CHAPTER 6

THE TRAFFIC LIGHT turned red and the cars slowed down and stopped in front of Layla. She had just alighted from a bus and was waiting for her chance to cross the road. She stepped into the street and began walking as soon as the cars in front of her came to a complete halt. She glanced at her watch: it was almost 12:30 pm. She was on her way back to the office when she received a call from Anika, asking her to go back to Ambert’s office for some additional questions. Always a good soldier, she made the bus stop, and then she alighted, crossed the street and climbed a bus going to the opposite direction. Layla was about to stepped on the curb when she heard the angry screeching of car tires—she glanced to where she thought the noise was coming and saw a car hurtling towards her. She stepped onto the curb just as the car was about to hit her—the sidewalk proving to be an obstacle the car refused to hurdle. The car whizzed by her just a few inches from her before it hummed away while she tripped from confusion as she tried to continue walking and crashed to the pavement.

As she breathed hard and tried to stand up, she noticed someone—a man in a suit—standing a few meters away from her.

He looked at the man’s face and her heart also came crashing to the cement.

It was Ambert.

Ambert looked aghast while looking at her. She tried to call out his name but no sound came out of her mouth. She stretched out her hand towards him, motioning to him to come and help her. But he remained in his position, the look of aghast on his face slowly transforming into disgust and contempt. Instead of walking towards her and reaching for her hand, he put his hands tightly inside the pockets of his pants and then he spat on the ground and turned his back on her and started walking away. The throng of people around him immediately swallowed him and banished him from her sight.

And it made her crash into the ground again.

Layla woke up gasping.

She wasn’t on the sidewalk, lying down on the pavement; instead, she was inside her room and on top of her comfortable bed. It had been six days since that accident and she had dreamt of it twice. One, this one she had woken up from, with Ambert and the other one without. This dream she awakened was accurate except with Ambert’s part. She didn’t know why Ambert would be in that dream. Maybe because she knew he visited her in the hospital and she knew he was aware of the incident. And oh, maybe, because she had been thinking about him a lot.

He was looking at her with disgust and contempt at that dream. That wasn’t the case in real life, but soon, she was guessing, it would be. But she wouldn’t be surprised if she’d find out that he already hated her now. She had offended his ego. Many women would put him in a pedestal, but she, how many times had she nudged him off that pedestal? How many times had she snubbed him? Well, if only he knew, if only he really knew her, he’d be happy that she had snubbed him and stopped him dead in his tracks instead of letting him pursue her. He would be grateful that she didn’t let him waste too much time on her.

Anyway, she really didn’t know him, too. He probably was just bored when he invited her to a lunch that day and thought that his lunch would be more enjoyable that day if he had someone to talk to while eating, especially if that someone came from the female species.  Maybe, he treated some women as some kind of appetizers, or desserts. She probably resembled a tiramisu.

But that didn’t diminish her infatuation with him. He would always be his crush. It was just that nobody could convince her that a man like Ambert Torres would be seriously interested with him. She was more ordinary than ordinary and thinking that that lunch invitation would lead to something meaningful, like they’d have a happy-ever-after, would just be a flight of fancy. His ex, Olivia, was a goddess, or a princess. She wouldn’t even qualify to be her lady-in-waiting. Ambert was a prince; he wouldn’t waste his time on a commoner like her. She was certain that when a man like Ambert looked at a woman like her, he was seeing a toy, or a pastime.

Yeah, Ambert was a prince, and if someone would write a fairy tale about them, she would be written as the frog. A frog that had no magical capabilities, even when showered with a million kisses, to turn into something that invoked royalty.

They had gotten the results of her tests from the hospital three days ago and like she was expecting, she was okay. She just tripped on her own and fell to the ground. The car didn’t touch her, although the heat she felt coming from it rattled her. Though, two of her fingers still hurt a little, the ones she used as a cushion as she was falling into the pavement, but they were getting better, the pain receding.

She got up from her bed. Today was a very important day. At least for her, she smiled. It was the day Ambert would tape his guesting on Anika’s TV show and she was a part of it. The interview she made with Ambert had been posted on Anika’s F******k page and it had garnered thousands of positive reactions and shares. She even shared it on her F******k account and it gained hundreds of positive reactions. In fact, three of her female friends had already proposed to Ambert—jokingly—on the comment section.

Anika’s one-hour show would be divided into two parts. One part would be Anika interviewing Ambert and in the other, Anika would be interviewing a movie actor who had just been elected as mayor of his city. Taping would be at ten in the morning—Ambert would go first— while it would air at nine in the evening.  If she had her way, she would cancel the interview with the actor and extend Ambert’s interview into one hour. Ambert was more handsome than the actor, anyway.

She glanced at the clock hanging above her bed and saw that it was already seven in the morning.

She took a shower, then ate her breakfast and left the house at eight.

She hailed a cab as the bus wouldn’t take her to the office on time.

She thought about her dream this morning while inside the taxi and felt sad when she remembered Ambert’s reaction in his dream.

Disgust and contempt.

Of course, it was just a dream. She was sure it wouldn’t be the reaction of Ambert if he were in the scene. The first reaction from him would be to help her. He could smirk at her later, when she discovered everything about her. Anika, before her interview with him, told him that Ambert was a good man.

He was kind and amiable.

You can’t count on your fingers the charities he is helping, Anika told her. And the people he has helped personally, you’ll need lots and lots of fingers to count them. But some of the stories Anika shared with her about Ambert’s kindness, Layla already knew. She had been reading and researching about him ever since she first saw him inside their building. She still had a detailed memory of the day she laid eyes on him. He was wearing a white polo shirt and khaki jeans, snug casual outfit that showcased his toned body. He looked like he just finished playing golf, which was one of his favorite sports. She had read in an article about him that he also played tennis, boxing, basketball, and he joined marathons. No wonder he looked oh-so fit and healthy. She played only volleyball and she wasn’t even good at it. The article also mentioned that he didn’t’ smoke and only drank occasionally, her kind of guy these days. Ambert was the type of guy your mom would jump for joy the moment you took him home.

He was tall, probably an inch or two short of six feet, had a regular haircut, and an utterly gorgeous, always-free-of-hair face. She remembered all the ladies in their office, including the married ones and the gay men, swooning over him. Why not? He would be perfect to play the dashing prince in any fairy tale movie. He probably couldn’t act but Layla would still watch that movie.

Ambert and Anika were good friends. According to Anika, they first met more ten years ago, when he was still just starting in the family business and she, a promising journalist. She interviewed him for a magazine. Anyway, Ambert didn’t see her that day he went to their office. He was talking to one of her officemates, who was leading him to Anika’s office, when he passed by her cubicle. She remembered her heart exclaiming wow! upon seeing him. All she could do was chase him with her eyes. Would he also have invited her to lunch when he saw her that day? She would be the biggest hypocrite in the world if she would say that the invitation didn’t make her happy.  That was actually the event of her week, nay, the event of her month, nay, actually, it was probably the event of her year. She almost fainted when he uttered that invitation. But you are not obliged to take everything that will make you temporarily happy. A chocolate will make a dog very happy, but it will eventually make it sick—or kill it.

You should only take things that will make you permanently happy.

Everything’s that ephemeral, you avoid it.

Men like Ambert would never give a woman like her real time and attention. They would glance at her, pick her up, play with her for a few minutes, then drop her, then look for a woman that would really be worth their time, someone they could sit in a pedestal with them.

A man would never put her in a pedestal—she paused, stared blankly in front of her, then she shook her head. She’d been getting this habit of organizing a pity party for her.

Okay, she was through saying that he was utterly gorgeous, a lot more handsome than the real princes she saw on movies and on TV. Now, let’s go to his other attributes which made him more attractive to some women: Ambert was uber-rich, a young billionaire, his family being one of the richest in the country. They owned A & D Group, one of the biggest conglomerates here in the Philippines. A being his father Alfred and D for his mother, Divine. Alfred was already eighty-six years old, he married late at fifty two because he was busy making all his enterprises successful. Alfred was sixteen years older than Divine. They had three children: Gabriel, the eldest, thirty-four years old; Ambert, thirty two; and Emily, twenty nine.

They owned malls, hospitals, hotels, office buildings, and a chain of fast food restaurants.  They were also very influential as they had friends in high places. And yet, in spite of all the wealth and power he could wield, Ambert remained humble and low profile. Emily, too, was low-profile and humble and kind, according to the articles she had been reading about the family. But Gabriel, now, this one was high profile. Still a bachelor like Ambert, Gabriel had a reputation of being a playboy and a party animal. If he wasn’t attending a party, he was organizing one. A few months ago, two famous personalities, one was an actress, the other one, a model, had a catfight in a party. The two women, who ended up with lots of scratches and bruises, were concurrently his girlfriends. The video of the catfight currently had six million views on YouTube. A few weeks after the catfight, Gabriel was already brandishing a new pretty girlfriend.

I don’t want violent women, Gabriel joked when asked about what happened to his quarreling girlfriends. He claimed he abhorred violence but he was once caught on camera punching another man inside a bar. I was drunk, his alibi then, as if liquors gave you license to punch another person. He punched the man because he claimed the man was hitting on his girlfriend when in fact, said many witnesses, that the man was only casually talking to Gabriel’s girlfriend because they were acquaintances. Gabriel’s rule in life, it seemed, was no one could fool around with women except him. But to be fair, Gabriel, like Ambert, was an excellent CEO.

Ambert refused to comment whenever he was asked about his brother while Emily would always castigate Gabriel in public. If you’re a decent woman who loves peace and quiet, she once joked on TV, you will stay away from Kuya Gab and run towards Kuya Ambert. Even their parents had castigated Gabriel in public, but so far, Gabriel hadn’t show signs of turning his life around, or at least changing his attitude towards women.

Unlike his older brother, Ambert hadn’t been involved in any form of scandals.

Ambert was a God-fearing and charitable man. Like what Anika had told her, he was quietly supporting many charitable institutions, the ones that helped sick children, homeless people, almost everyone who needed help.

The taxi stopped in front of Gallant Broadcasting Network or GBN, the TV network where Layla worked as a researcher and writer. She paid her fare and alighted from the cab.  She wouldn’t cross a road this time so there was no danger of another car hitting her again. But as she was walking towards the gate, her peripheral vision caught something: a red car.

She turned towards it, and yes, there was a red car that was parked at the other side of the road—and it unnervingly looked similar to the car that almost hit her.

Was it waiting for her here?