Page 19 of Signal No. Us

“In Saudi,” Robby said. “OFW, since I was a kid. A few texts, a few calls, pasalubong whenever he gets the chance. We’re not that close, not because of any anger; it’s just, we’ve been far apart for so long, and it’s hard to get back that closeness when your whole childhood, his face was just a screen.” He shrugged, the gesture carrying more grief than the words did. “Ver, Tita Cora: they became my family here, while I was growing up. That’s probably why I’m so protective of your family too.”

Allan thought, suddenly, of Ver’s easy insistence that Robby was “family, not just a friend”—how obvious that was now, how it had never been a figure of speech at all.

“You know,” Allan said, “I used to think your life was simple. Varsity star, lots of friends, no problems. I was wrong.”

“Everyone has their own struggles,” Robby said. “Some people are just better at hiding it.”

“You’re not hiding it now.”

“No,” Robby agreed. “Not with you, not anymore.”

“Was it ever a whole thing for you?” Allan asked before he could decide if it was too personal a question for a porch step. “Figuring out you liked guys too, I mean. On top of everything else.”

“Not really,” Robby said, easy, with no weight loaded into it at all. “Liked a girl in third year. Liked you before that. Liked a guy from Virac one summer at a training camp when I was twenty-two.” He shrugged, like it genuinely hadn’t cost him much. “Never felt like I had to pick a side to belong to. Guess I got lucky that way. Not much of a war to survive.” A beat, and something more careful crossed his face. “Not everyone gets that. I know that now, more than I used to.”

It wasn’t said as comparison, and it didn’t sound like performance either, just a fact offered plainly, the way Robby offered most things that actually mattered. Allan filed it away anyway, one more small, unglamorous piece of him worth knowing.

Allan leaned his head against Robby’s shoulder, watching the tide come in slow and steady over the rocks below, and thought about how much of Robby’s steadiness, the careful, patient way he’d handled every hard conversation since the library, hadn’t come from nowhere. It had come from precisely the kind of grief that could have made him harder and hadn’t.

“Let’s go inside,” Robby said eventually. “I have a photo of Nanay from when I was a kid, I want to show you. You still have a drawing of her in your head somewhere, you said, maybe you could put her in the mural. I want the whole barangay to see her, even though she’s been gone a long time.”

“I’d like that,” Allan said, and truly meant it, one more piece of Robby’s history he intended, from now on, to actually know.

Inside, over a small cup of instant coffee Robby insisted on making despite Allan’s protests, they went through an old photo album with a cracked plastic cover: Robby as a gap-toothed six-year-old on his mother’s hip, Robby at nine holding a fish nearly as big as he was, Robby at fifteen in a too-big varsity jersey, grinning at whoever held the camera with an ease Allan hadn’t gotten to see up close back then, too busy, at the time, being quietly, hopelessly in love from a safe distance.

“She was beautiful,” Allan said, looking at a photo of Robby’s mother laughing at something off-camera, a whole life visible in the crinkle of her eyes.

“I know,” Robby said, softly. “I’ll tell you about her, if you want. I don’t need to hide my grief anymore just to look strong.”

“I want to know all about her. And you,” Allan said. “Not just the easy parts.”

Robby looked at him for a long moment, searching, just as Allan had searched his face in the library days ago, and seemed to find, this time, exactly what he was looking for.

“Okay,” he said simply, and turned the page.

CHAPTER 9

Allan was still half-asleep when he heard Robby’s voice at the gate, low and businesslike, the version he used for work. He couldn’t make out all of it over the fan, just pieces: mangroves, spillway, Sitio Tawog, and then his own name.

By the time Robby reached the porch, Cora already had an opinion ready. “Bring him back in one piece,” she said, not looking up from the seedlings she was repotting. “No medals for drowned staff.”

“Noted, Tita,” Robby said, and turned to Allan like the whole exchange had been entirely routine. “Coastal check. Mangroves, a few houses too close to the riverbank. Not yet a system, just a low-pressure area PAGASA’s watching. I’d rather look now than after.”

“And you need me for this because⁠—”

“Because you’re good with people who don’t want to talk to a guy in a vest,” Robby said. “And because I want you there.”

Allan, unable to argue his way out of it over breakfast—“It’s just driving and asking questions, Allan, you’ve survived worse meetings”—found himself twenty minutes later wedged into the passenger seat of Robby’s beat-up service tricycle, Oryo sprawled proprietarily on the floor mat like he’d been personally deputized.

“I want it on record,” Allan said, “that I quit my job specifically to get away from this kind of thing.”

“You quit your job to get away from a toxic work environment and a bad boss,” Robby said, pulling out onto the coastal road. “This is a good boss. Me.”

“You are not my boss.”

“For today, I am.” Robby glanced sideways, the ghost of a grin. “I’ve seen you with kids. You make storms less scary. A valuable skill.”

The road north looked like it had been drawn by someone with a grudge, potholes appearing like jump scares, Robby taking each one with the unbothered ease of a man who’d been doing this since before he had a license to. The sky sat low and close, the particular gray that hadn’t committed to rain but clearly hadn’t ruled it out either.