Legacy

5 - The Search

It's been a struggle for Diana the whole day. Aside from the soreness and discomfort that she felt down there which she has to endure every time she moves and has to ignore and hide from her mother and her nosy friend Lea, she can't get over the guilt for what happened that morning with Jacob and lying to her Nanay.

She had told her Nanay that Marcy had gotten so drunk that she ended up sleeping in his place to take care of him then later spending the whole morning there too because her best friend (that traitor!) was still so sad and she needed to be there for him. Of course, that lie was coupled with a fervent prayer that Marcy doesn't show up and tell her Nanay a totally different story.

Her Nanay, as sweet and trusting as she is loving, believed her of course and even told her to sleep more in case she was still nursing a hangover, which she was. Guilt-ridden Diana, however, refused and told her mother that she was okay.

During her ride home, Diana has contemplated confessing to her mother and telling her everything that happened but she knew that her Mom would be very disappointed with her. She may even blame herself for not being a good enough mother to make sure something like that won't happen. She has raised her daughter with old-fashioned values and virtue. 

Diana doesn't want her mother blaming herself. She was already in poor health. All of Diana's life, she and her Mom had always struggled financially but her mother did everything to make ends meet, selling her home-made sweet pork and chorizo on the side while working a full-time job as a laundromat personnel just to put Diana through college.

Her Mom always said that she has no great wealth to leave Diana except for the small house and land which they live in that she had also inherited from her parents. The most valuable thing that she can leave behind for her daughter was her education and the virtues and values that she instilled in her since she was little.

More than the physical pain of losing her chastity, Diana felt an excruciating torture to her heart and soul for betraying her mother's trust. She has been trying to forget about it all day, trying to forget about him— his eyes, his smile, his voice, his touch, his kiss. But despite burying herself in piles of chores to keep busy, starving herself to punish her body for its sins, and inviting her Mom and Lea to a game of Scrabble to get her mind off other things especially him, she can't help the memory of Jacob from pushing forward and reminding her how on a single night, she let him take something that she has protected and valued for so long, how on one night, she let a stranger make her forget everything that her mother taught her.

She knew she had no one to blame but herself. She was the one who was weakened by his words. She was the one who gave in to his kiss. She was the one who craved more of his touch. She was the one who still ached for him now.

"Didi! Hey!" Her mother slaps her knee after calling her attention by the nickname only her Mom uses.

"Huh?" Diana looks up from blankly staring at the game board, startled.

"It's your turn. We have been waiting for you to make a move for 5 minutes."

"Oh! Sorry, Mom. Here." She looks at the words on the board and the letters on her rack then tries to figure out a word. She ends up putting a lame 5-point word on the board.

"Baby, are you okay? You've been spacing out all day. Is something wrong? Tell Mom." Her mother observes.

"No. Nothing's wrong, Mom." She suddenly beams, shaking any thoughts of Jacob away and pushing them at the farthest reaches of her mind. "I'm just hungry. What do you want to eat, Mom? I'll cook." She smiles widely and acts excited to reassure her mother.

"Are you sure you're okay, Didi? You're not keeping anything from me?" Her mother is still worried. 

"Mom, stop worrying. I'm very okay. I'm so okay that I can cook your favorite pork stew and stir-fried vegetables." Diana grinned. 

A promise of her favorite foods for dinner works. Diana's mother nods her head and gently pats her cheek. "Alright. If you say you're okay then I believe you."

"Great! Wait here, Mom. Dinner will be ready soon." Diana jumps up from her seat and hops off to the kitchen.

She has to stop. She has to remember her responsibilities to her family now. She has to remember who she was before she met him. She has to forget about him.

***

You would think that Diana would be a very unique and uncommon name nowadays. It's not. Jacob would know since he has spent all morning and afternoon scouring through the internet to find her on f*******:, i********: and Twitter. He figured that unless she has been living under a rock for the past decade, she would have a social media account. No matter how inactive, she must have one. Pretty and mesmerizing as she is, he wonders how she hasn't broken the internet yet.

His searches gave him over seven hundred profiles of girls with the name Diana, even when he narrowed his search to only include results in the local area, there were still at least a hundred of them. He patiently checked each one but none of them was his Diana.

"His Diana"... Yes. That sounds right to him. He will make her his Diana.

That took him all day and even now that he's back in the bar where he spends his weekend nights, he's too busy tapping and scrolling on his phone to hear Keno's question.

The bartender had to tap the wooden counter in front of him to finally get his boss's attention.

"Huh?" Jacob looks up from his phone for a second to acknowledge Keno before looking down again. "What was that?" He asks as he continues typing on Google to search for Diana + Metro Manila. He sighs when the results come up because that proves to be a bigger dead end.

Keno frowns as his boss seems to have slipped away from the living world and into the virtual blackhole that has consumed him for the past two hours. He dares sneak a peek on Jacob's phone and snickers at what he sees.

"Tsk tsk... Oh no, boss! You're Googling her? Oh s**t! You fell hard, boss." He chuckled.

"No. Shut up!" Jacob shoots a cold glare at his friend as he finally stuffs his phone into his pocket.

"Really?" Keno smirks. "I saw you leave with her last night. Did you take her home?" He wiggles his eyebrows.

"We're not talking about her." Jacob grumbles. He's obviously pissed off but Keno is unfazed. They grew up together and he's used to Jacob's moods.

"That bad?" The bartender snickers.

"I said shut up, Keno." He glares at his friend. "Also, it was amazing. That's all I'm saying. Not one more word about her."

Talking about girls and their conquests is nothing new between the two friends. In fact, they enjoy talking about how they flirt with and pick up women and how they sleep around with them since there's some unspoken competition between the two good-looking men.

If it were another girl, Jacob wouldn't have any trouble bragging about it but somehow, he can't get himself to talk about Diana, not in a way that will give his friend any disrespectful images of her or in a way that will put her in the same level as all the other girls because she's not. Not to him.

Keno narrows his eyes and studies his friend's thoughtful expression. "This looks serious." He clicks his tongue.

"What are you talking about?" Jacob frowns.

"I've never seen you this hung up over a girl, boss."

"I said not one more word about her, Keno." He warns.

"Did you try searching f*******:? i********:? Twitter? Snapchat? Tinder?"

"She doesn't use Tinder." Jacob grits his teeth. 

"How did you know?"

"I just do, okay?"

"You never know these days, boss." Keno shrugs. "But did you try?"

"I searched the entire internet already!" He growls.

Keno smiles knowingly but decides not to say anything about his thoughts about his boss's feelings to him. "Oh well... Maybe she doesn't use social media. Maybe she's part of the 1% of the world population who prefers old school methods of communication like snail mail or rotary phones."

"Possible. Do they even still make rotary phones today?" 

"Boss, focus. You want to find this girl, right?"

"Yes." Jacob answers instantly.

"In this day and age, she can't be untraceable. Unless she was just a dream you made up but we both saw her so that's impossible. Or maybe she's a secret spy that's why she doesn't use social media to be incognito or she could be a fairy and has now gone back to her magical world."

The first could explain why he feels like he's falling into a trance whenever he thinks of her. The second would justify why she was in his arms one second and then gone the next. The third could be why he's so enchanted by her eyes, enthralled by her smile, intoxicated by her kisses and charmed by her touch.

"You just need to know where to look." Keno tells him.

"I'm listening." Jacob says. "Where do you suggest I look?"

"Right in front of you." His friend answers.

"Are you shitting me? You're in front of me." He scowls.

"Exactly, boss. I, Keno Vasquez, your most trusted friend and employee, have the answer." The bartender grins smugly and raises his hand, holding up a plastic card.

"Is that..."

"Yup. The credit card she used last night. You rushed off so suddenly that she left it. So, my dear boss, you don't have to look for her..."

"She'll come looking for me." Jacob smiles.

"Technically, she'll come looking for the card. But, yeah. Sure, boss."

Jacob doesn't even mind his friend's sarcasm because his thoughts have raced ahead to when he gets to be with his Diana again.