And I Love You Still

“Lucille, are you still up there? Your father’s been waiting for you for ages!” “Yes, Mama. I’m coming.” She smoothed the lip tint with one last careful swipe, watched the color settle, then tucked the tube into the pouch like a small, guarded secret. The Jag backpack was heavier than it should have been; she slung it over her shoulder and hurried down the stairs. On the landing her mother pinched at her cheek as if checking for a fever. “What’s that on your lips? Lucille Blair—you’re too young for lipstick.” “It’s lip tint, Ma, not lipstick,” she said, measuring politeness into the words. “They’re the same thing,” her mother replied, disapproving as a closed book. Lucille accepted the lunch bag with the same practiced care she used for secrets; her father’s car horn blared like a clock striking the hour. “All right, I’m leaving,” she said, kissing her mother quick and mechanical, then stepped into the damp morning light. The Toyota Revo looked older than its years, repainted twice to hide rust like a face touched up with concealer. Her father was proud of its stubborn heart—secondhand metal, first-rate engine—and for the moment its imperfections felt like a small, honest blessing. But it was Zareb in the passenger seat that stopped her breath. Zareb: a name that had long since tangled itself in the soft places of her daydreams, the basketball player everyone noticed, the kind of boy who could make a hallway go soundless. “Sit here, Lucille,” Avery called from the back, sliding to the side. “We’re riding with Kuya today—Tito George insisted.” She hadn’t heard Avery climb in. She gave him a small smile—an economy of expression—and let him nudge her ribs. He knew, as if by sixth sense, the way her heart loosened and flapped at the sight of Zareb. She kept her eyes to herself, but her skin remembered him: the slope of his shoulders, the rhythm of a walk practiced under outdoor suns, the way a laugh at the wrong moment could feel like a hand to the chest. “It’s good you took up work at the shop,” her father said easily. “We need hands these days.” “I had to, Tito,” Zareb answered. “Mama’s salary won’t stretch for both Kuya’s and my schooling," Avery added. Almeera’s name fell into the morning like a gentle reminder: family stitched by necessity. Her father’s compliment—“You’re like the son I never had”—was warm and a little clumsy, like someone offering a sweater too large. Zareb smiled, practical and modest. The car ground to a stop in front of St. Sebastian. The school’s brick and glass looked ordinary under the early sky, but for Lucille it was the beginning of a small, private kind of theater. She and Avery walked the path to junior high, teasing and trading glances the way children trade stickers. She tried to sound casual—“Tomorrow, Avery, you and your kuya should ride with us again”—but her voice was thin with wanting. A cluster of boys cooled her mischief. “Hi, Miss Beautiful,” the tallest crooned. Jayden: loud, habitual, a boy with a rose in his back pocket and an energy that sought her out like a moth. He produced a pink rose and offered it with the innocent bravado of someone used to being forgiven. “For you, love,” he said, and ran off with a grin. She stared at the blossom for a heartbeat too long. When Zareb walked by, his eyes flicked to hers and something like a reprimand crossed his face. Her stomach dropped. A rumor of a boyfriend could be a curfew for a hope she had been practicing—Zareb as her date to the Night Encounter, the plan she’d tucked like a bright coin into a shoebox. Miss Vanessa’s voice pulled her back: “Lucille, line up—the flag ceremony’s starting.” She let the rose go; the petals sank into the trash can like a secret surrendered. Classes moved in waves. The first two periods washed lazily over her; she asked permission to go to the restroom not because she needed to—but because she needed air, a place to unglue herself from the tedious weight of lectures. Hallways hummed with the sort of small human dramas that seemed enormous to those living them: a scolding, a secret, a laugh turned into a rumor. She found Zareb again near the washrooms. He had been joined by Xyrene—editor-in-chief of the school paper—the kind of girl who wore authority like a second skin. They drifted toward the back of the building where the curtains were thick and the classrooms closed like clam shells. Curiosity, that subtle, dishonest engine, propelled Lucille after them. She hid as if invisible. He tried to hold Xyrene’s hand and she pulled away; they whispered, the words stolen by distance. The argument closed into a sudden tenderness that shoved the air from her lungs—Zareb’s arms found Xyrene, and their mouths met. For a moment the world reduced to the soft precise geometry of that kiss. “Oh my God,” she breathed into the quiet, and the sound turned to salt. She could not watch. She ran to the washroom, splashed water over her face until it burned and felt more real. When she returned, the classroom had become a small community of people rehearsing for a performance she could not step into. Sir Virgil assigned groups, and Lucille shuffled into hers with the practiced gait of someone who had learned to pretend. “Where were we?” she asked, and the question felt like a thin veil. Jayden put his hand on her shoulder; his nearness was a ledger of possibilities. Mariz announced the leads: Lucille and Jayden. Her name sounded different from the other syllables—closer to a wish than a fact. They planned the shoot, the ten-day deadline feeling like a distant drumbeat. Outside, life’s ordinary machinery kept turning—bell, bell, bell—and Lucille watched Zareb and Xyrene stride past the open door. For the briefest second their gazes locked. In his she saw something too sharp to decipher: annoyance? hurt? Or nothing at all but his quick, indifferent glance. She shrugged free of Jayden’s arm and folded herself small. The ride home was short and wordless. Her father did not fetch her that afternoon; a tricycle took them and Avery down the familiar route. When she neared home, Zareb appeared again, grease on his palms, a pump belt looped at his side. He looked like a boy who could mend things that broke—engines, schedules, perhaps hearts too. “You’re home already, Lucille?” he said as one might deliver a statement of weather. She smiled with something tight inside—bitter and brittle. She tried to walk past, but he tugged at her bag and the motion felt intimate and dangerous. “Aren’t you going to greet me, honey?” he asked, playful and reckless as a dare. Her laugh stuck in her throat. “Don’t call me that,” she snapped, the words a shield. “If I remember right, Xyrene’s your ‘honey.’” He grinned like the boy who might never be given to apology. “Does Tito George know you have a boyfriend?” “Why do you care?” Her voice turned sharp. “You have a girlfriend, don’t you? And you kiss her at school—what are you, exhibitionists?” He stepped close, and for a moment her world narrowed to the heat of him. “Try it,” he said, his hand suddenly rough as he grabbed her arm, “and I’ll twist your neck. You won’t do that to Jayden. I’ll—” His words thinned into threat and then softened at the sight of her father returning. He let go as if some authority had been recalled. Lucille’s face hardened. She turned and walked into the house. Her heart pounded—no longer a fierce hopeful thing but a raw instrument, its strings plucked and left to reverberate. It was heartbreak, bright and precise, like a small glass dropped on a tile floor.