Chapter Text
People think love looks obvious when you grow up around it.
Like if your parents are deeply in love, you automatically become good at understanding relationships. Like growing up in a happy home somehow guarantees emotional stability.
I used to think that too.
Then I turned seventeen and realized the only thing I actually know about love is this: It survives things that should’ve killed it.
My name is Lia Arceta-Lim, eldest daughter of attorney Mikhaela Lim and marketing consultant Maraiah Arceta-Lim. If you ask the internet, my moms are one of those couples people romanticize constantly.
Successful. Elegant. Self-made. The kind of love story people turn into long captions about resilience and destiny.
Personally, I know them as the two women currently arguing in our kitchen over olive oil.
“You bought the expensive one again?” Mama Mikha asked.
“Because the cheap one tastes sad,” Mommy replied while typing on her laptop.
“That sentence doesn’t even make sense.”
“It does to people with functioning taste buds.”
I snorted from the dining table.
Across from me, my younger brother Emmanuel nearly inhaled his juice trying not to laugh.
Mama looked over immediately. “You two are enabling bad behavior.”
“You married the bad behavior,” I pointed out.
“That sounds personal.”
“Because it is.”
Mommy finally laughed softly, eyes still glued to the presentation she’d been editing for the last hour. Even at home, she worked like every client campaign determined the future of civilization.
Mama once said Mommy’s biggest strength was that she cared too much.
Mommy once said Mama’s biggest flaw was exactly the same thing.
Honestly, that probably explains their entire marriage.
Mama walked into the dining room still wearing her office attire—black slacks, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened slightly after a long day in court. She looked exhausted in the specific way only lawyers ever do.
“You know,” Mommy said casually, “your daughter told her adviser she didn’t want to join debate club because she inherited your anger issues.”
Mama slowly turned toward me. “Excuse me?”
“I said litigation looks emotionally draining.”
“You implied I’m unstable.”
“You are unstable.”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“Again,” Mommy said calmly, “not mutually exclusive.”
Emmanuel burst out laughing.
That’s how most nights are in our house. Loud. Warm. Comfortable. Safe. Which is funny considering my mothers spent most of their twenties without any of those things.
I already knew that part, of course.
Every kid knows the mythology of their parents. The stories repeated at family dinners. The jokes told too many times. The “back when we were broke” anecdotes that eventually become household lore.
I knew Mama Mikha once worked three jobs while reviewing for the bar. I knew Mommy Aiah used to sleep inside office meeting rooms during campaign season because commuting home cost too much. I knew they used to split one fast food meal into two portions and pretend they weren’t still hungry after.
Those stories weren’t hidden from us.
But stories feel different when they become tangible. I discovered that because Emmanuel couldn’t find his basketball.
“Mama!” he yelled upstairs. “There’s ancient civilization stuff in the storage room!”
“That better not mean you broke something,” Mama shouted back.
“I think I found fossils.”
Naturally, I followed him because curiosity is apparently hereditary in this family.
The storage room smelled like dust and old paper. Emmanuel sat cross-legged on the floor beside an opened balikbayan box filled with folders and envelopes.
“You think this is treasure?” I asked.
“You say that now until we uncover buried family secrets.”
“Every family has secrets.”
“Exactly.”
He handed me a yellow envelope. The paper was worn and slightly bent at the edges. Across the front, written in messy blue ink, were the words:
For Aiah.
Not yet. Maybe someday.
Mama’s handwriting.
Something about that made my chest tighten unexpectedly.
Inside were old receipts, folded documents, and random papers.
Utility bills. Apartment contracts. Bank notices. Budget computations.
Not poetic struggle either.
Actual survival.
There were calculations written behind receipts.
Rent due. Groceries. Transportation. Projected expenses.
One page had numbers repeatedly crossed out and recomputed beside the phrase:
Can survive another month if careful.
My stomach twisted slightly.
Because suddenly the stories had weight.
Mama Mikha—the terrifying attorney people whispered about in legal circles—used to count coins for transportation?
“What the hell,” Emmanuel muttered softly.
Then another thing slipped out from the envelope.
A photograph.
Two young women sitting on the floor of a tiny apartment.
Mama looked impossibly young. Mommy looked exhausted.
There was barely any furniture. A thin mattress pushed against the wall. An old electric fan. Takeout containers beside them.
And yet they were smiling at each other like none of it mattered.
I stared at the picture longer than I should have. Not because I didn’t know they struggled. But because I had never seen this version of them before.
There’s something unsettling about realizing your parents existed before they became your parents.
That they were once just two scared people trying to survive adulthood.
“These are the women who lecture us about financial responsibility?” Emmanuel asked quietly.
I laughed under my breath. Then I noticed another receipt.
Pawnshop claim stub.
Name: Mikhaela Lim.
Beside it was Mommy’s handwriting.
I’ll buy it back for you someday. Promise.
Something painful settled quietly in my chest. Because I knew enough about Mama’s family to understand what that meant.
Mama grew up comfortable. Not billionaire rich, but comfortable enough that she never should’ve reached a point where she had to pawn personal belongings.
And yet she did.
For rent. For bills. For survival.
For love.
“You kids alive up there?” Mommy called from downstairs.
Emmanuel immediately started shoving papers back into the envelope like we’d committed crimes.
Too late.
Mama appeared at the doorway first.
Then stopped.
Her eyes landed on the photograph in my hand.
For the first time in my life, I watched my mother—the woman who terrifies prosecutors for a living—look genuinely embarrassed.
“Oh God,” she muttered.
Mommy arrived behind her.
The moment she saw the photo, she burst out laughing.
“No way you still kept that.”
Mama looked offended. “That’s history.”
“That apartment had rats.”
“They paid no rent. Very disrespectful tenants.”
Emmanuel nearly folded into himself laughing.
I looked between them.
“You guys looked so young.”
“We were young,” Mommy said softly.
Mama walked over and took the photograph carefully from my hand.
For a few seconds, she just stared at it quietly.
Then she smiled in that small distant way people do when remembering a version of themselves they miss and don’t miss at the same time.
“That was our first apartment after I moved out,” she said.
“Got kicked out,” Mommy corrected.
“I prefer dramatic phrasing less.”
“You arrived with two bags and anger issues.”
“I still have the anger issues.”
“That’s true.”
Their shoulders bumped together naturally. Instinctively.
Like second nature.
And suddenly it hit me.
Everything we have now—the house, the stability, the comfort—exists because two women in their twenties decided they’d rather struggle together than live comfortably apart.
Not because they were fearless.
But because they loved each other enough to be scared and stay anyway.
Mama sat down on the dusty floor beside us.
“You know,” she said casually, “your mommy once threatened to leave me.”
Mommy gasped. “You promised never to tell them that.”
“You threw a slipper at my head.”
“You spent our emergency money on concert tickets!”
“They were good seats.”
“We had no refrigerator!”
Mama pointed at her triumphantly. “But notice how you still stayed.”
Mommy stared at her for a few seconds before rolling her eyes fondly.
“Unfortunately.”
And maybe that’s the thing people don’t understand about long-term love.
It isn’t built from grand gestures.
It’s built from surviving the version of yourselves that had nothing except each other.