it's the same. i shall announce you. falling cathedrals in the mean meantime...

I don't remember how it started. Maybe it was as early as the Educfest concert. I was helping him carry an amp. It was just us walking ahead of everyone else; it felt so like how I would want to walk with somebody I loved. I remember thinking, too bad this is just Tos.

Maybe it was that day I ended seeing a friend of ours. We were both standing; he was balancing a plastic cup of coke in one hand while patting my shoulder indulgently with the other, the arm of that hand holding me snug and close.

Maybe it was the constant hanging out with him. He was witty, extremely smart and very sweet when he wanted to be. But too young. And too bleeding promiscuous. When it started, I didn't really care much.

I don't know. Maybe it started when I told someone. Maybe only then did I start believing it.

I'm not exactly sure how it ended. I think it was during a conversation where he was talking shit about a girl he used to see and I felt I didn't want him to one day talk shit about me.

Or when my brother started drumming for his band. During that time, I was really upset with Quincy taking advantage of several situations that I was bound to get into the middle of. He was always befriending my friends and abusing my friends and getting me into trouble with my dad and doing all sorts of stuff that made it impossible to hang out with my friends. And then he started to drum for his band and I knew then that it was not a good idea that I was infatuated with Tos.

Or because the cute guy from the neighboring org was starting to smile at me and I thought I had to get that guy out of my system. It would be hard to be with somebody and still be interested in someone else.

Or, if it was possible, I just stopped liking him that way. It became hard only because he started liking me back.

At one point, he said to me, "I will take anything you give me."

Once, I would have said that to someone I had loved, I had really really loved, hoping he would realize how he felt about me. Now that I'm on the receiving end, it crushes me that his reply may not be so far off from mine.

I took a deep breath before telling him, "I don't feel the same way about you. I mean, I love you, but I don't love you that way. It won't be fair to you."

"I don't care," he said.

I grab his sleeve. "You have to care." I started to cry. I cried a long time. And he let me wipe my tears on his shoulder. For that, I knew I would love him forever. And I still do.