The idea starts as a whisper in the middle of a rainy Manila night.
We’re tangled on my dorm couch again—his head on my stomach, my fingers lazy in his hair, the rain tapping the window like it’s trying to get in. We’ve been talking about nothing important: the new coffee shop near his office, Andra’s latest dating disaster, whether we should try cooking adobo together again even though last time we almost burned the kitchen down.
Then he lifts his head. Looks at me with that quiet intensity he still has, even after everything.
“What if we go somewhere?” he asks.
I blink. “Somewhere?”
“Far. Just us. No work. No Manila noise. Two weeks.”
My heart does that familiar skip. “Where?”
He thinks for a second. Then smiles—small, real, the one that still makes everything inside me soften.
“
