The Boyfriend Backtrack

Chapter 1

Wednesdays are always supposed to be just one of those days. Nothing much happens on Wednesdays—mainly because people feel crap about it: the week has started, but it's not the end just quite yet.

But this Wednesday is different.

It starts when I find myself waking up from a strange dream. I forget how the dream started but I do remember feeling like I was inside a Van Gogh painting: reminiscent of Wheatfield with Cypresses, I was standing in a large field when the sky, cloudy and blue, started to swirl.

I open my eyes then and find my paintbrushes on the nightstand, stacked in a cup and untouched since graduating from University.

Realizing that I accidentally turned off my alarm when I meant to hit snooze, I hurry to start my day. It's a hectic day in the office: more digital post-processing training with my new assistant Faye, and an album to submit to the printers.

I climb in my car only to find it uncooperative; it refuses to run. I have to get that checked, but since I'm already about an hour late, I hail a cab to take me to Makati.

I realize that it's on days like this that I need Faye the most. She can cover for me in case Morrie, our boss, comes in before I do. We said we'd have breakfast today so we can actually sit down and get to know each other better. But with this traffic, I bet we'll be having an early lunch instead.

Then, the radio from the cab starts playing this familiar song. I haven't listened to it fully—or intentionally—in a long while. It was in Regina's Soundtrack of Youth, a decade-old hits album burned in a single, possibly scratched, CD. The track that's currently playing on the radio is Track 3, the very song that was playing when I met this boy in University.

Slightly bothered by this, I distract myself by scrutinizing my hair on the cab's side mirror. It is how it's always been for the last couple of years: straight and limp, parted in the middle and cut right below the shoulders. I have been told to let my hair rest for a while so it can outgrow the damaged bit. It figures, because I possibly did all the things that I could do with my hair when I was in school.

I hear the chorus of the song, the same line repeating over and over. I consider asking the driver to switch stations. Instead I ask him to take an alternative route so we can get to the office faster. But seeing that it's rush hour and we're on Ayala, it's kind of hopeless. We stay on that street for ten more minutes, making me officially late for breakfast.

When I arrive at the office, Faye hands me my messages. We decide to have brunch in a coffee shop right across the street so we can talk about the industry and my shift from being the great Morrie Lazaro's assistant to his junior I-can-trust-you-while-I'm-away photographer.

I have been in the Wedding Photography industry for three years. And I'd like to think that I've seen almost all of it: well-planned destination weddings, dramatic cathedral weddings, and the downright shotgun let's-just-get-this-over-with ones.

I used to think that being surrounded by weddings would bother me, but they're actually great. When I was younger, I remember getting really bored watching my aunts and my cousins get married. But here's the thing when you get older, people actually start to understand what 'I do' means.

While we're eating, Faye tells me that she's planning to get married next year. This shifts the conversation to our wedding ideas, despite the fact that neither of us is currently wearing an engagement ring.

"I would really rather have something low-key," Faye tells me. She just graduated from University. She reminds me so much of how new grads are when they step out into the real world. So hopeful. So confused. So idealistic. So like me years ago. "It's my mother who wants the whole grand-ballroom type of wedding."