Page 4 of The Five Stages of Courting Dalisay Ramos

He’s not sure what she’s getting at. “Travel enough, you start to realize people are the same everywhere. I’m not quick to judge.”

“You may be right. But the thing is, though, I’m from the Philippines. It’s a long way from Paris.”

“I didn’t know I was getting a geography lesson today,” he says. He likes the way her eyes crinkle at the corners when she smiles.

“Perhaps you should study some more then.”

There’s a distinct shift in the tone of the conversation, and Evan’s charm starts to wear from his smile. Is that a hardnessin her eyes now, or is he reading her all wrong? He starts to scramble for some sort of excuse. Is this about his sweatshirt? His Blundstone boots? He always dresses comfortably for long flights, but he wouldn’t call his style sloppy. “Is it something I said?”

“No, not the particular words themselves.”

“Mind filling me in?”

Dalisay sighs and tosses the wooden stirrer in the trash. When she looks back at him, he’s captured in her gaze. “Let me be clear then. I’m not interested in American hookup culture. No drinks, no dinner, no coffee. That might work with someone else, not me.”

Evan balks. She doesn’t have to sound so haughty. “A simple no would have been fine.”

“Then the answer is no.” Her dark eyes sparkle, shining like the night sky, and she looks down her nose at him. “You’re going to have to try a lot harder than that.”

Evan raises a curious eyebrow as Dalisay turns and leaves. But before she disappears from the kitchen, she looks back at him.

“You may know Milan, Evan Saatchi, but you don’t know Manila.”

CHAPTER TWO

After kick-starting Bettie with luck and a prayer after work, Evan parks her in front of The Basement, a board game store in the Mission District. Riggs gets out first, balancing the pizza boxes with one hand and a grocery bag in the other. “That isbrutal,” he crows, head thrown back in laughter. Evan told Riggs all about what happened with Dalisay while they were grabbing food for their gaming sessions. “ ‘You’re going to have to try a lot harder than that’?! Sounds like a threat.”

“I think it was,” Evan says, juggling two four-packs of tall boys under one arm and carrying the rest of the snacks while closing Bettie’s trunk with his elbow. He’s more amused than chagrined. The epic rejection was almost worth it to get Riggs’s reaction.

Riggs knocks twice on the window of The Basement. The lights are on deeper inside, but at this hour the door is locked, the store closed. “You should have known. That woman is out of your league. Besides, you work together. That’s ripe for drama.”

“We’re in different departments! I didn’t think it’d be weird.”

“Well, now it is!”

“I know, but it was worth a shot.”

“Never mix business and pleasure. Amateur move, dude.”

A hulking shadow moves at the front door and unlocks it. The six-four, totally ripped, Filipino Captain America, JohnMark—JM to his friends—smiles at them. “I smell barbecue. You better have normal pizzas in there.”

Riggs and Evan step into the store. “Only one barbecue, and that’s for me,” Evan says. “The rest are boring like you like, don’t worry.”

JM locks the door after them. “Good. If I’m going to kill you guys, you’ll want all the comfort food you can get.”

Every Friday, they gather here after the store closes to drink beer, hang out, and playDungeons & Dragons. It started when they all met at Berkeley as freshmen. They would play for hours at Evan and Riggs’s two-bedroom apartment in Westbrae above a hardware store, powered by pizza, beer, and garlic knots from the place around the corner. For a trio of guys who look like they belonged in a frat, they all preferred role play, killing goblins and fighting evil wizards over partying. JM is their dungeon master, the one who designs all the campaigns they play.

“Gonna TPK today?” Riggs asks. “TPK” means a “total party kill.” They all have backup characters for such an occasion. While JM is the kindest, gentlest person Evan’s ever known in real life, as a dungeon master, he’s as brutal as he is a good storyteller.

“Only if you make dumb decisions again,” says JM.

Unlike Evan and Riggs and their liberal arts paths, JohnMark Aquino focused on the sciences. They became friends when they joined the Magic the Gathering club as freshmen. JM is still at Berkeley, going for his master’s now in publichealth. He’s also one of the fittest people Evan has ever met. When he’s not studying for school or working for his girlfriend Pinky at The Basement, he’s lifting weights. He can squat two Evans’s worth of weight and barely break a sweat. He and Evan work out together, but Evan can’t bulk up like JM can.

In the backroom, Pinky is already sitting at a small table set up with their battle map and figurines. She makes grabby hands at the pizzas and Riggs hands them over.

“Careful over there,” she says, tipping her head toward the bathroom while she takes a slice of pepperoni. “The floor might still be wet. A kid didn’t make it, puked all over.”

Everyone cringes. Running a small business is no easy feat. Pinky Valenzuela, JM’s girlfriend, owns and manages The Basement. On top of selling games, she also oversees community programs for kids, teaching them how to play board games, and giving them a safe place to stay after school. She’s used to the mess, but even Evan’s stomach churns thinking about cleaning up after twenty kids every day. On top of that, Pinky somehow manages to find the time to be one of the most popular cosplayers in San Francisco. Every year, the four of them fly down to San Diego to Comic-Con where Pinky wins serious money with her costumes onstage. Last year, she made a Sailor Moon quick-change costume, and the video went viral. The money she makes from Instagram alone keeps the lights on, but The Basement doesn’t need it. Every weekend, the store is packed with people playing, and sometimes they host Magic tournaments. Even if it wasn’t operated by some of his best friends, The Basement is one of Evan’s favorite places to be. He’s not ashamed of calling himself a nerd.

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