14: Elise (ii)

I smiled and relaxed in my seat and thought of where I was going to start my story. That was when Jase sauntered in. Alia glared at her cousin, too. I already was. He really had to come back as soon as Alia knew. That didn’t stop Alia from smacking him and pinching on an arm and blaming him for not calling her about the injury last night because he could have fetched her from work.  
“So there was a meltdown, huh?” Jase asked while he rubbed the abused part. Then he shrugged. “I never had any training about cousins on meltdown but I assumed my other cousin here has the experience many times,” he teased, but his touch on the top of my head was gentle. “Meds?” 
“Need to eat first.”
“I’ll help with breakfast. What do I do?”
So he and Alia cooked and watched over me as I ate everything they spooned to my plate. I took my meds as soon as I had a few mouthfuls of food in my stomach so pretty soon, the pain of my injuries started to dull, too. I told them what happened in between the remaining bites and chews, but not that Gian saw my titties. Jase didn’t wait for me to finish. He pushed both of us towards the living room so we could continue in comfort while he cleaned the kitchen. He even brought a mug of coffee (the mangosteen, malunggay and corn concoction Alia always bought instead of usual brands) for Alia and milk for me after he was done with the dishes, then took his leave because he said he needed to pick up items from the hardware and the supermarket.  
So. Back to my last thought. I didn’t know why she often teased me about Gian. Okay, wait. I knew. It was because Gian was hot and delicious. It’s just like her to gloss over the fact that his type were statuesque, beautiful women. Not diminutive and small-boned like me. The fact that I was in proximity to someone like him was all that was needed for my romantic friend to dream that Gian would suddenly forget all his preferences and fall in love with me. Charis’s intoxicated deeds distracted her, thank goodness. Even before I finished telling almost all of it, my poor friend was mad as hell. She waved her spoon and fork in the air like they were swords and she was in a revolution right there in the middle of the living room.
“Is she crazy?! What is wrong with her?! You have to sue her! This is not right! Just because she’s filthy rich and her family is filthy rich, she thinks she could just get away with a crime like this?” The fork’s four sharp points pointed uncomfortably near my nose. “Your family is richer than hers, no one just knows it, and once they find out about this it will be war, Elise. C’mon, let’s go and sue the fucking bitch. I’ll be with you all the way to Malacañang!”
I was trying not to laugh. What had the president of the country got to do with this? “I am not going to sue,” I told her. “But…” I said before she started another tirade of curses against Sheila again, “her family needs to make good on their promise to send her to rehab ASAP. I got my medico-legal last night. I can still file. It’s just… her grandmother begged us to settle so I’ll have Madam Soniah’s lawyers deal with it.”
“Whaaat?! Look at you! My god! I never imagined in my entire life I’d ever see you with a black eye! That stick bitch! If your parents find out about this—”
“Oh, no. Don’t do anything. Don’t tell them,” I protested right away. Alia also grew up in Puerto Galera and was so close to my family that she called my stepfather Itay and my mother Inay as I and Anna did. Jason was her cousin on her paternal side, and he was my cousin on my maternal side. You could say we were almost relatives except the bloodline arrow missed the target a centimeter to the left. “They will all rush here and they’ll be blaming poor Gian. He’s already blaming himself too much as it is.”
A grimace marred Alia’s face. “Yes… you’re right. They’re going to blame him and the Verrazzanos. It happened in their house, under their very noses.” But her face went back to its fierce expression. “If I see that bitch ever, her gums will be the only part of her body that’ll be safe from me! I will avenge you! I swear!”
I doubted if the two would ever meet but I wouldn’t tell her that because she would take it as a challenge. I’d rather distract her away from that thought. “Madam Soniah and Sheila’s grandmother are childhood friends. I don’t want this to cause a bigger rift between the two so I’m giving that woman just this chance to settle out of court. Relax, okay? If you’d only seen Madam Soniah last night, you would know that just because she couldn’t convince me to sue, she would not do more. She will not rest until Sheila is confined in a private and expensive rehab somewhere where she can’t easily escape.”
“Just rehab? That’s it? Rehab.. after what she’s done to you? Have you seen yourself in a mirror, Elise? It’s like a soil compactor rolled over you, woman!”
“If it’s not going to be a rehab clinic, then next will be the mental hospital,” I added. 
He eyebrows rose in surprise.
“Something’s wrong with her. A psychiatrist will give her a diagnosis and I have a feeling she would be confined in rehab in a mental hospital,” I mused loudly. “If you’d only seen her eyes…” I thought out loud. “Manic… crazy. Even Gian said a while ago that she’s mental.”
“He did?”.
I nodded as I finished off the potatoes on my plate. “Yes, he said she was a mental case that day she went to his office and made a scene there.” Alia knew about that. “So there is a possibility it’ll be a mental institution but they’ll say she’s in rehab. It’s not like she’s the only wealthy kid who went through this.”
“But she can go to a mental institution after her stint in the Women’s Correctional.”
“If I file a case, it’ll reach the media, and they’ll exposed me before my time. It's not that simple.”
She thought about it for a minute, then she took a deep breath. “It still is not okay to get beaten up, Elise,” she concluded, thoroughly dismayed about my situation. She got up from her seat, moved next to me on the couch, and poked with a finger one of my exposed bruises.
“Ouch! What did you do that for?”
“Exactly my point.” She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at me sardonically. “I bet it hurts all over, and that’s not even a bruised spot. If your Oma Beatrice learns about this, I will bet you, they will want to sue.”
“I’ll get exposed—”
“God! They should learn who you really are so they’ll be afraid of you! This can’t happen a third time!”
I sighed again. I decided to change the subject or distract her with something else until she cooled down.