Of Pines and Providence

I wasn’t running away. Not exactly. But there was a strange rebellion in the way I packed my bags that morning, like the quiet kind of mutiny against the self I had curated—meticulously planned, excessively scheduled, precise to the decimal. Baguio called me, and for once, I didn’t ask why. I just went.

Maybe it was muscle memory. My dad didn’t just spend summers there, it was a bimonthly ritual. That city was stitched into the fabric of his youth, like the scent of pine baked into the folds of every memory. My parents honeymooned there. And I was barely twelve when I first heard “Something Stupid” on an old cassette tape my dad played in a cabin's attic. I remember thinking, this must be what love sounds like: soft, warm, a little clumsy, unafraid to be sweet. There was no cynicism in it, only yearning dressed in gentleness.

The first two days were loosely planned, our only real structure was getting coffee and walking until our legs remembered joy. My best friend (someone who always knew how to hold joy in his hands) and I wandered into places we’d been before, but did things that felt curative, like riding Japanese bikes in Burnham Park, laughter unraveling like old knots in our chests. We weren’t reliving the past. We were rewriting it gently, without bitterness.

At night, we honored our college selves—those chaotic, reckless teenagers who thought heartbreaks could be drowned in Cerveza Negra and poor decisions. We pre-gamed in a pub, letting nostalgia trickle in with every bottle, before tumbling into a bar that played songs like “Clarity” and every teenage wound we thought had closed. We danced anyway. We screamed lyrics like incantations. We were stupid and light and free.

And then, him.

A Virgo. The kind that made you believe chivalry hadn’t died—it had simply learned how to whisper.

He opened doors not for applause, but like muscle memory. As if kindness had been taught to him in quiet ways, passed down in gestures rather than speeches. He pulled out my chair without fanfare, without question. Like he had always known that tenderness was in the details.

When we walked—downhill, uphill, across Session Road’s slippery cracks—he shifted without a word, placing himself between me and the world like instinct. As though danger would always meet him first, and never me.

He remembered. Small things. My allergies. The way I wince at cinnamon. He told the servers before I could speak. And when I told him I was impressed he remembered, he only smiled and recited them back to me like they were gospel. Like I had been a lesson he had studied and never wanted to forget.

When the rain came sudden and soft, he tilted the umbrella toward me, letting the cold find his own shoulder instead. He didn’t make a show of it. He just did it. Like care could be seamless, invisible, almost holy.

He never reached for my hand—not without asking. His touch was an invitation, never a presumption. Every moment was wrapped in quiet consent, in pauses that waited, in questions spoken only through gaze. He moved with the certainty of someone who had nothing to prove, only everything to offer.

And in that stillness, I felt more seen than I ever had by declarations or fireworks. No noise. No chase.

Just a softness that steadied itself beside me. And stayed.

It wasn’t love. But it reminded me of what I thought love should feel like when I was twelve, listening to that song for the first time. Not overwhelming. Not confusing. Just right.

Now I’m back in Manila, wrapped in the weight of what’s next. But Baguio lingers. In the pages I journaled in quiet cafés. In the food I tasted like first times. In the walks that led nowhere but felt like arriving.

That trip is memory now. But it’s the kind that stays. The kind that softens you. The kind you return to—not to relive, but to remember who you were when you finally let yourself be unafraid.