Page 55 of The Secret
What the hell am I doing here?
I head out of Cotabato airport, scanning over motorcycles and the hot asphalt. Someone named Ramesh, my interpreter and guide, is supposed to be meeting me here. I was half expecting a guy holding a board with my name on to be waiting in the terminal. I scan down the three cars lined up outside the tiny terminal. A gorgeous Indian Filipino guy in shades is leaning against the hood of a beaten-up old jeep, scruffy jeans and a tight T-shirt outlining his toned body.Now there’s a man I would have flirted with in a past life. I press my lips together. He’s engrossed in his phone, not even checking whether anyone is coming out of the building.
Once I reach him, I clear my throat, and he looks up, pushing his glasses into his curly dark hair with a smile like sin itself, and I can’t help the answering curl of my mouth. Not a man who has to try too hard with the ladies, I suspect.
“Hi! Ramesh?”
His grin gets impossibly brighter, brown eyes widening in delight. “Yes! You are Liss?” His eyes scan down my body slowly and appreciatively and I want to laugh. Could he be any more obvious?
“What about this?” he says excitedly, thrusting his phone in my face as his long fingers fly over the screen, and a cat runs repeatedly into a mirrored garbage can.
He shakes his head and laughs as he studies it with me, leaning over my shoulder. “I love these things. Memes. Yes?”
I giggle too.What a flirt. But also, clearly delightful.
“Yeah,” I say, turning my head toward him, and he stares at my mouth.
My jaw drops. Seriously? “Stop doing that.”
“What?” His eyes flick to meet my gaze, frowning then giving me the full-wattage smile again.
“You know fine well what,” I say, heading around to the passenger side of the car.
He waves at me. “This is not my car.”
He gestures to a motorbike with a sidecar sitting farther down the sidewalk. Rust makes up 50 percent of the bodywork. How is the sidecar still attached?
I turn back toward him, and he leans into me. “I was trying to appear cool for the gorgeous American lady. How did I do?”
“Very good, Ramesh,” I say, a reluctant grin breaking forth.Definitely too cute for his own good.
He jumps on the bike, grabs my backpack, and gestures at the sidecar. I hesitate. This is crazy, but some thrill is already bubbling away low in my gut. As I slide in, he secures my bag on the back of the bike, swinging a long leg over the seat and fiddling with the starter. I have no idea what’s coming next, no clue where I’m staying, what I’ll end up doing here, and it all fizzes through my veins like sunshine. The engine kicks, and Ramesh shoots out into the traffic, narrowly missing a minivan packed with tourists. I send a thank you to the gods for my friends back home who understood that I needed this before I did.
Ramesh slides and swerves along dirt roads that occasionally turn into asphalt full of potholes, before returning to dirt. I’m sure I’ve put more dents in the sidecar from rattling around on the inside, and when he takes a corner at full speed, I almost lurch out into the mud. Every so often, I get a glimpse of white sand and palm fronds and I tip my head back to gaze at the impossibly blue sky.This is amazing.When we finally arrive at the small house inland that appears to be our destination, I’m expecting my hair to be white when I next look in the mirror. Ramesh is still sporting an irrepressible grin, still flirting. He’s impossible, and in another time and place I can see we would have had fun together, but I think Dan has made me immune to it all.
Ramesh pushes open the door and shouts.
“Mama!”
Concrete and corrugated iron make up the majority of the low-slung building, bougainvillea and palms of all shapes and sizes surrounding it. As we head inside, I can see an open area to the left with a table and benches, covered with a bamboo shade. A lady appears from behind a beaded curtain with a smile so like Ramesh’s that there’s no mistaking she’s a relation. She chatters away in a local language, and I’ve already read enough to know there are dozens of these here. Occasionally she appears to scold Ramesh with a sharp frown, then suddenly she grasps my hands in hers and pumps them up and down to emphasize something I have no hope of understanding.
“What is she saying?”
“She’s welcoming you to her home. She’s also telling me that you are very attractive and that I need to keep it in my pants,” he says laconically, and I burst out laughing. His mother frowns and lets out a stream of something else.
“Now she wants me to explain what I said to you to make you laugh.”
I smile at her, and her expression softens.
“Welcome, welcome,” she says in broken English.
“Thank you, thank you,” I reply, clasping her hands in mine and bowing my head.
“She will show you to your room.” Ramesh puts a gentle hand on my shoulder, and delivers a stream of words to his mother, who nods and scurries backward, gesturing toward some stairs.
“I’m staying here?”
He studies me. “I thought it would be helpful to live with a Filipino family to help you understand how things work here. More useful than the nearby hotel which is full of cockroaches.”
