Everything pretty much went the same now. Joy and I now were back eating lunch together with Irene, Wendy, and Harry, much to Joy’s chagrin. She loved hanging around Wendy, and sometimes Irene too—somebody said the best friend never liked the crush—but she said I was such a masochist and idiot that I willingly sat in front of my ‘crush’ and her boyfriend for lunch.

She was one to talk though. Joy only did long distance relationship because she said it was more challenging.

Challenging my . Why would you want to be apart from your girlfriend not knowing where she was, what she was doing, with whom she was, and whether she was telling the truth at all? Joy’s last girlfriend turned out to be hiding another girlfriend from her and until now I wasn’t sure she had moved on at all from the betrayal.

Irene wasn’t even my girlfriend, but I still couldn’t imagine being separated from her. Just the thought of not being able to see her beautiful face in the morning and have her slap my arm whenever I was unbearable enough.

Back to the situation at hand, as things were pretty much back to how it was, I could testify that they were also completely different. There was a change in the air as it got colder and the threat of snow hung above us. But I mentioned change not only to talk about the weather. What I meant to talk about was Irene and Harry.

They were still together, obviously. Irene was still happy which was good because I would never want her to be unhappy even though sometimes I thought about how it’d be if she broke up with probably the only good guy I had ever known except my dad. It probably would make her sad as , and that was why I was only entertaining the idea as a simulation for a possible incident so I could be prepared to comfort her later. Or at least that was what I was telling myself anyway.

The change that I was talking about was not that. The change that I was talking about was the fact that Harry didn’t always sit with us anymore. He would sit over with his group of senior friends sometimes while Irene would be sitting with us—wasn’t such a masochist now, was I, Joy? She was also back to spending every Sunday with me scouting street foods or just sticking with what we knew best, Carlos. When I asked her about it, she said:

“Harry and I have agreed that we haven’t been spending that much time with our friends lately, so we decided to take a break every now and then to spend some time with them. Our friends are important too.”

When I told Joy about it, she tried to emphasize on the ‘friends’ part of Irene’s statement, but I didn’t care. I was important to her.

-

It was 8 o’clock at night and I was alone in my room when Irene called.

“Hey,” I said trying not to mind the damn butterflies that her call stirred.

Hey, Bear, she said. Are you busy?

For you? Never, I wanted to say. But that highly seemed inappropriate so I didn’t.

“Nope, just here listening to some music,” I answered honestly.

Have you had dinner yet? she prompted.

“Nope,” I popped the ‘p’.

Are your parents preparing for dinner then?

Familiar with the conversation and knowing where it was going, I told her eagerly, “My parents are staying late at the restaurant, so it’s just me eating whatever to not starve.”

Perfect. Do you maybe wanna come over? I’m making chicken casserole, stated her.

There were only so many reasons why Irene Bae wanted me to come over to her place to have dinner. Most of those ended with me happily being the guinea pig of her cooking experiment, even though sometimes she was only experimenting to find the perfect recipe for Harry. But I had tried her chicken casserole before—Lord, it was so good it gave my mouth an —and considering the fact that tomorrow we would be having our end-of-term chemistry exam, I was pretty sure she was inviting me for an altogether different reason.

There are also some things I need to ask you about, she said putting words into my thoughts.

Sometimes I couldn’t help but compare myself to Harry. Could he read her as well as I could? Could he guess what she wanted before she even said it? Did he hear the words she didn’t say? I couldn’t help but think if I were a boy, would I be better than him? Would she pick me over him?

“God forbid Irene Bae ever inviting me over to her house just for the sake of wanting me around,” I joked playfully hoping my voice didn’t betray my disappointment.

Your presence is very much wanted here, Your Highness, mocked her in return. If we didn’t have chem exam tomorrow, I would’ve invited you over anyway. My dad came over today.

Among the many mysteries that revolved around one Irene Bae, her father was the most perplexing of them all. Nobody—not even the teachers and Irene’s precious boyfriend, Harry—knew who her father was. He had never come to the school for any parent-teacher meeting. He also didn’t come on that one time he was supposed to be called when Irene and I skipped school (when I asked Irene about it, she just shrugged and said she didn’t know). He never drove her or picked her up from school. Seeing Irene’s many times use of the phrase ‘come over’ and not ‘come home’, he must’ve not lived with her. I had never once seen him—even on accident—in her apartment. There was no picture of him, n