My First Love's Second Job
The fluorescent lights in my Makati cubicle flicker like dying stars, casting a sickly glow on my monitor. Another Excel formula error mocks me with its red triangle, while my officemates' family photos stare from their desk frames. My phone buzzes - a notification from her premium content page. Same smile, different audience. Eight years, and Joanna's smile still scrunches her nose when she laughs, but now it belongs to thousands of subscribers at 750 pesos per month.
I minimize the spreadsheet and close my eyes, letting the memories wash over me like monsoon rain.
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The sweet scent of sampaguita wrapped around our childhood like a mother's embrace. Joanna and I claimed the small plaza near our neighborhood as our kingdom, where crumbling concrete benches served as our thrones and the rusty basketball court our royal court. Our math notebooks lay forgotten beside us, pages dancing in the provincial breeze, as we traded Pokémon cards and shared pan de coco from Jan Micos bakery. The bread was always slightly warm, leaving sticky coconut traces on our fingertips. She always saved the filling for me, teasing that my sweet tooth was worse than a kid's.
"When we grow up," she declared one sunny afternoon, her long black hair catching the golden light like silk threads in the wind, "let's build a house right here. With a garden full of sampaguita and ylang-ylang." Her eyes sparkled with the kind of innocence that only provincial dreamers possess.
I turned to face her then, my heart pounding like summer thunder. "And we'll have a small balcony," I added, reaching for her hand, "where we can watch the sunset every evening, just like this." She looked at me with those deep brown eyes that reminded me of melted caramel with hints of mystery, and for a moment, the world stood still.
High school transformed our innocent afternoons into stolen moments between classes, our uniforms crisp in the morning but wrinkled by afternoon heat. We shared shy hand-holding during town fiestas, our palms sweaty under the glow of parols, and exchanged late-night text messages that made the old Nokia phone's blue light feel like moonshine.
During our last year together, in the same plaza where we spent our childhood, we sealed our promise with a kiss that tasted of Coca-Cola and dreams. The gentle breeze carried the scent of sampaguita around us, white petals spinning like tiny stars.
"I'll become a successful businessman," I promised, my voice full of the confidence that only youth can muster. "And you'll be a teacher in the elementary school, just like you've always dreamed."
But dreams, like sampaguita blooms, have a way of wilting under harsh light.
College separated us - me to Manila's concrete jungle, her to a state university in our province. At first, we tried to bridge the distance with video calls and weekend visits. But slowly, like sand through an hourglass, our connection began to slip.
The first sign was her changing social media presence. Simple selfies gave way to carefully curated posts. Teaching practice photos were replaced by sponsored content. Each transformation came with a story - "Just extra income for books," then "Supporting my family," until finally, "This is who I am now."
The sampaguita garden of our dreams withered with each passing season. Our last conversation happened on a rainy Tuesday, her voice crackling through the phone like static. "Sometimes," she said, "dreams need to change to survive."
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A knock on my cubicle wall jolts me back to reality. My supervisor wants the quarterly reports by five. Outside my office window, Manila's skyline shimmers in the afternoon heat, a concrete and glass jungle where provincial dreams come to transform or die.
The sampaguita still blooms in our old plaza, their white petals pure against the pollution-stained walls. Sometimes, on my rare visits home, I catch their fragrance in the air. But like the numbers I've learned not to dial, some scents are better left in memory.
I open my phone's browser one last time. Her premium content page glows on the screen, the subscription button pulsing like a digital heartbeat. Eight years of changes captured in a monthly fee. I close the tab and return to my spreadsheet, where at least the numbers make sense, even when they don't add up to what we dreamed.
In the end, perhaps we both found our gardens - hers in the digital space where dreams are measured in likes and subscribers, mine in the ordered rows and columns of corporate life. Different kinds of blooms for different kinds of dreamers.
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