Chapter 3: A Message from the Past
677 Words
The sunlight streamed through the sheer curtains, casting a golden warmth over our quiet Sunday morning.
“Daaaaddy Eitan,” I sang in a teasing whisper, nudging his side with my knee as I held my phone in one hand and my growing belly with the other. “Craving alert! Hot pan de sal, scrambled eggs, and tsokolate—yung tablea ha, not the powdered kind. Filipino breakfast tayo today.”
Eitan groaned into his pillow, his hand instinctively reaching over to cradle my bump. “Anything for my queens,” he mumbled, voice thick with sleep. “One inside me, one beside me.”
I chuckled, my heart fluttering at his words. It still amazed me how this man—my husband, my calm in every storm—loved both me and my son from a previous relationship as if we were born from his own soul. No questions. No doubts. Just love.
While he snoozed a little longer before his breakfast mission, I scrolled through my socials. A few mom group notifs. A reminder from Gracey about the OB checkup. And then… a message request.
From Zander Cruz.
I froze.
Zander?
The name hit me like a glass of cold water down the spine. My thumb hovered over the screen, reluctant, trembling just a little. My stomach fluttered—but not the good kind. It was the kind of tightness that curled around old memories, ones I had packed up neatly and never planned to unpack again.
His profile picture was a simple selfie. Slightly older, of course. The jawline was still there, the quiet smirk—but the eyes? Still unreadable.
I tapped the message open.
Hi Mira… kumusta ka na? I know this is random. And late. Maybe too late. But if there’s any chance you’d want to talk… I’m still here.
What did that even mean?
My fingers gripped the edge of the table. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t even sure I was surprised. Just... unsettled. After all these years?
Eitan’s footsteps echoed from the hallway as he prepped for my sudden breakfast cravings, unaware that I had just received a message from a ghost.
I didn’t reply.
But the memory came anyway.
Laguna Techno Park. March 2015.
The job fair was crowded, chaotic, and smelled faintly of wet umbrellas and paper resumes. I was twenty-three, fresh from college, and desperate to land anything that paid enough to support my lola and my then-secret pregnancy.
That’s where I met him.
Zander Cruz.
We ended up sitting beside each other on the waiting bench of a small manufacturing firm. Same call time. Same queue number. Same nervous energy.
“You look like you memorized the entire HR manual,” he joked, nodding toward the thick folder in my lap.
“And you look like you didn’t even bring a pen,” I shot back, not even glancing up.
He laughed. “Fair.”
That was how it began. Quick exchanges. Lingering glances. Shared jeepney ride home when the rain poured unexpectedly hard. It was never officially anything, but in those weeks we texted, called, met for coffee, and sat beside each other at every interview, he made it feel like it could be something.
Until one day, he disappeared.
No message. No explanation. Just gone.
And shortly after, I met Eitan—by fate, by timing, by miracle. And the rest, as they say, was history.
Back in the present, the sound of the pan sizzling in the kitchen brought me back.
I stood up and quietly locked my phone.
No. Not today.
Not when my son was upstairs playing with his Legos, waiting for his favorite scrambled egg sandwich. Not when Eitan was in the kitchen, singing out of tune as he toasted pan de sal for me and the baby I carried. Not when my heart was so full of the life I built from the ground up.
Zander Cruz was a chapter I already closed.
But still… I couldn’t help but wonder what made him reach out now.
And why.
- Writer
