Potential Candidates

^_^

- Present time -

"What are these?"

He stared at the thick folders she dumped in his arms as soon as he sat down on a chair next to her hospital bed.

"Candidates."

"Candidates for what?" He put the heavy folders on the bedside table and picked up the basket of oranges he got for her.

"Potential Husbands."

He snapped his head from fixing the fruit baskets and glanced at the innocent looking folders. He picked one on the top of the pile. He threw his head in laughter the moment he saw what's on the file.

Pictures of a guy from different angles, clearly the photos were lifted from the social media of the man, - Ricardo Dalisay. Engineer. Thirty-five years old, second son of Engineer and Mrs. Dalisay. He flipped the pages, giggling as he read the compilation of Ricardo Dalisay's thirty-five years of existence.

"All of those files are like this?" he asked, laughing.

"Yes! There are twelve of them there. My mother isn't taking any chances. She didn't just get me one or two choices. She got me twelve of them!"

She puffed in annoyance. She glanced outside the window of her room, located at the East Wing of the hospital. If she would stand up near the window she could see the Christmas tree that was left standing on the hospital ground when it is already the first week of March.

"You need to help me get out of here."

"Why does it have to be me?" He was peeling oranges, removing all the disgusting white vines as Laurie calls them. She won't eat them if there is even a tiny white strand on her orange.

"It must be you because no one knows that we are still friends!"

"You have a lot of questionable friends though, why don't you ask them?" he pouted.

"Well, bitch, they didn't promise me that they would do every favor I would ask for the rest of my life. You did! And it was well-deserved. I played that role so well, I could win an Oscar."

"How are you going to do this great escape of yours?"

He transferred the clean oranges to a saucer and handed it to Laurie. Who removed her leg from the being hanging from the strap at the foot of her bed.

"You can already move your leg?" he asked in incredulity.

"Yeah," she answered nonchalantly, folding her good leg under her to eat the oranges that Andrei peeled for her. "I had to pretend that my leg was still in pain so I could stay longer here, if not my mother would drag me to the island as soon I got released from here."

"How do you know your mother hired security to keep you in the country?"

"One of the people she hired told me."

"You -" he shook his head in disbelief. "You - asking me to come in the middle of the night was also part of your great plan to escape from your mother?"

"Yup! No one should know that it was you that helped me."

She started munching the juicy oranges. Shoving them one by one to her mouth as they discussed the details of her great escape. She knew she was being totally extra but she needed to make a show of this running away from home in order for her mother to have a hard time asking her to come home.

She has no plan to get married to any of those guys she chooses for her. None of them take her fancy. Yes, most of them are successful in life - career wise. All of them came from a good family, well-educated, well -breed and oh so totally boring!

She would die with boredom if she would marry any of those men her mother deemed 'perfect' for her. She didn't want a perfect guy. She wanted a guy that would make her stay. A man that could make her change her mind about marriage. And most especially a man that could make her - wet.

"You wanted me to renew your passport? That's it?" his eyes widened in bafflement. "You could have anybody to do that for you!"

"Not everyone -"

"Yes! My god, Laurie! How long will you make me pay for that favor I owe you ten years ago!"

"Until the day I die, - or you die. Just like you promised." she winked at his annoyance.

He sighed dramatically that made her roll her eyes.

"I'm not gonna ask you to lie to my mother, - like you did to me ten years ago," she smirked when Andrei dropped his shoulders and shook his head in defeat. "All you have to do is renew my passport, book me a plane ticket to a plane going to Japan last minute - that's all. Not so difficult, right?"

"I still don't understand. You can simply have these done on your own. Why do you need me to do it for you?" The line on his forehead deepened along with confusion on how she gets so conniving as the years pass.

"As I've said to make it difficult for my mother to ask me to come home."

"I got the drama that you are planning to pull off. What I don't understand is why you need me to renew your passport and book you a plane ticket, and why Japan?"

"Ugh! So many questions. What happened to you? You got so boring!"

"This is not about being boring, Laurie. This is what you called maturity." He furrowed his eyebrows for he felt attacked. 'Did he really get boring?', he wondered at the back of his head, while watching Laurie's eyes dance in mischief. Her face was full of excitement. He used to be like her.

"To answer your question about the passport, - my mother took it! She thought she could keep me in the country without a passport. Well, in actuality yes. But then, she must have forgotten that I can just declare it as missing and renew it. Easy, right?"

He nodded.

"That's what you got wrong. When things are easy on the outside, that's when you have to take precautions. Because nothing comes easy in this shitty life. It's like that bitch Karen that is always hiding in the next corner, ready to pounce you and take you down."

"We are talking about renewing your frigging passport. What that actual fuck are you talking about? Just answer my question, why do you want me to do it?" His eyes widened in exasperation.

"Because you are Andrei Mark Fucking Tan! You are a Tan."