LUKE and Valentine had been on the Messenger video call for over an hour (one hour and 19 minutes according to the log of all recent calls) when Valentine got another call from Ochenta y Seis, the name of his group chat with his girl friends from high school Batch ‘86.
Ochenta y Seis is a support group of sorts that Valentine initiated on the second month of the pandemic to check on his friends Diosa in Milan, Lisa in Vancouver, and Jennifer in Quezon City. They chat almost daily except on the weekends after Valentine suggested that they spend it instead with their families, or other friends, or even in finding a viable love connection during the pandemic.
Valentine didn’t have to take the call, but he has told Luke about his online activities sometime during their extended first day conversation. When he told Luke that it was the group that was calling, Luke insisted that Valentine answered it because he also had to rest anyway. It was almost midnight in the Philippines, and he had been talking to Valentine for well over four hours in both text and call.
Valentine was reluctant to let go and end their video call, but Luke assured him that he was just a call away. He also promised that if he woke up in the middle of the night, and couldn’t go back to sleep, he will surely call Valentine. In the end, Valentine relented and said, “Okay. But I will talk to you tomorrow, and if anything else happens until then, just remember that I love you.”
Luke smiled. All the four hours and twenty minutes of chatting was all leading to these three (or five) most important words. “I love you, too, Valentine,” he said, and he pursed his lips for a virtual kiss.
Actually, what Luke said was “I love you, too, Peter.” But Valentine is a romantic, and for the purposes of this novel, he wanted to use what is called the poetic license. A technique that most bad poets interpret as the license to kill correct grammar, and murder meaningful syntax. But in truth, is only the license or freedom to write about the emotional truth of events to create an effect, more than just to recapture in words the details of life’s journalistic truth and reality.
Valentine didn’t really believe in saying goodbye. So, before he ended the call to join his Ochenta y Seis group, he said, “I love you very much, Luke Paclibar. I love you very much.” He needed no poetic license for those last lines because he really meant it.
Valentine truly loved Luke Paclibar. Even on first video call, even on first convo. It was all so sudden and rush, maybe; but Valentine’s love was always true and genuine.
After Martin, he had so much love to give to anyone who could come. Just look again at the tagline of this novel: “All he wanted was to love the one who is yet to come, and inspire a generation of readers and lovers…”
*
Good narratives thrive on conflict. Valentine knew that for a story to really engage its readers, there must be real tension and palpable conflicts.
And these conflicts happen to the protagonist or protagonists. These are the conflicts that the major characters must overcome for a story to be a proper story.
In a romance, Valentine has long realized that the conflict has always been between the lovers. That it’s not really Romeo and Juliet, but that it’s always been Romeo versus Juliet. Antony versus Cleopatra. Samson versus Delilah.
In Valentine’s Theory of an Organic Story, a protagonist must badly want something which the antagonist also desires with as much, if not more, fervor; and they each strategize until they go on a showdown confrontation which culminates in the climax that, in turn, finally resolves the conflict, or removes and releases the tension.
Valentine understood that he loves Luke. And therefore, Luke is his “formal enemy.” Luke is the antagonist whose existence in the story is only to deny Valentine the love that the protagonist Valentine wants.
If Luke accepted and married Valentine in this chapter, and they lived happily ever after, the novel ends.
Or, the story continues to become a different kind of novel.
Valentine marked Luke Paclibar as the antagonist that he must wrestle again at another time, in another chapter. But in the meantime, he had to entertain the possibility of other conflicts: Valentine against himself, Valentine against his friends, Valentine against society, and Valentine against nature or the forces of God like the pandemic. These opponents can easily block or deny his access to the thing that he thinks he wanted most: the love of another human being in the time of the pandemic, and beyond.
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(You may also follow this story on Wattpad under the account of @PeterSolisNery.)/PN
