i.
You meet Cecilia at the open bar behind the large red bookstore on Mango, as all young adult horror stories go. Simon motions her forward towards you with the front of his ‘baby bump’, as he jokingly calls it, against her back. “Late na pud ka! Ana biya ko seven-thirty,” Simon says as he pulls her to the high metal table you were all convened at together. Her hair sways from side to side at the light force, across the middle of her back like a broom. you wonder if the way it looks is a product of rebond or not. “Si kuan diay, guys, Celia,” says Simon with his chest, and you pray that the way his eyes travel from you to her then back at you aren’t a hint of some nefarious gay plan as he says, “Celia, si I—”
The strobe lights flashing all over the place are barely helpful like the surely-not-roofied drinks they serve, and the generic inspired-by-the-Chainsmokers-but-reloaded music they play that straight people eat up. At least you can see she has big wide eyes, framed by thick winged eyeliner and perfectly arched eyebrows, with her lips colored in a dark lipstick that changes color depending on the hue of the lights at the second—pink, blue, orange, pink, blue…