My Ride, I Love You

  Heart-to-heart Message From the Author

  Why must it be an all-boys school? Why must all main characters be handsome, have high profiles, and be university students? Those are the myriad questions that I have asked myself when I visited M/M novels’ corner in a bookstore. More often than not, the protagonists are among the cream of the crop in the society, good-looking, famous or popular, and are in their prime of life.

  It had me ask myself if there could be a love story of people who are marginal, who are plain and ordinary, having no superior quality, an average Joe just like most people. Can there be a love novel that is a relatable story, a love that can happen in real life?

  That’s why Mork is an upcountry guy who works as a motorcycle taxi, without a college degree but a vocational certificate, and why Doctor Tawan is an ordinary resident doctor, so plain and not so memorable, who will also fall into a specific “position” which is disapproved by the society.

  At first, My Ride, I Love You started out as a short #twitterfiction which I wrote and tweeted on my twitter account. It gained a large amount of retweets and the readers requested for a rewrite into a long version. And that’s why and how it became the book in your hands right now.

  I’d like to express my thanks to an important person, Ms. Rayon, my personal editor. Without her, Mork and Tawan would never have been made into a real book.

  Lastly, thank you all of the #หมอกตะวัน(MorkTawan) followers and fans for support and encouragement.

  Thank you.

  Ransimant.

  Chapter 1: Tawan

  “It’s now the morning of the tenth day, Tawan.”

  I am not responding with words to P'Por,[1] just a smile and a nod.

  “Well... Tawan, are you free?”

  Of course, I am free. This morning I rushed to my ward since 5 a.m. to finish my ward rounding, and then cleared my schedule just to make time for my dear P'Por. I give him another nod.

  “Let’s get some coffee, then. It’s on me.”

  I nod again and lead him out to the elevator lobby in front of the ward, then press the down button.

  “So… Tawan, you know what I’m going to say today, right?”

  I meet his eyes and he steps even closer to me, our noses were almost touching already when he asked. I turn my gaze elsewhere but dip my head slowly as an answer.

  The moment has arrived, I guess.

  An important moment of my life.

  Well… Where should I start?

  It’s going to be quite a long story.

  Let’s start with telling you about the past between P'Por and I.

  …………

  P'Por was a gorgeous senior from the Faculty of Dentistry back when I was attending medical school in university. Although we were in different faculties, our buildings were next to each other and the reputation of his handsomeness managed to circulate through to the Faculty of Medicine’s building. He was a guy I had always viewed as being out of my league, so when I became a fourth year student and he graduated and left to serve his internship,[2] I ceased hoping to ever stand beside him. I also heard a rumor that his boyfriend was a steward.

  Right, that was when I completely gave up.

  Several years later, it was my turn to graduate and start working as an intern. Although some people had come into my life, no one had ever stayed long enough to start a real relationship. Intern doctors have a jam-packed life schedule, I tell you. We start working before sunrise and leave the hospital after sunset. Also, when we’re on duty, that means we have to pull an all-nighter before plowing through the day shift from dawn to dusk again.

  This resulted in my three year internship being full to the brim with knowledge and intensive experiences in patient care, yet completely lacking the experience of love or any relationship. In my free time, I either ate or slept. Fortunately, the hospital soon established a “health park” where people could get some exercises, and I unintentionally benefited from it by getting dragged into exercising with friends. Otherwise, I might have become so roly-poly I had to roll around to see my patients.

  After the three years of my intern life, I returned to the city to continue in specialty training. And this was where my timeline and this handsome senior’s timeline connected again.

  …………

  “Nong Tawan.[3] Nong Tawan!”

  “.........”

  “Nong Tawan, do you remember me?”

  “.........”

  “It’s me, P'Por, remember?”

  “.........”

  “We both used to be welfare unit staff during the university’s sport event, Canine and Syringe Games. Oh no, don’t you recognize me? We were quite close, you used to hitch a ride on the passenger seat when I rode my bike on the campus, too.”

  I hurriedly nodded. It’s not like I couldn’t remember, I was just too flustered. Who wouldn’t be? He recognized me. It should have been me who asked whether he still remembered.

  Instead, it was he who waded through forty or fifty newcoming resident doctors towards me. How could I not be overjoyed and flustered? I froze in place until Nadia, my best friend, nudged me with an elbow and only then my soul came back into my body.

  “Um… P'Por, are you working here?”

  “Oh, I’m a house staff[4] here. I’m that old, hahaha.”

  “No way… You aren’t old! You haven’t changed at all since the university years.”

  “Really? I haven’t changed a bit? Why, thank you. But…”

  He paused shortly before giving me a gentle smile.

  “But Tawan changed so much. You’re way more adorable than back then.”

  At that moment, I was so flustered I didn’t know what to do. With my body still and my face straight, my heart was already leaping with joy. In my head it felt like there were three festivals; Obon, Songkran, and Chinese New Year, all happening at the same time.

  “Actually, I’m not a house staff in the medical division, but they herded everyone here to welcome all the young new residents. I’m glad we met again. I recognized you from a distance but wasn’t entirely sure, and had to approach to take a better look. Because you’re such a cutie now, you know.”

  “Heyyyyy, I’m standing right here too, P'Por. How come you recognized only Tawan? What about me? Do you remember me?”

  My best friend Nadia whose existence had been completely forgotten for quite a while couldn’t resist speaking up.

  “Oh, um, hello Nong…” P'Por squinted to read the name on the chest of Nadia’s uniform. “Nong Warut, yes of course, I remember you. I knew you looked familiar.”

  “Nayyyyy, P'Por, please don’t call me by my real name. I am Nadia. Actually, my nickname is Not, but a fortune teller told me the name ‘NOT’ is inauspicious and won’t attract men, so I changed it to Nadia.”

  “Hahaha! That was such a brilliant idea, Nong N…, uh, Nadia.”

  There was an air of doubt before he called my friend Nadia. Honesty, though, I wouldn’t blame him. I shared the same doubt, even.

  P'Por turned to me again.

  “I’m going to the dental clinic now. Which ward are you in?”

  I pondered for a while. It was the first day and orientation had just concluded. I hadn’t explored or looked for my ward, so I couldn’t quite remember. “Um… Internal Medicine, Female Regular Ward no.2.” That must be correct… Hopefully.

  He nodded. “Ah… so you’re continuing in Med. Are you free at noon, then? If you’re free I’ll pick you up for lunch.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what my work schedule looks like yet. Not sure if there will be a lot of patients. I haven’t got any on service note, either. On top of that, I still need to take the duty handover.[5]”


  He whipped out a cellphone from a pocket on his trousers.

  “Well, then, can I have your LINE ID and phone number? So we can at least chat.”

  After adding my contact, the charming senior smiled gently again before ascending an escalator to the hospital’s second floor. I trailed him with my eyes and found the dental department. Good! At least now I knew where he worked.

  “How, when, why! What’s up just now? Since when are you all buddy-buddy with the star of dentists like P'Por?”

  Nadia poked me again with an elbow.

  “I used to carry a torch for him. We got close...during the sporting event.”

  I turned to answer, still feeling over the moon. The angel whom I could only secretly ogle from afar actually remembered me and told me I was adorable. Everything happened in a blink of an eye and he even asked for my number and LINE ID. I wasn’t dreaming, was I?

  “Carry a torch, huh? That idiom is soooooo outdated, I have long forgotten about it!”

  Nadia rolled his eyes at the air around him, expressing a frivolous grievance towards me.

  Beep… A message notification made me check my cellphone.

  Of course, Nadia wouldn’t let the chance slip and leaned in to look.

  It was a Brown Bear sticker with heart-shaped eyes, sent from P'Por.

  “I’m happy we met you again, Tawan. I hope we grow closer.”

  “Oh my, oh my! Look at you, beaming from ear to ear. Hey, let’s go to our wards and get to work. You, to the Medical Ward, and I, to the Pediatric Ward. Don’t you dare get so head over heels about him and forget about me.” With that, Nadia strutted off, half leading half dragging me, still in trance, towards the elevator lobby to start our daily role as resident doctors.

  Seemed like…my three years of specialty training here would also yield something good besides education.

  …………

  “Nong Tawan, are you spoken for?”

  P'Por asked when we were in the middle of a meal.

  After three months of residency I started getting acclimated to the work and the hospital, including the laborious work-study schedule, and meanwhile climbing up the levels of intimacy with him.

  We often had dinner together. Due to the busy schedule for each of us, me as a house doctor and him as a dental house staff, it was nearly impossible to make time for each other at lunch.

  The only chance we had was in the evening after six o’clock, when the dental clinic’s regular hours ended and when I finished giving the duty handover. On the days when I had no more duty and he didn’t have to stay for after hours clinics, we sat together for dinner, otherwise I waited for Nadia instead.

  Actually, today I had a dinner appointment with Nadia, because P'Por was originally scheduled for the after hours clinic. Yet, at 6 p.m. he appeared in front of my ward to pick me up, saying he traded his duty slot with someone because he wanted to have dinner with me. So I phoned Nadia to call off our dinner until the next chance and simply went down for a simple dinner in the hospital’s cafeteria.

  “... Why did you ask?”

  He knew I wasn’t going steady with anyone, but he asked and I must pick up the ball. My move in this play was to test the water with yet another question. You might feel this was getting old and boring, but believe you me, it was just like a game of cat-and-mouse. I can’t explain why, but I felt it was a part of flirting and getting flirted.

  “Well, because I am curious about it.”

  “What about you, then? Are you spoken for?”

  “... I’ve broken up with my boyfriend for a while now.”

  I already knew, too, that he had broken up with his boyfriend. On his Facebook account, his status was single. Before, he was listed as in a relationship with someone. I didn’t pay much attention, so don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t a stalker. I simply admired him, and checking out his Facebook was totally natural… Wasn’t it?

  “That’s neat. I’m single, and you’re single.”

  He said and smiled without further comment.

  “Why is that neat?”

  I acted clueless and asked.

  Do you know when the best moment in a relationship is?

  I tell you, the moment when we both talk and flirt back and forth, each knowing that the other party also has the hots for you, but both of you haven’t yet reached the point of asking each other out. Nope, no arguing with me. Just pause and look back to your past experience. Think carefully, and you will realize what I said is true.

  Right then P'Por and I were at that point in the relationship.

  “You breaking up with your boyfriend should be counted as a bad thing, I think. And me being all single and having no one who hits on me, combined with your situation, it looks more like an unfortunate thing.”

  Meh… I must admit that I intentionally rubbed salt into the wound, flourishing it with a dose of teasing to elicit the crucial statement from him.

  “Well…” he trailed off and instead reached down to get a brown paper bag, similar to the envelopes we use for official documents, and handed it to me. “Here, I want you to keep this envelope, Tawan.”

  “Hmm? What’s this?” I took the paper bag and began to open it.

  “Don’t open it yet, let me explain first.” P'Por reached over and put a hand over mine.

  “I put nine envelopes of letters inside, each has a number. I want you to open and read one letter each day. You must not open more than one letter a day. Don’t forget. One letter a day.”

  I peeked inside the brown bag. There really were nine white envelopes inside, each had a number on the top right corner. I looked up and met his eyes.

  “During the next nine days, let’s not see each other. I want you to have time to read and think about it carefully. Then, on the tenth day’s morning, when all the letters are read, I’ll go meet you.”

  Actually, I really wanted to just blurt out that we didn’t need these nine envelopes, and there’s no need to wait until the tenth morning, either. I kind of figured what my handsome senior had to say, and my answer was yes. We didn’t have to wait for the whole nine days. If we both had feelings for each other, these extra nine or ten days weren’t necessary at all.

  But man… If this was his intention, his way of asking me out, and if I was to be his boyfriend and be a part of his life, then I must play along as he wished. Besides, it was quite romantic to open a new letter everyday.

  After reaching my conclusion, I smiled and nodded for him.

  “I gotta go. Open the first envelope after I leave. See you on the tenth day!”

  Then, he got up and left the table. I waited until he exited through the cafeteria door to open the envelope and read the first letter.

  “I like you, Tawan. I’m delighted we met again.”

  If I weren’t in the middle of a cafeteria, I would have gotten up and danced around. Luckily, my mind still retained its sanity and my body was already so exhausted after working in the ward all day long.

  I flipped the paper over and there was nothing else in the letter.

  “There are only two sentences for the first day, huh.” I muttered to myself before placing the letter in its envelope and returning the envelope to the brown bag. A part of me wanted to just open all nine letters at once... But nope, I already gave him my words.

  Okay, so be it.

  I had already waited for him all these years.

  Only a few more days weren’t anything at all, right?

  …………

  Ten days means one third of a month.

  Which means 240 hours.

  Which also means 14,400 minutes.

  And now I am too lazy to convert that into seconds.

  What I want to say is that it was long and short at the same time. At first, when P'Por said we weren’t seeing each other while I had the letters to go through, and that he would come and meet me on the morning of the tenth day, I imagined it would surely be the very long ten days because I had to wait.

  You must
have heard what they said, when we have to wait for something, the time always seems to pass slowly. That was what I thought; those would be ten days of unbearable torture, because we usually met almost everyday and talked every night. But with the rules he set for the letter-reading period, there was no meeting, no messages, and no talking until the tenth day.

  In truth, though, it turned out to be very short.

  Time flew and suddenly, it is now the tenth day.

  I sit at the counter in the Female Ward of Internal Medicine, bringing out all nine letters to reread them in the order he specified.

  First day.

  “I like you, Tawan. I’m delighted we met again.”

  Second day.

  “Back then, maybe because we only met during sports days, I saw you as just an adorable Nong.”

  Third day.

  “So I’ve been missing out on such a good opportunity. :( It’s my own mistake.”