(Short Story / 2nd of 5 Parts)

The door in her bedroom was ajar, slowly that I pushed it open. I was right, she was there, and from the looks of it, she was already asleep. I waited for this moment for so long, and yet Grandma just slept on me and forgot about her promise. I felt disappointment slowly creeping in, but I knew our grand old lady needed that rest. 

 After a few seconds, I decided to leave and no longer disturb my grandmother.

“Hey, don’t tell me you’re no longer interested to know my secret. Get back in here. My laptop’s open. It’s here beside me. I have already opened his blog.” That was Grandma just before I closed the door. 

Excitement readily dislodged the disappointment I was beginning to feel earlier. Finally, the moment had come – the moment when my thirst for knowing more, if not everything, about my grandma’s mysterious adorer would be quenched. 

I jumped into my grandma’s bed and started to manipulate her laptop. Attached to her laptop computer was an old but reliable wireless broadband gadget. She requested additional pillows on her head and back so she could also see what I was doing. 

The man’s blog was so old-fashioned, as old-fashioned as the birthday card given to me by that old man earlier. There were no video and audio appendages similar to the blogs of my time. It only looked like a plain online diary encoded in a colorfully-designed template.

It was the man’s profile I paid attention to first. To my dismay, his real name was not indicated. What was there was just PEEKER, obviously a pseudonym. There was limited information as well – no age, no address. It was only his profession he cared to divulge – educator-writer. 

“Grandma, what’s his name?” I asked casually.

“Secret!” She naughtily retorted. Insisting was pointless because I have tried asking the same thing before, but Grandma would not divulge his name. 

“Okay, just tell me where he is now.” 

“How I wished I had known.” I paused when I heard that from Grandma. There was sadness in her tone. It was intriguing. But I was happy with her response because somehow, she started to open up about her adorer and unwittingly gave me the slightest inkling of how she felt for him.

When I finished the profile, I started to open the blog entries. I was surprised by the sheer volume of entries in Peeker’s blog. In the archive section, I saw that he had entries from 2009 to 2041. However, he stopped blogging in the past 10 years. Coincidentally, those were the years that my grandpa suffered from cancer until he succumbed to the illness 5 years ago. 

What’s more striking was that he blogged exclusively for a woman he fondly calls Charming.

“Yes, that’s the name he christened me with – Charming.” That was Grandma’s response when I inquired about the name. Then I scrolled back to the entries in 2009. My grandma then was just in college. Then I began reading…

The blog entries, with each one always beginning with the salutation “To my Ever Dearest Charming,” were very long. Through the first blog he published for Grandma in May 2009, I learned he was a professor at a reputable university invited to conduct a one-day leadership seminar in the college where Grandma was studying.

In one part of the blog entry, Peeker wrote…

—–

“You gatecrashed into my life when you attended the seminar which I conducted at your school. Of the many participants who came, you easily caught my attention. Not only because you are pretty with so smooth skin. I am used to seeing beautiful young women. But there was something exceptional about you. Your eyes radiate some kind of magic. When I looked into your eyes, I got myself charmed and bewitched. Our eyes met, you smiled, and at that very moment, there was something I felt. I could not understand if it was what they call love at first sight. I was uncertain. I felt I was too old for such kinds of stuff. But I am certain that the feeling was something special, something so disturbing – so special and disturbing that that very night I would keep thinking about you until I decided to open my website and put you and this experience in my blog. This is very funny. And yes… very inappropriate! Thankfully, that would be my first and last time seeing you. Soon, you’ll be forgotten.”

—–

“Grandma, did you ever see him again after the seminar?” I inquired. 

Grandma responded in the affirmative, “He was hired by the college as the facilitator of the 3-month English proficiency program for selected students. I was one of those students, and whether we liked it or not, we were destined to see each other again.”

Indeed, whether they liked it or not, their destinies intertwined at that juncture. Their paths crossed, inevitably. Grandma told me that the program her adorer supervised for three months in their university was done thrice a week.

In Peeker’s next blog entry, his emotional predicament was so apparent.

—–

“I don’t know if I would consider that 3-month job offered as a blessing or a curse. Instead of being forgotten, you got embedded deeper into my consciousness. Each time we will have a session, I try to avoid looking into your eyes, not only because I may get distracted in the performance of my tasks but also for fear that all the more that you will get me charmed and bewitched. But not looking at you is like forgetting to breathe. I did not like to deprive myself of the simple joy that your presence brings.”

 “Instead of avoiding you, I befriended you. I asked for your mobile phone number and your e-mail. Each time I would plan to make a conscious effort to avoid you, all the more that my feet would drag me closer to you. I have frequently talked and exchanged text messages with you since then. At first, we discussed matters concerning the program I was conducting in your school. Later, we explored various topics, including our personal lives.”

—–

The adorer admitted in his blog that there were rules of propriety that he violated when he befriended my grandma. He unabashedly realized that not long after they became friends, he could confirm what he was so afraid of…that he was in love with my grandmother. 

EVERLASTING (Part 3)