Chapter 21

Isabella's flight going to London came, just a couple of weeks after she took the CPA board exam. She can no longer wait for the result since it may take months, and her friend's mother is asking them to travel to London as soon as possible. She just asked Franco to tell her the results once they're out and in case she failed, she'll be flying back for a retake.

Franco and Isabella made love all night before her flight. Franco even asked her to stay and maybe delay her flight but she refused.

"Everything is already set as planned and they are already waiting for us…" she said sweetly.

"Promise me you will come back to me, okay?"

"I promise you, and then we'll get married," she said and kissed his lips.

Franco drove her and her friend to the airport the next morning. She bid goodbye to Franco and kissed him on his lips before entering the airport. While waiting for their flight, she called her family to inform them that she's leaving for London. Her mother was very happy when she heard the news and asked her right away how she will send them money. She shook her head and said she'll just send it through the bank. She talked longer to her grandmother whom she missed so much, and promised that she'll send her goodies and clothes that she has never had before. She also apologized for not being able to visit her before she leaves. Afterwards, she looked at Carlo's number. She's thinking if she will call him or not. She pressed the call button, the other line rang but there's no answer. Isabella put her phone back to her bag and just listened to the music from her iPod. The first song that played was their theme song. Isabella sighed, the first thing she wanted to do is to play the next song, but she thought that she has to get used to it. She has to get used to the pain to finally move on. The pain of loving someone whom she can never be with. The pain of letting go the one person that made her face all the troubles in the hope that one day, they will be reunited until eternity. She has to accept the fact that no matter how much they love each other, they can never be together because for some reason, the entire universe is just against their union. Maybe one day she will understand the irony of life. Maybe one day, she'll understand why Carlo and she can never be together. Until then, she will always question the existence of love and pain. Until then, she will continue to live in this insane world that broke her many times. She will always blame love for all the pain that she's feeling now. Until then, her soul will never rest.

Their theme song has finished playing when they were asked to board the plane that will bring them to the other side of the world. When they were already thousands of feet from the ground, she saw the ocean of clouds that looked like cotton candies. How nice it would be to be able to swim in this ocean of clouds, to jump from one cloud to another and chase the sun. Perhaps once the sun is gone, the moon will start chasing after me and I will never get tired of it. I will travel the whole world just jumping over the clouds. But what if there are no more clouds? She thought. Then I'll just rest on top of the moon for a while and wait for a cloud to pass by and after it makes love to the moon, I'll jump on it and let it bring me where I've never been.

Carlo was very drunk when he got home the other night. Lucy has been worried about him since Isabella's last visit on her graduation day. She doesn't know what happened to them and why she's never returned. She just assumed that maybe they fought and decided to part ways again. Lucy tried to talk to Carlo about it but he wouldn't answer her questions. Since then, Carlo has been drinking every day. Sometimes his friends need to accompany him because he couldn't carry himself anymore.

Carlo decided to just drink every day to fill in the empty space in his soul instead of getting into another relationship. That way, if he will cross paths with Isabella again, he will be able to proudly say that he has waited for her patiently.

He woke up late that afternoon with a terrible hang over. He took a bath right away and drank some aspirin and Gatorade. He looked for his grandmother and he found her in the balcony, sewing some old worn clothes. He went back to his room to sleep again. He took his phone first to check the time, when he saw a missed call. It was Isabella. He remembered that she said she will be leaving for London in two months. She must have left, he thought.

He just stayed in his bed, and stared at the ceiling. There's nothing else he can do if she has decided to leave, after all, he has driven her away the last time they talked. Maybe it's really all over between them. Maybe after all that happened to them, she will just become one of the happy memories that he will always have. Their happy ending has ended but it wasn't happy at all. He closed his eyes and reminisced the first time they kissed. It felt like the whole world revolved around them, and they have their future right on top of their palms. But it all changed. Just like the phasing of the moon, but unlike their relationship, the moon always comes back to what and where it was before. For them, he doesn't know if they will ever return to where they were. Maybe they will be back to being strangers. A beautiful stranger as they say. A stranger that whenever he will see will always make his heart pump a little more, a stranger whom he will always look forward to bumping against every day. And maybe, just maybe, once the time is right and the stars and the universe are on their side, their eyes will meet again and see each other's soul. Who knows what lies ahead? Who knows if one of the stars that's looking after them has long exploded into a black hole, an empty black hole that sucks all the energy that comes its way but still ends up empty, that's why their relationship has gone haywire.

He turned the radio on, and for some insane reason, it played their song. He laughed at the meanness of life. For playing the song that triggers both his happiness and despair. He listened to it, listened to the lyrics of the song until it came to the part that promised, "So you won't cry."

Promises, he thought. Their whole relationship has been filled with tears, and where are those tears now? Perhaps they evaporated into the air and joined the clouds that always make love with the moon. He felt the ring in his right ring finger and rotated it. For several years, he has worn the ring that connected them to each other. A symbol of their undying love, the ring that became the symbol of his hope that one day, she will walk down the aisle and he will be waiting for her to reach the front of the altar. But all that will just become a mere memory. Nothing more than a childhood puppy love, an infatuation that felt so real, they have mistaken it for true love, for soul mates. When their song has finished playing on the radio, he turned it off and went to sleep.

He dreamt of Isabella, but it was very vague. He saw her face looking at him in her wedding dress. He tried to reach her, and she stretched her hand too but she's slowly fading until he can't see her anymore. When he woke up, it's already dark. He went outside and sat on the chair in the balcony. He removed his ring and stared at it for few seconds, watching it glimmer from the light of the moon. Then, he raised it right in front of his left eye and looked at the moon through it. He flipped it and for a moment, he thought about tossing it off but he held it in his hand. He closed his hands tightly, very tight as if trying to break that silver ring with his bare hand.

Isabella reached their destination after long hours in the sky. She felt exhausted and sleepy. They went straight to her friend's family house and her friend, Laura, showed her room. She was so tired that she just placed her luggage beside the bed and went to sleep. She slept soundly the very moment she laid her back on the bed that she didn't even give attention to the architecture of the room. It was morning when she woke up.

Wow that was sixteen straight hours of sleep, she thought. She stretched her arms and yawned. Now, she's hungry. She looked around the room and noticed that it was really themed for a woman. Lavender walls with hand painted trees and birds on the side. There's a framed painting hanging on the overhead of the bed, with a peculiar style of frame, the kind that's made of a tree branch. It is a painting of sunrise where there's a garden filled with flowers of different colors. She was amazed at the talent of the artist, whoever he is. His signature is very plain, just a single letter M. Parallel to the bed is a glass sliding window with light yellow curtains. This room is very relaxing, she thought. She stepped out of the room and looked for Laura. It was a big house and she doesn't know where her room is. She noticed a huge staircase going to the second floor which looked like the one in their university library. She laughed at the resemblance but kept it to herself. She went to the dining room and there she found Laura eating some meat and bread.

"Thank goodness you're alive!" Laura joked when she saw Isabella approaching.

"You're crazy!" Isabella laughed and sat beside her. The housemaid immediately placed a plate on the table in front of her and gave her some grape juice.

"Your boyfriend kept on calling me because you weren't answering your phone."

"My boyfriend? Who?"

"Isabella, are you awake or are you still dreaming?" Laura asked with one eyebrow raised. "Do you want me to remind you?"

"Ha-ha. No, I'm sorry, it's just the jet log. What did you tell Franco?"

"I knocked on your door like a thousand times but you didn't open it, so I told him I'm not sure if you are just asleep or what. I asked him if I should call the police. He said no, you might just be sleeping, waiting for your prince charming to kiss you."

"You are really crazy." They both laughed.

"That's why we��re friends."

"Since you're fully rested, I suggest that you get ready this afternoon and I will tour you around before we start our job tomorrow."

"Huh? Why this afternoon?"

"Well, you've been sleeping all night and all day, so we didn't have time."

"Can we do it tomorrow morning, please?"

"No."

"Fine. Let's go out tonight."

"Perfect! I know a good café just a few blocks from here."

"Great!"

"And, oh please! Just call Franco, okay? Tell him you're alive! I hate it when people keep bugging me."

"Okay, okay, I will."

After eating, Isabella went back to her room and unpacked her things. She placed the neatly folded clothes in the closet and hung some of her dresses. She placed her shoes in a separate drawer behind the door. Afterwards, she looked at the small pocket of her luggage where she placed her ring. She stared at it for a few minutes, not blinking at all. She was thinking if she should wear it or not. She wondered if she should really have to let him go and all the memories they shared to free herself from yesterday. Then, she thought, in her perfect world, they would have been together. But reality bites, this is not a perfect world. This is the world of trials and challenges which will force you to get out of your comfort zone and push you to your limits. A world that will not stop making things more complicated, and leading you to places where you should never be. A place of temptation and tears, and broken love. Then once you have conquered all, that's the only time that it will bring you to where you should really be, after you have broken yourself a million times. If only, she can live in her own world, but that would be insanity. She took the ring from her luggage peeked through it. Everything is just the same. She removed Franco's ring and placed both rings on her palm. She looked at them trying to compare and weigh them. She wants to know which one is better, which one will make her happier and which one she loves more. During those days that she needed someone, Franco has always been by her side and she thought that Franco only deserves her love and respect. Her heart felt heavy, tears tried to escape from her eyes again and she looked up and shook her head. With closed eyes, she wore one of the rings and let the other one fall on the bed.

At eight in the evening, Isabella and Laura went out. She was wearing her brown long sleeves with low neckline. She's also wearing her faded jeans and brown boots.

"It's cold outside, wear this," Laura said and handed her a green scarf. She placed around her neck and they walked down the dark pathway outside their house.

"They should have these light posts fixed, you know?" Isabella said.

"I know."

After a few blocks, they went in a bar called "Paul's café and bar." It's a small place with just around ten guests.

"It's still early that's why, but come midnight, this place is very crowded and people go crazy," Laura said as they sat on the table beside the door.

"Let's drink, it's on me." Laura said and winked. They ordered a bottle of expensive red wine and some beef dish that Isabella doesn't even know how to pronounce. They stayed there for almost five hours and talked about just anything. At around one thirty am, they decided to call it a night and headed back home.

They were both laughing loudly when they walked out the door and singing some random songs. They're going to cross the street so they waited for the light to turn green. Isabella crossed first, even dancing like crazy on the pedestrian, and Laura just kept laughing as she walked slowly behind her. Then in a flash, a white Porsche hit Isabella and threw her body two blocks away from the pedestrian. Laura went hysterical, calling for help as she ran towards Isabella's unconscious body. The ambulance came and the paramedics checked for her pulse. "She's still breathing," the guy in uniform said and put her immediately on the stretcher. They brought her to the nearest hospital.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Carlo woke up early to go to his scheduled interview at nine am in a construction firm where he will apply for any kind of part time job to have extra money and to get more idea about being an engineer. Lucy cooked his favorite beef steak and rice, and then he sat again on the brown chair in the balcony as he sipped through his cup of hot coffee. He dressed up after and left home at eight thirty am. He was wearing his light blue polo and gray slacks, his hair fixed with wax. He pulled out his ring and put it on.

"I hope you're still my lucky charm."

"You don't look like you're going to an interview, son," Lucy said.

"Why grandma?" he asked, as he hugged her gently.

"You look so handsome that you look like you're going to a wedding."

"Ha-ha. Grandma, I love you so much. Once I get this job, I will treat you a good vacation on my first salary."

"Good luck, child!" she smiled and he left.

The traffic is already heavy when he went outside. He waited for the traffic light to turn green and walked down the pedestrian when everything blacked out. Everyone panicked, after a few minutes, an ambulance came and rushed him to the hospital.