“Many of our friends work abroad or live in Manila now,” my friend Dek said as we got on our way; he was the only close friend from my class who also came from my village. Our friend Ramil, whose parents ran a convenience store next to school, was indeed gone; his mom said he was working in Singapore. At least my cousins Leslie and Brian were home in Pantubig, three villages over; they were technically uncles but were close to my age. We also picked up Hershey Rodriguez, who I wasn’t that fond of because she always insisted on getting in everyone’s business, but she was on the way and we knew would be eager to be part of the excursion.

“You know Samuel and Rosanna are together now,” Hershey said when she got in the van. Rosanna was a meek and unassuming girl in our class. She was not the woman I would have thought of for Samuel, not just because she didn’t stand out in any way but because I wouldn’t have pegged her to go for someone so rakish, though maybe she too discovered immense kindness beneath his rugged athleticism.

Samuel was already on the list of friends Dek and I had planned to invite, and I tried to be casual when we talked about him. Though my family knew about me, my friends did not, and I wasn’t planning to tell them. It felt too at odds with the image I’d cultivated, of a serious, accomplished person, not a bakla who worked in hair salons and florist shops.

Hershey provided more updates about our old classmates, and I enjoyed hearing about how everyone did after I left. Not only had the top two students from our class gotten into the country’s most prestigious school, UP Diliman, which was no surprise, but Samuel had too. This made me wish we could have celebrated our college acceptances together, even though we were half a world apart.

As we reached Samuel’s house, I wanted so badly to consign my love for him to the realm of teenage fantasy, yet I found it impossible to separate those old feelings from the picture of him in my head, ten years older than the boy I had known. Even with the intervening time and the dozen men I’d been with—all of them white—it felt as if there would always be a compartment in my heart reserved for my old friend, my secret love.

In my reverie, I found myself unprepared to encounter the sudden familiarity of the hunter green gate to his house, timeworn yet still bright. I got out of the van and yelled, “Tao po!” as I peeked through the bars above the metal gate, which the top of my head hadn’t even reached before I left.