Day Six: A kiss.

We both knew it was doomed from the beginning.

She knew I was gay. She went to the gym with my ex. I knew a part of her hoped that I would return her affection. In hindsight, I was toying with her affection, knowing she enjoyed having me around like a boyfriend.

It was one night after her job in Makati. We went drinking and she had more than her usual. As drunk as a payday weekend. She was, by far, not a frail woman; but very drunk women traveling alone are still vulnerable. There was no question that I would accompany her home. I had accompanied her home before.

She knew I haven’t slept with a woman before. We teased each other often of the idea of sleeping together. “Soon,” we told each other in jest. We never had sex.

In that bus ride to Muntinlupa, she sobering up a little. By the time we reached the gate of the village where she lived, she could already walk well enough on her own.

As we often did, we held each other’s hands while walking. Occasionally, I rubbed the tips of my fingers against her trimmed nails. Sometimes she leaned on me and I placed one arm around her waist. We walked slowly and in silence.

A few hundred steps before we reached her house, she asked me to kiss her. I leaned down to her face in the dark street and kissed her for the first time. She kissed deeply and with passion, as fierce as I know how she is as a woman. We kissed until we had to catch our breaths. We started walking a few more steps and then, without prompting, we kissed each other again. We tried to compose ourselves by the time we reached the door of her family’s house.

It was a relief when that pseudo-affair ended, to be honest, when she met her then-future-husband some time after. Soon after they started dating, she would giddily tell me how good he was in bed.

Here’s the thing about kissing a girl: I missed feeling the gentle scratch from growing facial stubble.