"Dead Stars"

First of all I had a hard time with this task because I didn't know if I had anything to say about the topics. I don't remember my first date and I don't have a childhood sweetheart or current love. Luckily I remembered that something did happen on my senior prom night, so here goes...

Our HS Prom

During my senior year in high school I became close friends with my fellow CAT officers. Our prom night was set to fall on the eve of Valentines and the day before that, one of my guy friends gave each of his close girl friends a rose for valentines. It was the first rose I had ever received in my entire life, so it was pretty special, even though during that time I had absolutely no clue about what I was to realize the next day. On prom night that same guy friend was crowned prom king. And though lots of girls who had crushes on him lined up to dance with him, he somehow found time to dance with me. At midnight the party was over, and he brought me home in his jeep because I had no other "sundo." At home I clambered into bed and lay there staring at the ceiling for the longest time, unable to fall asleep, as though I was waiting for something. Just then the phone rang and I knew that that was it. I got up to answer it and it turned out to be the prom king. He greeted me happy valentines day and we talked for a few minutes before saying goodnight. When I got back into bed I realized something: I was in love with him.

I wish I could have a different ending, a romantic comedy ending, to this story, but we never became a couple. After graduation his family migrated to Manila. Despite the distance, he kept in touch thru rare emails (he is not internet-savvy), long distance phone calls (this was when cellphones were not yet "in") and once, even a handmade card for my 18th birthday wherein he made me my eighteenth rose out of sampaguita blossoms that he stuck to the card. We kept the friendship and for a long time I thought I was still in love with my first love. Then after four years, the summer after I graduated from College, he came back to our hometown for a vacation. He had grown even more handsome and all my college friends were drooling over him but to my disappointment, I realized that I no longer felt attracted to him at all. Just then I felt what the character Julio felt in the short story "Dead Stars" - "So all these years--since when?-- he had been seeing the light of dead stars, long extinguished, yet seemingly still in their appointed places in the heavens."

And yet we remain friends, especially now that we have been brought by fate to the same place once again. Once in a while we still get together when he is not up in the air (he is a flight steward). I am always proud to show him off to my friends, of course, but the poor guy is still a kid at heart and has remained single until now. No, he's not gay, trust me. I would know. And one more thing -- he doesn't know that I ever fell in love with him and I have no intention of ever telling him. I love him as a friend, and I love it this way.