I was on the crossroad.
People love to use that word as a metaphor, but this time I mean it as a literal thing.
I was standing on the crossroad, my bag on right arm, my iPhone on my left. I had put my sunglasses up, squinting due to the sun to find the right taxi.
It was another usual hot day in Singapore, and I was melting.
On my right hand, I held another white plastic bag containing fishballs snack and a bottle of water.
I looked at my phone, texted him, “Where are you?” and released a deep breath. At this rate, we were going to be late.
Late for what, you ask? My landscape architect boyfriend was excited to go to a urban city planning screening, and his girlfriend – being a good girlfriend that she was – decided to accompany him even though she knew she wouldn’t understand a thing. But she went anyway.
A couple of minutes later, he arrived.
His taxi stopped right in front of me, and I got in. He smiled while giving me a puzzled look, and mentioned the destination place to the driver, while staring fervently at his GoogleMap. I told him about my quick lunch with my family before excusing myself to meet him.
I believed he didn’t get a single word into his head at that time.
Ten minutes later, we arrived at School of The Arts. Apparently, we still had about fifteen minutes before the screening began.
“Okay, Mister, sit down,” I said. “You need to have a little bit of lunch first.”
We sat down at the stairs in front of the gigantic artsy building, and took out the fishballs snack.
“Are you sure you’re going to be full with only eating these?” I asked.
“Yah lho, what to do, but I’m not that hungry now, so that’s okay,” he replied.
He wore a yellow t-shirt and blue pants, eating fishball sticks in front of a school building. He definitely looked more like a university student.
After having the not-so-adequate and quick lunch, we hurriedly made our ways to the screening.
Yet he paused.
I was getting a little bit annoyed and kept tugging his hand. Still he paused.
He said, “Wait.”
He walked towards the traffic light, picking up packages of scrambled tissues along the way.
There was a physically disabled old man with tissues to sell inside a plastic bag. But apparently, the bag was broken, and it kept leaking packages and packages of tissues.
He gave the tissue packages to the old man, opened his wallet, and bought some of them.
He ran back to me, and I was smiling.
I put my hands around his left arm, resting my head on his shoulder.
And during that usual hot day in Singapore, I fell in love again.
Image by TJ Aminoto
