Note from the author: This book was first published in 2012, and updated in 2017. It's available worldwide in ebook and print. Link to purchase in "External link." Thank you for reading!

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I showed up for my first day of work in red, pointy shoes with four-inch heels. That was why my officemates hated me.

I wouldn't have done it if it weren't for my sister who brainwashed me the night before and told me that I should "show them who's boss."

That was two years ago, and I did kind of show them who the boss was. The problem was that I was apparently replacing someone they had loved working for, someone who wore jeans and sneakers, drank beer with them every Friday, and resigned "as a statement" when he found out that I was being brought in to be co-managing editor. My grand entrance, complete with smart dress suit and red, pointy shoes, made it so clear to the team which editor they preferred. Also, I didn't really like to drink beer.

These people made my place of work cold and unfriendly at best, hostile and hellish at worst. Monday mornings were a dreaded chore, like having to go to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned. Every week.

It wasn't like this when I was a teacher. I taught college-level English at my alma mater for a few years, while I took my master's degree. Sure, I got annoyed at my students sometimes, especially when they preferred to give their laptops the attention they should have given me, but it never got this bad. I never had to lie in bed wide awake, thinking of new but non-serious diseases to claim I had, so I could take sick leaves.

My younger, more gregarious, and apparently more thick-skinned sister deflected any blame I sent her way. "They hate you because they're incompetent and they don't like it when you point it out to them," Andrea said, more than once. "Don't you dare blame my shoes, Manang."

***

So that was how I lost my officemates. My friends, I lost one by one because of stuff I said.

I didn't really lose them forever, by the way. Maybe that was a bit dramatic. But over the years I became the kind of person who liked to tell people the harsh truth—that they were stupid for making that decision.

Technically I never fought with anyone, and if I happened to see them at the mall or elsewhere, we'd hug and genuinely say we missed each other. I noticed a pattern in some of my friends' lives—they'd tell stories of their latest romantic mishap at dinner, moan about it at the next one, claim to be over it by the third one, and then plunge into the exact same predicament the next time I saw them.

Sorry if I didn't find that entertaining. Was I the minority for actually feeling sad when a friend went through these things? I didn't feel like laughing and offering to buy a round of drinks when the nth girlfriend moaned about being treated badly and worrying about being lonely forever. That wasn't funny.

As someone who had never had a serious boyfriend, I kind of took that thing... seriously.

"Please don't go back to him. You know he's never going to change," I once said to a friend.

"Well, you'll never end up in a serious relationship with anyone if you keep escaping to other countries to supposedly 'find yourself,'" was another thing I said.

To another friend: "Be careful around her—I saw her nearly making out with some other guy in a restaurant. Does she think you'll be okay with that?"

So they stopped telling me about these little things. And they also stopped inviting me to "vent over drinks."People who were conflicted enough about their own mistakes didn't really like anyone else pointing it out. A lesson I learned eventually, along with "people who loved their previous boss will resent any move the new boss will make."

"You're such a manang, Manang," my sister told me. Andrea lived like my friends did, never mind if I kept calling her on it. She and I were built differently. She was four years younger but was way ahead of me in terms of guys dated, relationships had, and hearts broken. It pained me to see her get into these avoidable scrapes, and I kept telling her where exactly she was going wrong, but she never listened to me. She couldn't hide from me though, not the way my friends did. We still lived in the same house.

***

I was twenty-five years old but my sister had been calling me "Manang" since we were kids. That was probably the reason why I met Antonio U. Santos at all.

The word actually means "older woman" but every group of friends has one, I think, even if they're all the same age. Andrea was not the first and only person to call me that. Some friends did too, and it's often been a term of endearment.

On behalf of the manangs of the world, I would like to say that we usually have the best intentions. I didn't particularly enjoy making someone feel bad, or raining on someone's parade.

I was also, for the most part, a nice girl. Not someone who was drawn to the wrong kind of guy, or who would end up having a hook-up story to tell at a random party. Or was it because I was never given the chance before? One day, someone took it upon herself to "loosen me up"and introduce me to a "fun guy," and of course, that was when things turned around.