"Too bad, you didn't come!" Pat lamented while having lunch with Ingrid in the pantry of Regal Talents Agency.

"Crazy, what would I do there if I did?"

Pat was her paternal cousin, a year older than her. They grew up together, so she considered him like a brother, and he was her best friend.

"Well, you've had a crush on Maverick Logan for a long time, haven't you? It would have been your chance to meet him in person."

She rolled her eyes at him. "Like I'm going to tell my boss I'm going to go."

"You should have asked if your presence was needed there, maybe they were going to discuss Maverick's contract renewal. Take notes, you know. My God, Ingrid! Get rid of that shyness in your system if you want to achieve something here in Manila."

"What? I've been working here for almost two years now. I don't have any bad records, do I? Raffy likes me too."

Their immediate superior, Pat, didn't call for Ma'am or Boss. She was friendly with her staff, especially with her cousin, who was his executive assistant.

"Yes. But, cuz, you gotta be more aggressive! That's why you took this job, to awaken your confidence that's been in dormancy because of the misogynistic environment we grew up in."

"What are you talking about? I'm not as shy as I was on my first day here, am I?"

"Yes, but learn to kiss ass like me! Look at me, I'm so happy with my position at work now. You should kiss up to Noah too!"

Ingrid laughed. "You know I can't do that."

"There's nothing wrong with ass-kissing if you know you deserve the perks you'll get, right? And hello! I'm good and I work hard, that's why Raffy likes me too." Pat giggled. "I just kissed up to him so I could join his fancy outings."

She stirred her pineapple juice. "Sir Noah is different from Raffy, so that won't work on him."

"How are your three days with him going?"

"Okay," she replied to her cousin, shrugging.

"He's not giving you a hard time? There's a bad rep going around that he's strict, you know. Raffy told me too."

"No, he's nice. Sir Noah is actually nice."

She smiled as she remembered that he liked her coffee blend. She also had an impression of the senior manager of Regal Talents that he was a bit aloof; serious and not very talkative or smiley.

"Does he have a boyfriend?" she blurted out in a soft voice.

Sometimes she had a bad habit of mumbling incoherently what was on her mind. Maybe it came from years and years of not having the right to voice her own opinion because she lived in a house where only her late father's voice mattered.

Pat choked on his coke, apparently hearing what she said. "Boyfriend? Do you think Sir Noah is gay?" he asked her with wide eyes.

"Oh, isn't he?"

"Crazy! If anyone would be the first to know if Sir Noah is gay, it would be me. I can smell the green blood, no matter how much he hides it."

"Well, I didn't feel it, I just thought it was possible. It's just... he looks too clean, you know? He even likes pastel-colored polos. Today, he's wearing a light pink long-sleeved shirt. He was wearing white pants yesterday too."

"So what? It's trendy now to wear masculine clothes with light or pastel colors. Why, I like dark colors but I'm a gay? It's hard with you, you're used to your talipandas ex who was lazy to shave and always looked like he was in mourning because he wore black t-shirts all the time."

Ingrid rolled her eyes at her cousin. "You reminded me!"

"Seriously, Ingrid? You need to hang out with guys or go on a date to erase that default image of men that Eric forced you to believe. He's a man, so he has to ride a big bike, hang out with his barkada, drink, smoke. He's a man, so he's supposed to be a chick magnet. He's a man, so all he says is street slang and curses. He's a man, so you have to always obey him and submit to him. He's almost going to get a tattoo on his forehead with the hashtag 'I'm a man'."

She frowned even more. "Patrick, come on. I know all that. I've been moving on for two years now."

"Have you really moved on? Why don't you want to date?"

"I don't know. Maybe I'm traumatized from my last relationship. I-I don't want to experience that again, Pat."

Eric was a classic asshole. The only difference, maybe, from other assholes, was that he was affectionate when he did something wrong, so she always forgave him.

Until she finally had enough and broke up with him. She forgave Eric for his first betrayal because of her father's interference, but the jerk did it again. She wanted to slap herself for giving him a second chance.

"You won't experience that again if you choose your next relationship carefully. You listened to your father, you know," Pat emphasized.

Her late father was the Chief of Police in their town, and he was close to SPO1 Eric Galvan. He introduced the man to her, and she admitted that she was attracted to him back then. Her parents wanted her to marry Eric back then, but she was the one who refused. She wasn't sure back then if she could marry a man who betrayed her.

She and Eric had been together for over a year. She was so gullible that she was fooled by that man, and maybe she finally decided to break up with him because her father, whom she feared, was no longer there, he had a heart attack. After she broke up with him, Eric was still trying to pursue her. He was confident that she would come back to him. Until she decided to leave home to get away from everything, away from her home, from everything that was familiar.

Her mother didn't want her to leave at first, but she couldn't do anything in the end. She just felt the need to learn how to be independent and be her own person. And if she stayed with her mother, living in the same house with her and managing their small grocery store in the market, she felt like her father was still alive, watching over her life. Maybe she and her mother were different because when her father died, she felt like she needed to kill all the wrong beliefs he had instilled in her mind. But her mother still believed in him. It was like her father was still around and alive when her mother acted and spoke.

"Pat, I don't want to talk about it anymore, okay?" Ingrid said, her voice firm. "I'm so far away from all of that."

Pat smiled, pleased with her assertiveness. "Fine."