Sleep hid from her.
Sheryl lay on her thin mattress with the fan carving the heat into squares, the temple's red eaves still bright behind her eyes, rain still rattling in her ears, the taste of vanilla and something new on her mouth. Her phone lit the room like a small candle. She didn't mean to stare at the screen; it was simply there, a lighthouse on her bedside table.
It buzzed.
Rafi:
Are you awake?
She laughed—quiet, baffled at herself—and typed back.
Sheryl:
Maybe. Maybe not.
His name appeared, calling. She answered before the second ring.
"Hi," he said, voice low, as if the night might overhear.
"Hi," she echoed, trying to make it light and failing a little.
They started with easy things: the storm, the sprint from 7/11, how the ice cream had surrendered at the first drop. She teased him about the salon ladies swooning. He claimed to have lost three years of dignity to a nail file. She told him Maty's garlic rice could solve most of the country's problems. He said he'd vote for that platform.
Then the talking tipped into the kind that happens when both people are walking on a rope and decide, together, not to look down.
"What did you want to be?" he asked.
"A professor," she said. "Maybe abroad. Or a lawyer. But I was good at being useful, so I stayed." She surprised herself by saying, softly, "I don't mind being needed. I just don't want to be invisible inside it."
He was quiet long enough that she thought the signal had slipped. "You aren't invisible," he said finally, careful as a prayer. "I see you."
She swallowed, throat suddenly tight. "What about you?"
He chuckled, a sound with too many edges. "When I was small, I wanted to be a fisherman." He paused. "I imagine a boat. A line in water. No one calling my name for anything."
"People call your name a lot?" she asked, playful on the surface, curiosity beneath.
"Sometimes," he said. He let it rest there like a stone he wouldn't turn over.
They drifted to gentler ground. He asked about her students' news-of-the-day reports; she did impressions of the ones who delivered the weather like soap opera. He told her about a boy at the mosque who had learned to stack slippers in perfect rows. They shared small victories like marbles.
Time slipped. The fan hummed. Somewhere in the neighborhood, karaoke tried to strike a tender note and missed by three inches. Her mother coughed, turned in sleep. Savier snored the way only young boys and old dogs can.
"I should sleep," she said at last, though she didn't want to.
"I should, too," he replied, and didn't hang up.
"Good night, then."
"Good night."
Neither moved. She listened to his quiet breathing for a few more heartbeats, and he listened to hers. When they finally said goodbye, the room felt different, as if the air understood something it hadn't before.
She slept smiling—an unfamiliar, weightless thing—like a person whose hands were briefly free.
Sunday arrived bright and ordinary, and she wore the ordinary lightly, like a dress that finally fit.
Her mother waved her Practical Nursing modules and asked—again—if Sheryl could print a new CV at school. "I will," Sheryl said, and meant it, but the old heaviness didn't anchor the answer. Sharon announced she was "meeting friends," the kind of sentence that usually triggered a lecture; Sheryl merely hummed, stirred the sinangag, and told her to be back before dinner. Susan's door stayed closed; Sheryl left a plate outside it without knocking. Savier asked if scientists needed to be good at drawing; she kissed the top of his head and said, "No. But it helps."
Every rough edge of the house softened by half. It wasn't that the problems disappeared; they simply lost their teeth for a day. She scrubbed the pan, tied up the trash, watered the crooked plant by the window. She thought of a suit in fluorescent light, of laughter under a temple roof, of a voice on the phone that had folded the night into a small room and made it feel safe.
Her phone chimed after lunch.
Rafi:
I need to take care of something today. As soon as I'm done, I'll call.
She smiled at the screen. Okay, she sent it back. I'll be here. It felt good to write a sentence with her in it and realize she was not apologizing for the word.
Late afternoon, she walked to the parish chapel and sat in the back. The air was cool, the votive candles sputtering their little suns. She didn't ask for things; she simply let gratitude run over her like water. She thought of her father and did not mind that the memory ached—it was a clean ache, like a healed bone in the weather.
She went to bed early, hair damp, phone on the pillow. When morning pried at her eyelids, she woke smiling and reached for it before the fan had made its first full turn.
A message blinked.
Rafi:
Emergency. I need to go to Davao for a few days.
I'll call when I can.
Her ribcage compressed, but she told it not to dramatize. Emergencies happen. People got sick. Flights were missed. Davao was not Mars.
Sheryl:
Okay. Take care. Safe flight.
Her thumb hovered over the call button. She pressed it, then stopped. Pressed again. The network tried; the ring did not come. The call failed.
Globe often did that, especially in storms. She tried again anyway. Failed.
Fine. He'd call later. She tucked the phone into her bag and faced the day with her teacher's mask. It slipped, a little, when the first student delivered the news-of-the-day report and said "inflation means everything got fatter" with such confidence that Sheryl wanted to both laugh and cry. She corrected gently; she always did.
Between classes: a text.
Rafi:
Landed. Will text you tonight.
Relief walked in half a step, trailing doubt. She typed back something simple and unneedy, then taught the next period with chalk dust on her sleeves and a phone-shaped heat against her hip.
That night, his message arrived.
Rafi:
Good night. I hope you ate.
Sheryl:
I did. You?
Rafi:
Yes. Thank you.
Her thumb hovered again. She called. The call blinked into the void and fell through it. She watched the screen until her own face stared back in the black glass. Maybe he's in a dead spot. Maybe his phone is in airplane mode. Maybe Davao hates Globe.
Tuesday, the pattern repeated. A morning line—Good morning. Did your students behave?—and an evening one—Sleep well. Sweet as sugar, light as air. Each time she called, the network swallowed her, refused to ring.
By Wednesday, the sweetness began to sting.
She did what women who have lived too long with disappointment do: she let the blame settle on her own skin. Maybe he regretted the kiss. Maybe I laughed too loudly. Maybe I leaned in first. Did I leaned in first? Maybe I smelled like rain and garlic rice. Maybe there was ice cream on my chin. Maybe— Her mind was creative, a natural at cruel invention.
She considered confiding in someone and realized she didn't want her mother's eyebrows or Sharon's jokes or Susan's quiet gaze. She kept the new thing in her like a thin flame cupped with both hands, and the wind of the week kept trying to blow it out.
On Thursday, a student asked, "Ma'am, is it true Muslims don't celebrate birthdays?" It came from nowhere, part of a current events report about a Ramadan food drive that had, somehow, arrived out of season. Sheryl's stomach dropped while her teacher's voice answered calmly: "Different families have different traditions." After class, she sat alone at her desk and stared at the white chalk smears on her fingers. Not a birthday, then, she thought, and felt a small, ridiculous hurt. Of course. I'm an idiot. He said what I would understand.
Her phone pinged.
Rafi:
I saw a boy today who stacked slippers in perfect rows. It reminded me of your story.
She wanted to ask, Where are you, really? She typed Davao? then deleted it. She typed Call? then deleted that, too. She sent a picture of her blank lesson plan from tomorrow's free period and wrote, This page looks like the sky when nothing happens. I should fill it, but I'm enjoying the pause.
He replied with a single line that felt like a touch on her wrist.
Rafi:
Keep the pause.
Friday night, the city throbbed with payday noise. The house swelled with it, too—Sharon on the phone, savoring gossip; Savier pleading for load; their mother ironing the one blouse she wanted to look like a uniform when she delivered her application to the school. Susan's door stayed closed with the stubbornness of a vow.
Sheryl locked herself in the bathroom and brushed her teeth twice, hard enough to joke at herself in the mirror. "Maybe it's bad breath," she told the girl with foam on her lips. The girl did not laugh back.
In bed, she tried the call again. Failed.
She texted, Are you okay? then stared at the three dots that didn't appear. Ten minutes later: Yes. I'm sorry I can't talk. She typed Why? and didn't send it. She typed Can I hear your voice? and erased the line. She turned the phone face down and told sleep to make itself useful.
Saturday came with a soft rain and the smell of laundry soap. The market sang its loud bargains. She took Savier for a haircut, stood behind him like a small mother, paid in coins, and made a joke that earned her a discount she did not ask for. She bought fish, chilis, and two mangoes that were either going to be perfect or a disappointment; she chose to believe in perfection. The phone slept in her pocket and buzzed twice—Have you eaten? at noon, Rest if you can at three. She imagined a hand reaching across distance to set a glass of water near her elbow and hated that the image made her eyes sting.
On Sunday, exactly a week from the kiss, she put on a clean blouse and walked to Mass with her mother. She knelt and prayed and kept finding herself in the wrong paragraph. The homily was about the prodigal son; she thought of cities with airports, fathers with fragile hearts, sons who left and sons who stayed. She shook her head at her own wandering and tried to focus on the words in front of her, which were about mercy, which was inconvenient.
That night, as she folded the laundry on the sofa, Sharon breezed in with a grin and perfume too sweet for the hour. "Ate," she said, "guess what—"
"Not now," Sheryl said gently, surprising them both. "Tomorrow."
Her phone pinged.
Rafi:
Good night. When I can, I'll call.
She typed, Okay, and did not ask When. She was learning to be careful with hope.
The second week arrived like a stubborn guest. The rhythm continued: his texts delicate as rice paper, her replies a careful mix of air and spine. Each night, she tried to call; each night, the call fell through silence and did not land. Her mind grew new explanations like weeds. He is busy; he is bored; he is kind; he is a coward; he is trapped; he is free. The words braided and unbraided.
On Wednesday of that second week, she set her phone on the table and walked to the window. Parañaque breathed beyond the grills—tricycles stitching the street, laundry bright as flags, a boy dribbling a soft basketball. She pressed her forehead to the iron and listened to the city's plain heart. Then she found a piece of paper, the back of an old handout, and wrote a sentence she did not want to say out loud:
When he comes back—if he comes back—I will end this gently.
She underlined gently twice, as if good intentions could turn into airbag foam when the impact came. She told herself the practical things: We are different. My mother will not permit it. My father's memory deserves a certain kind of obedience. I have no extra heart to spend on something that cannot stand in daylight. She placed the paper under the prayer beads on her shelf like a contract.
That night, his message arrived as though it had not taken a week or a world to reach her.
Rafi:
I thought of your students today. Someone misquoted a proverb in a speech and I heard your laugh in my head.
She exhaled a sound that had to work to be a laugh.
Sheryl:
Poor proverb.
Don't bully it.
Rafi:
I will be kind.
To proverbs.
And to you.
She put the phone screen-down on the table and stood for a long minute without moving. Then she brushed her teeth lightly, in case, and told herself she was ridiculous.
Before she slept, she tried to call once more. The dark screen refused her again, mute and polite.
She placed the phone on the shelf beside the beads. "Enough," she told the room. "Boundaries." The word felt like pulling a blanket over a chair—tidy, if not warm.
The fan spun. The house settled into its night noises. Somewhere far from Parañaque, a man read messages on a screen and closed his eyes and imagined a temple roof, a woman in a white button-down laughing rain out of her hair, and a kiss that had felt like a door opening in a wall he had never questioned until it moved.
In the morning, she would wake and teach teenagers who would forget half of what she said and keep the half that mattered. She would bring her mother's CV to the office. She would remind Savier to put his science project in a plastic envelope. She would be good. She always was.
And when her phone lit up and blinked another Good morning, she would breathe in and breathe out and choose, again, the narrow road between what she wanted and what she could afford to want.