Married By Accident

02: My Heart Longs For You, Pizza

| Franki |

In a rare instance of solitude, I'm sitting in an outdoor restaurant with bags in my hand, not having the best appetite. I'm a female drummer and part-time DJ, feeling rejected and ignored isn't in my vocabulary, well, unless we're talking about my ex. She's a special kind of monster so it's understandable how she treated me in the past.

Jodie's surprise cousin crushed my spirits in just a short amount of time.

Who is this woman, and why does she have this effect on me?

This is fine, I thought as I stared at the strangers passing by. Diana vanished after our Maza rescue this morning.

"I love that adorable Aussie accent," I scoffed as I thought that maybe she didn't mean anything that she said, she just wanted to have some fun.

But she's your wife. You're married to her, what are you going to do about that?

"Heh..." I let out a quick chuckle.

It's not funny, Franki.

My expression quickly changed, as if someone was watching me.

My life back in Australia wasn't perfect but at least I haven't tried to marry a complete stranger... who might be engaged to someone else and that's another one of my fears. Who is this mystery fiancé? What if I find out it's someone I know? Like an acquaintance of some sort? I started running everyone in my head, trying to recall if anyone has confessed of being recently engaged, I think I'm losing my mind. If Maza finds out about this, I will never hear the end of it.

It's two in the afternoon and we're getting ready to go back to Manila. We were here for two days and one night, this was an impromptu trip. We have jobs and stuff so we didn't particularly iron out our schedules solely for this event.

Where the hell is she? Are we not even gonna talk about this?

I never knew a cousin existed until last night. Jodie and I aren't really that close. She went to college with Maza and they dated for two days. I know. Maza told me that 'horrifying story'— her words, and I remembered her making an 'ick' face like a three-year-old not wanting to eat their broccoli. Nobody ever mentions that incident again. But they remained good friends ever since. So now she's sort of my friend too. She's pretty cool. Mostly very serious, but cool.

I met Maza at a music festival in Australia. I visited the Philippines a few years back for a small gig and started to just love everything about the place and the culture. I grew up in New Zealand, moved to Australia when I was eighteen and now I think I'm staying in the Philippines for good. Maza and I have a fun relationship. She's a lot, but I love her.

"Heeeey giiiirl."

Speak of the devil and she doth appear.

"You seem unusually chipper for someone who's had a lot of tequila last night," I‌ said in a very flat tone.

"Haha! What's with the faaace?!" She said with an enormous smile while putting on her glasses.

"Okay Debbie Downer, how bout this. You take a photo of me in that empty corner. Cmon, make yourself useful." She pointed me to a dark gray wall. I made a show of groaning as she pulled me up. I dropped my bags and reluctantly walked towards that area.

We snapped a lot of photos but she finally posted something that she thinks, in her own words, is bitchin' and cool AF.

Jodie, Sky, and some blonde guy wearing a floral shirt are walking towards us, carrying food and drinks. The blonde guy looked familiar, I think he's on YouTube or whatever but Maza said he's a little weird so we never really hung out with him until now.

This is also the first time that I'm hanging out with Sky. He has a travel show with another British guy in London who looks like Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys, can't remember his name. They travel around the world to find the best local dining spots and give you tips on how to spend less but experience more. He has a decent following on i********: and Twitter. The show's new and not popular yet, but he's a celebrity.

Then I hear a beep on my phone.

It's an i********: direct message.

Diana: Did some research and asked around. They said if we sign some papers right now they might call us tomorrow morning about the processing and once we receive an email confirmation, it should take five or six weeks for everything to complete and void the marriage.

Diana: I'll hand you over some papers, we can sign it, and I'll take care of the rest.

Wow. Not even a good morning or hello.

Her over-eagerness about this annulment thing is bumming me out. I shouldn't feel this way, I mean she's basically a stranger. I feel sick. I've been in a foul mood since this morning. This should've been significant news.

I hate how she was all out flirting when I was about to go down on her, but she completely ignored me the entire time we were at Jodie's.

Get yourself together. She's probably in a relationship with some popular model and you were just for fun last night... and this morning.

I suddenly remembered her posting a photo of me on i********:, I stalked her account after she left. I checked her feed, and it's gone.

She f*****g deleted it.

Or maybe archived it.

Anyway, point is, the post's gone.

I may have heavily sighed, forgetting that there were four other people in front of me who looked very excited to eat their food. They all stared at me in confusion.

"Sorry, I have a terrible headache. I'll go get myself something to drink." Before Maza could open her mouth and blurt out something petty and hilarious, I was already falling in line to get myself another cup of coffee, but the thought of a really good soy milk latte isn't even helping.

It's helpless.

I'm in Vegas, I'm depressed and I don't even know why.

Then came another beep on my phone.

Diana: Franki? You can come to my hotel room if you want, I have the papers.

My head started spinning. The last thing I remembered was angrily opening a car door and riding a cab back to her hotel.

I went straight to knocking at the door while hearing faint music play in the background. It took a moment, but then she opened the door and the music became clearer.

Horsebeach, one of my favorite bands, apparently she has great taste in music too.

[My Heart Longs For You, Pizza by Horsebeach]

♪ Can't you see the colors changing around me

When you are near again ♪

"Hi." She said with a lazy smile that made my heart skip a beat. A warm fuzzy feeling took over my exasperation.

Just like that.

"Well, better start the paperwork," I said trying to sound casual, storming inside her room.

"Franki..." She whispered and subtly touched my hand. I felt a zing of electricity shot through me.

This is bad. I can see myself making a very poor decision that I'm surely gonna regret later on. We do have a lot of that for the past twenty four hours.

I captured her beautiful dark brown eyes immediately, the hardest thing in the world at this moment is to look away but I can feel her eyes burning through me, neither one of us is willing to break eye contact.

Then her fingers cupped the back of my neck while leaning in to kiss me. I buried my hands in her hair as she pulled me closer.

"Sorry about earlier." She hissed, breaking away then planting another lingering, soft kiss on my lips.

"About what?" I said as if I haven't been moping around ever since she left. I kissed her back, taking a hasty, shaky breath, my lips warm against hers. The heat that was radiating from her was making me all kinds of dizzy, she still smelled like lavender, the intoxicating scent was making my heart beat so fast.

Lavenders will never be the same.

"We should... sign the thing." She barely whispered against my shoulder. I felt her hot breath tickling against the shell of my ear.

I moaned agreeably, tilting my head back as she scattered kisses down my neck to my collarbone.

I swallowed hard as my fingertips were itching to pull her shirt up and out of those pants, so I can sneak my fingers underneath it. But I shook the thought out of my mind, reminding myself that she's with someone else.

And we're going to miss our flight.

"What time is it?" She broke away from me, looking all confused.

"It's uh, almost three. Oh, s**t—" She scanned the room and landed her eyes on the bed where the papers were carefully laid piece by piece.

Do I want to sign that?

Of course, you need to sign that, are you stupid?

"So... yeah." She handed over one document sheepishly, looking down and finger-combed her hair. I think she may have sat on the bed as I went over it real quick. Swallowing hard the emotion welling in my throat, I turned to look for a pen then picked up the black and gold retractable one on top of the bedside table.

The bedside table.

The rings are gone. I didn't want to ask her, I'm sure she has those somewhere. I started filling out my side of the paperwork while I heard her pack stuff up. That was the longest ten minutes of my life.

Are we not going to talk about this? Is she not going to talk to me?

Maza called me on the phone to ask where I was, "I'll be there, give me a few minutes."

"So do you want to go to the airport together? I mean I'm heading there now," I asked Diana casually, trying to break the tension.

"It's fine. Sky and I are on a different flight."

Sky.

So is he the boyfriend? Fiancé? Why doesn't anyone talk about this? Are they together? But when I think of Sky, all I remember is him glued and talking to someone on his phone. He's from London and she's from... I just realized I don't even know anything about her. She has a very neutral accent.

What I know though is that anxiety is caused by a variety of things: Brain chemistry, stress, environmental factors, and traumatic events.

At this point, it's stress, traumatic events, and probably brain chemistry for me.

"I don't know what you're thinking or how you feel but I'm not insensitive. Things are just complicated for me right now and when we get back, I hope we can be friends."

There it is.

Complicated.

Friends.

I didn't wanna seem stubborn or immature. I'm sure there's more to this mysterious and mixed signals but if she's just another variety of a monster like my ex, then the universe must really hate me.

"I would love to talk more but I have a plane to catch. I'll see you in BGC, I guess." I heard Jodie talk about Diana staying at her place early this morning.

I didn't know what to say, I didn't want to seem needy or desperate or wanting. She obviously has some stuff going on, I wish I knew. I wish I had time.

The next thing I know is I'm sitting in a cab staring out the car window. It was a very dramatic moment, like the ones you see in music videos. I Don't Know You from The Marias started playing on the radio, definitely not helping.

♪ There's a weight in my bed

Where you laid and you said

I don't know you ♪

I reached the airport and I saw Maza waving frantically. Jodie flashed an innocent smile and blonde guy with a floral shirt was busy doing something on his phone and taking videos of himself talking. I forced a smile and walked towards them trying to brush Diana's thoughts off.

I suddenly felt sick in my stomach when I realized that Sky's gone, they're indeed leaving together.

I checked their i********: accounts but only saw a few photos of them, oftentimes they're with friends. There's one of them drinking wine with the caption, "Missin' you at wine nights."

That doesn't mean anything I mean, friends can miss each other on wine nights...

"Oh, Diana and Sky? Psssh." Maza rolled her eyes leaning over and saw me looking at their photos.

"What?" I said, sounding a little surprised.

"Those two are... it's a long story and I have a really bad headache. So maybe next time." She then closed her eyes and rested her head on my shoulder.

I sat at the airport lounge, completely oblivious to everyone around me for a few minutes. I think I took comfort with the fact that Maza knew something about them but reacted negatively. I didn't want to end up learning the fact that they're indeed getting married soon because I'm already inexplicably drawn to her.

"You hungry? You haven't had lunch yet." Maza asked.

"I'd kill for a slice of pizza right now," I replied. The thought of having one is somehow the only thing that's making me feel better at the moment... and maybe a text from Diana, I don't know, or a call.

Oh, my heart longs for you, pizza.