue.

I glanced up at his profile. "Of course they do. You're physically attractive and exceptionally polite when you want to be. My parents are realists, they're not idiots."

He let out a low laugh.

"But seriously," he continued, his voice softening, "they were incredibly warm. And funny. Your dad even showed me high-resolution baby photos of you squeezed into a plush banana costume."

"I WILL LITERALLY END HIS LINEAGE."

"You looked adorable."

"I looked like a fruit-themed curse, Cairo."

He tugged on my hand gently, pulling me to a complete stop beneath the warm glow of a streetlamp.

"You know…" he said, his voice dropping an octave, turning deeply serious, "if our parents ever bring up the topic of marriage again… just know that I don't hate the idea. Not right now. Not yet. But someday."

My heart did a full, spectacular somersault inside my ribcage. 

I blinked, the breath caught in my throat. "Someday?"

"Someday," he repeated, his eyes locked onto mine. "When we've had a few more Pictionary meltdowns, and quiet park nights. And embarrassing family dinners."

I stared at him, my voice barely a whisper. "You want to endure embarrassing dinners with me forever?"

"If it means I get to keep you forever… yeah. Absolutely."

And that was it. 

No Hollywood fireworks. 

No swelling orchestral music. 

Just a quiet, ordinary moment under a park lamp, where my loud, messy, glitter-covered heart suddenly felt entirely still. Safe. Completely at home.

—

We ended the night right outside my condo unit. 

Ari had already messaged me that he had arrived safely back at his place, adding that Kenneth "smells like expensive vanilla and pure temptation," a transcript I fully plan to unpack with him during our morning debrief.

Cairo and I stood under the hallway light. 

I nervously fiddled with my keys.

"I had a lot of fun tonight," he said, stepping closer to brush a stray strand of hair away from my face. "Even if you publicly yelled at me over my chicken swan."

"I am a passionate woman, Cairo. It is an integral part of my charm."

He smiled, that devastatingly soft smile. 

Then he leaned down and kissed me. 

Soft. 

Sweet. 

Zero pressure. 

Just lips on lips and the faint sound of laughter lingering between us.

When we finally pulled apart, I whispered against his lips, "You're not gonna drop down on one knee right now, are you?"

He grinned, his hands resting on my waist. "Nah. But maybe one day."

I winked, unlocking my door. "You better learn how to draw a structurally accurate swan first, Raceboy."

He laughed, and I disappeared into my unit, my heart pounding like a college drumline.