THREE
848 Words
THREE
Erin didn’t think she was staring at Ramon to the point of rudeness until he asked if he’d grown an extra head.
“I’m sorry. I’m still getting used to...this,” she laughed softly, hand motioning to his face, his shoulders…
He definitely put on a little weight, she thought, but it looked good on him. His shoulders looked broader and his arms looked muscular, stronger. And hello, stubble that tickled her skin when they brushed cheeks earlier! It’s nice to see you too.
Ramon jerked an eyebrow. “Me looking like a goon?”
“Oh, shush! You don’t look like a goon!” Erin quickly protested. She rested her chin on her palm. “You’re like a younger, leaner version of skinhead-era Channing Tatum now.”
“Mahiya ka, uy,” Ramon quipped, making her laugh.
It was a little past ten in the evening, and they were having a late dinner at a 7-11 a few hundred meters from the theatre building. Erin would have treated him to a nicer meal somewhere else, but the nearest restaurants were already closed. Instead, she bought cup noodles, siopao, and coffee for both of them. Ramon didn’t seem to mind.
“Just ask me what you want to know,” he finally said. “I’ll answer as honestly as I can.”
Erin slurped a bit of the seafood-flavored broth from her cup and eyed him warily for a few seconds. “You didn’t shave your head because of a break up, did you?”
It was Ramon’s turn to laugh, leaving Erin wondering for a second if the warm feeling in her stomach was because of the soup or the throaty timbre of his voice.
“My alopecia worsened after graduation,” he began. Steam rose from his cup of coffee when he took the lid off as he spoke.
He opened two packets of powdered cream and poured it carefully into the black liquid until it became a nice shade of brown. He left the sugar packets untouched. “The bald spots got increasingly bigger and harder to hide, so I thought—might as well shave it all off.”
She got stuck on the term alopecia, reminded of the time Ramon told her about an auto-immune condition he had that caused his hair to fall off in clumps for no apparent reason. Back then, she failed to notice it because he had on a baseball cap every time she saw him on campus. Her curiosity was piqued, though, when some of their org mates called him “Poknat” behind his back. The childish nickname didn’t sit well with her, so she corrected them—subtly or otherwise—whenever they called him that.
She also recalled feeling alarmed that he might be dying, but he had been quick to fend off those fears. “It’s not contagious nor life-threatening,” he reassured her. “The doctor said it’s just that my white blood cells keep killing the hair follicles, so I might just have to live with the bald spots, possibly for the rest of my life.”
“Does that mean it hasn’t been cured?”
He shook his head. “It can’t be cured, only treated.”
“Oh.”
“There you go again!” Ramon laughed and pointed at her face. “That look on your face is just like that time you thought I was dying or something.”
Erin clicked her tongue. “I didn’t know what alopecia was, okay? I thought it was some kind of rare cancer!”
He shook his head and sighed. “I’ll say it again. It’s so nice to see you again, Erin.”
“Same. I didn’t even know how much I missed you until now.”
“Well,” he began, taking a packet of siopao sauce from her hands when she struggled to tear it open. “You’re going to get tired of my face from today.”
“Let’s see who gets tired first,” Erin said and waited for him to tear the packet open. She raised the siopao in front of him.
Ramon chuckled and squeezed the sauce packet, leaving a heart-shaped brown gloop on the surface of the pork-filled pastry. “I’m sure as hell it won’t be me.”
“Oh, right!” She took a quick bite off the bread and pulled her phone out. “I have to add you to the chat.”
“What chat?”
Erin opened a chat app and showed it to Ramon. “This chat,” she said, and went back to typing. He took his phone out as well, and was welcomed with a notification message—
Erin Javier added you to the LakambiniKEEDS chat room.
—followed by message notifications from Erin, Hiraya, Mark, and Jericho.
Hey guys, say hello to Ramon!
Hiya, babe! Welcome to our noisy little chat window!
Naku, Ramon. Say goodbye to productivity.
There’s always an option to mute, Mark.
Ramon looked up at Erin, confused. She smiled and went on to explain. “We’re a clingy sort of people. We like keeping each other up by talking about useless things.”
He blinked.
“I’m kidding...it’s a place where we talk about ideas. Sometimes chismis.”
More messages came in, and Erin watched as Ramon tried to keep up with the chat.
Hi Raf!
Who’s Raf ?
I’ve decided to christen him with a nickname. Ramon sounds too old.
Erin laughed upon reading the message. “That’s Kai, she likes naming people. Things. Animals. You can choose to ignore the nickname, but I’m telling you—she’ll stick with it until you get used to it enough.”
“Kai is...?”
“Blue-green hair, pixie cut. She’s our wardrobe and make-up specialist. When she’s not acting, that is,” Erin replied and typed in a message:
But I like Ramon. Sounds like a character from a Mexican telenovela.
HAHA.
“With a lot less hair,” Ramon pointed out.
“Type it in!”
He obliged, shaking his head. “Chat rooms are the bane of my existence.”
“Oh, get used to it. It’s fun!”
“If you say so!”
- Writer
