Dalumat

XIX. The Female Gaze

"Uy! Sen, may sayaw tayo ngayon?"

"Ang corny mo, dean."

Risa had decided against changing. When she and Leni arrived together in their next event, there were some surprised looks from the tropa and her staff, and raised eyebrows from Chel and Teddy, specifically. She wasn't able to dodge the sayaw jokes, nor was she able to avoid Leni's gaze again when they ended up sitting far apart from each other. Chel noticed it, too, again, and when he brought it up to her, Risa just laughed it off.

Risa no longer traveled with Leni after that, choosing to go with her own staff in their own van. As much as she wanted to be with Leni all the time if she could, she couldn't just abandon them for the rest of the day. She had her own responsibilities to attend to.

There was an advantage to it, too, to the temporary separation. She liked how Leni kept on glancing at her in their final rally, liked how Leni approached her before the program started and said, more a statement than a question, "Hindi ka na nagpalit?"

Risa shrugged and smiled. "I like it."

When the program started, she sat away from Leni on purpose, and this time, she didn't wait for Chel to notice. Risa found Leni looking at her before he did, and unlike the previous times, her gaze wasn't as unreadable; Leni was obviously pouting. And when Leni passed by Risa for her grand entrance, she gave Risa's side a pinch, and if they were trying to be discreet about anything, they clearly failed, for Risa's yelp-laugh gave them away to the people near them.

"Bati na pala kayo," Chel said beside her.

Risa shook her head with an incredulous chuckle. "Hindi naman kami nag-away."

It turned out that it wasn't just Risa who liked it. At the end of the program, a surprising number of supporters approached her and Leni for pictures, whom they happily obliged. As they smiled in front of the cameras, a passing whim popped up in Risa's mind, of wanting to be in someone else's shoes for a second, just so she could see for herself what she and Leni looked like from the outside tonight.

It must have been a hundred photos — or fifty — by the time she and Leni had a spare moment. They had ended up in front of the widescreen monitor that served as the background to the stage when Leni turned to her, grasped her wrist in that familiar way, and asked, "Stay with me tonight?"

Risa faced her with a smile and said, "Of course," never thinking for one second that the night would go any other way.

And she didn't want it to go any other way.

They kept close to each other for the rest of the evening — maybe not beside each other; people and confetti separated them — but the other person was always within sight. There was an excitement to the night — a different, knowing excitement that wasn't there in the previous week. Perhaps it was because unlike the previous nights, there were no guessing games, no uncertainty about how the night would go, no tiptoeing around each other that brought all the now-missing anxiety.

Even when Leni gave her an apologetic look after their quick dinner there that she would have to stay behind for an impromptu meeting with her campaign team, there was no disappointment from Risa. After all, at the end of the day, they both knew whom she would go home to.

"Wait," Leni mouthed to her before they separated. Risa watched as Leni approached one of her staff, exchanged a few words with her, and received what looked to be a small piece of paper after the staff produced it from the bag she was carrying. Then Leni walked to Risa. "Mauna ka na lang sa room ko," she said.

"But I don't have your—"

Leni took Risa's hand and placed something in her palm with a discreet smile. It was the keycard to her hotel room.