by Ali Merci
And now it was coming to an end because Carmen had dragged Asa into a war that had been raging within her soul for a while.
“He’s going to hate me,” she said, voice thick with so many emotions. Emotions that she had never let Asa see. Emotions that could’ve prevented a lot of pain if she had let them out sooner..
“Maybe,” her father said. “But if you keep one foot out the door and one foot in, if you keep dangling maybes in front of him, then you’re not letting him grow as a person. You’re clipping his wings, love. So if you really care about him, if anything you felt for him during the months you’ve known him was real—even if it was for just a single moment or just a cluster of seconds—then let him go. Set him free, Carmen.”
She thought about Asa, then, of his fingers brushing against hers as he placed the broken crayons into her palm; of his lips against her cheek in the art room when he’d thanked her for existing; of his arms wrapped firmly around her as he’d corrected her theory regarding binary pairs.
He had loved her, hadn’t he? He had. Even when she didn’t give him every single piece of her, he’d found the strength in himself to love the broken version of her soul.
And she was now going to repay that love by crushing him.
“How did I get here, dad?” Carmen mumbled, shaking her head to herself. “How did I get to the point where I made such a selfish decision?”
“Because you’re human,” he replied, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. “And it’s okay to want things. Yes, you went about it the wrong way, but you now have a chance to make it right. So do it. Do right by Asa. Let the boy go, Carmen.”
Coffee coloured eyes flashed in Carmen’s mind. Eyes that had looked at her with amazement, with tenderness. With love.
Eyes that would soon look at her with pain and hatred.
But this was the bed she’d made, and she was going to need to learn to sleep on it, whatever the consequences.
Even if it meant giving up the one real thing she’d ever known.
•••
By the time December rolled around, school had started too, everyone’s short break for Thanksgiving coming to an end and their lives falling back into their normal schedules.
Asa’s world, however, didn’t feel normal.
What was normal supposed to mean anyway? Because yes, the sun was still in the sky, and the weather was still chilly and the school hallways were still the same and Monday morning blues were visible on every student’s face.
But there was also that pressure right in the middle of his chest where his lungs met. It had been there since the fight with Carmen, as if he’d been holding his breath ever since. And there was that cavity in his chest, a hollow space in his ribcage where his heart used to be. A heart that refused to come back to him despite his pleas.
So, again, what exactly was he supposed to consider normal anymore?
Because when he saw the world around him now, he saw a frozen sun with frost spreading over it. He saw wilted flowers and when night fell, he saw a cracked moon with a split running right down its centre. He didn’t see the world anymore, all he could see was that painting from Carmen’s journal.
She’d stormed into his life like the hurricane that she was, and redefined his version of normal. It was still the same world, but he’d grown so used to seeing it through Carmen’s eyes that he didn’t know how to view it any other way now.
Asa hadn’t seen Carmen today, not yet. Then again, they’d never usually run into each other in the mornings. It was always during lunch and spares and the rides back home.
It was lunch now, though. And Asa’s mind was literally blank, rendering him ridiculously incapable of making up his mind on where he was going to spend it.
Because he knew the instant he stepped into that cafeteria, his eyes would search for the head with endless midnight hair, and he wasn’t ready, not yet, to look into those thundercloud eyes. He wasn’t ready to get struck by a lightning bolt they would send his way. He wasn’t ready for that to kick-start his lungs and allow him to release the pressure in his chest. He needed that pressure for a little while longer, just a little while. It reminded him that things had been real. Once.
“Mr San Román?”
Asa snapped out of his reverie with a start, darting his eyes towards his AP History teacher who was looking at him curiously.
“Not planning on going for lunch?” the teacher asked, cocking a brow.
“Sorry,” Asa mumbled, yanking his bag from the ground next to his chair and swinging one strap over his shoulder, letting it dangle crookedly against his back.
He walked out of the classroom and into the crowded hallways where everyone was rushing about, either running towards their lockers to stuff their materials in or heading in the direction of the cafeteria. Asa kept his head down, brows slightly pulled together and his mind a million worlds away.
Then he bumped into something hard, making him stumble back a few steps.
“Sorry,” he quickly apologised, lifting his head back up, “I didn’t…” The words died the second his eyes met Hunter’s icy ones. But something else caught his attention right then—the dark colouring on the lower part of Hunter’s jaw, a bruise that was at least a day old.
“Whoa, what happened?” Asa asked, his brows furrowing further as he stared at it.
“Why the fuck do you care?” Hunter snarled back, distaste evident in his tone.
Asa knew that right then, Hunter’s anger wasn’t necessarily directed at him, but at whoever had thrown the punch. That didn’t mean he had to be okay with being treated that way though. So Asa just shook his head to himself, wondering yet again what redeeming qualities Carmen saw in the asshole, and began to walk away.
He didn’t get to go that far though, because Hunter’s hand grabbed his forearm and yanked Asa back.
Asa sighed in frustration. “Okay, I’m really not in the mood for a fight. Just forget I asked anyth—”
“Happened yesterday during practise,” he muttered. Asa was confused for a split second before Hunter pointed towards the bruise. “Lost my temper with the quarterback.”
“I’m guessing he’s in worse shape,” Asa commented dryly, knowing what it was like to be on the receiving end of Hunter’s anger.
Hunter frowned slightly at that. “Not really... I think I kind of held back.”
Asa’s eyes flickered towards the wall at the other end of the hallway. “Why?”
Through his peripheral vision, Asa saw Hunter shrug. “Don’t know.” His tone remained nonchalant, “He was my teammate? I’m his captain and, I don’t know, just didn’t feel right to have to raise my fist to someone who was supposed to look to me for guidance.”
Asa’s eyes left the wall, landing on Hunter’s ones again instead.
“Okay,” he said, nodding curtly and stepping around Hunter to either head towards his truck or find sanctuary in the pool. But before he could put much of a distance between them, Asa felt Hunter’s hand grab his arm again and pull him back so that they stood face-to-face once more.
For the love of God.
“Seriously?!” Asa hissed, yanking his arm out of Hunter’s grasp. “Why do you have to literally yank me back? Call my name if you need to stop me, like a normal person would.”
“I didn’t start it,” Hunter said, ignoring whatever Asa had just said.
“Didn’t start what?” Asa snapped, still annoyed.
“The fight,” Hunter answered matter-of-factly, blinking once. “He was trying to undermine my position as captain because he’s the quaterba—doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is, he threw the first punch. I, uh, I didn’t initiate it.”
Asa stared at Hunter for a few seconds, adjusting the strap of his bag over his shoulder in an attempt to have something to do other than just stand there like an idiot.
“That, uh, that sucks,” he eventually said, uttering each word at a slow pace because the weirdness of this entire conversation was starting to get to his ner
ves. “Is that why you seemed so pissed? Cause it was your own teammate who took a swing at you?”
Hunter’s eyes hardened, the scowl returning. “No,” he said tersely. “The coach threatened to bench me during the final game of this season if something like that happened again. Can’t have that, not with all those scouts attending.”
Asa frowned, momentarily forgetting his animosity towards the boy in front of him. “But you said the other guy started it.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Hunter muttered. “I’m team captain. It’s my job to make sure shit doesn’t hit the fan within our own team.”
“Right.” Asa nodded, looking away again and shuffling on his feet awkwardly. “Right.”
“Yeah.” Hunter narrowed his eyes at Asa slightly. “Just needed to say that I didn’t, you know, start it.”
Asa met Hunter’s blank stare, unsure on how to respond to that, but before he could even decide whether he wanted to offer some sort of response or just walk away, Hunter was already turning around and taking off down the hallway.
“Hey,” a familiar voice said from behind Asa a few seconds before he felt a hand land on his shoulder.
“Hey,” Asa greeted back, tilting his head to the side, and watched as Wyatt stepped into the space beside him.
Wyatt frowned at the retreating figure of Hunter and then turned to face Asa. “You okay?” he asked, glancing at Hunter’s back again with something like worry in his eyes.
Asa’s mouth twitched, before forming a small smile. “Relax,” he said. “He didn’t hurt me.”
Wyatt’s worried frown didn’t fade, and he stepped forward, pressing his index finger into Asa’s jaw and turning his face to the side, examining the other half of Asa’s face for any evidence of a fight.
“Dude.” Asa laughed, shoving Wyatt’s shoulder playfully. “I’m serious. The conversation was pretty civil.”
“Civil?”
“For the most part.”
Wyatt stared at Asa for a while longer before visibly relaxing and slipping back into that easygoing demeanour. “So,” he said in an upbeat tone. “The cafeteria’s in the other direction.” He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb.
“Not hungry,” Asa muttered, the moment of lightheartedness dissipating at the mention of the cafeteria. And just like that, it all came crashing down on him again. One moment of peace was all he wanted. One moment free of reminders. But Asa wasn’t allowed even that.
Wyatt’s eyes narrowed, turning serious again. “You’re not jumping at the chance to spend it with Carmen,” he stated, rather than framing it as a question, the corners of his mouth turning down.
Asa’s chest clenched. “No,” he said, that dark cloud which had been following him around since a week ago now enveloping him as a whole. “No, I’m not.”
Whatever lingered of Wyatt’s usual carefree attitude drained away and he lifted his hand to his forehead, scratching the skin above his right eyebrow as he looked away.
“Um,” he started. “What happened?”
“Look,” Asa hesitated, “you don’t have to. If it makes you uncomfortable—”
“Why?” Wyatt scoffed. “Because I’m a guy, and we don’t talk about feelings?” He slapped the back of Asa’s head lightly.
“No.” Asa snorted. “I was just giving you a way out in case you start regretting it later on.”
“I won’t,” he promised. “Let’s hit the rooftop.”
“You do know getting caught could land us in deep shit, right?”
“Asa, if you’re going to pretend like you care about detention, at least do a convincing job of it.”
Asa smiled to himself, but didn’t say anything else as they snuck into the stairwell that led to the roof and found themselves standing on the vast expanse of concrete.
“All right then.” Wyatt sighed, dropping his bag on the dusty ground. “Spill.”
And so Asa did.
•••
It was several minutes later when silence fell among them.
Wyatt pursed his lips, staring into nothingness as he leaned over the railings and folded his arms on top of them, apparently lost deep in thought.
Asa, however, was facing the opposite direction, his back pressed against the metal bars that wrapped around the perimeter of the roof, staring down at his feet that kept tracing nonexistent patterns on the ground.
“You’re quiet,” Asa remarked, unable to take the silence anymore.
Wyatt sighed from next to him, shooting him a sideways glance. He opened his mouth, as if about to say something to Asa, but then closed it—only to open it once more and shut it again.
“Do you know what I think?” he finally asked, averting his eyes back towards the view of the parking lot and neighbouring streets and buildings that being on the rooftop provided.
“What?” Asa asked, his right foot drawing horizontal lines in the dirt now.
“That I will never understand why you let Isla into your life,” Wyatt replied, his forehead creasing.
Asa’s foot stopped moving, and his head snapped towards his left, staring at Wyatt incredulously. “What does that have to do with anything I just told you about Carmen and me?”
“Listen,” Wyatt unfolded his arms and turned towards Asa, leaning his side against the railings, “I’m saying that you found it in you to see the good in her when nobody else could, that I’m sure she herself couldn’t. Hayden thought you were batshit crazy for sticking by her side for as long as you have; Lyra wasn’t very impressed either but she never commented on it; and the others who knew you on the surface and probably wanted to get to know you better? Yeah, they probably never made a move to build a bridge with you because they wouldn’t have understood your loyalty towards Isla either.”
“I’m still not getting the point, Wyatt.”
Wyatt sighed heavily, shoulders sagging as he offered Asa a small smile. “It takes courage, I think, to be able to have faith in someone the rest of the world has condemned as a lost cause. I don’t think I have that courage. I don’t think I want to, either. That’s extra weight I don’t need in my life. But you took it on, Asa. Even when you knew people considered you hopeless and downright stupid, you stood by Isla for as long as you could anyway. And I think it’s rare to come across someone like that. But you—you got lucky. You found Carmen. You found someone who could understand you in a way nobody else can, and I think that’s pretty goddamn rare.”
“Because she has the same faith in Hunter that I did in Isla?” Asa asked slowly, furrowing his brows and pressing his lips together.
“More or less.” Wyatt shrugged. “And you can understand her in return—where she’s coming from, why she chose to believe in someone you think is a lost cause. Carmen and you are the perfect fit if I’ve ever seen one before, so it just makes no sense that the two of you aren’t grabbing onto each other with both arms and choosing to never let go.”
“But that’s the problem, Wyatt,” Asa stressed, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “I don’t get why she’d choose to want him in her life. When I befriended Isla, it was at a time when she was in a good place, so I’d already known who she was capable of being. It was later on when she eventually began spiralling. And I couldn’t abandon her at a time of need so I stood by her.
“But Hunter’s done nothing so far to redeem himself, has he? He’s not even tried apologising to me. All I’ve seen is the rage and the cruelty. So yeah, when Carmen just announced out of the blue that she wanted to reconnect with him, it hurt. Because she was the one I took down my walls for—walls that she knows Hunter made me build around myself.”
“This,” Wyatt gestured wildly between the two of them, “this is the problem. You’re supposed to be having this conversation with her. With Carmen.”
Asa chuckled humourlessly. “You think I don’t know that? I could even run to her right this second and spill my heart out. But if I start talking, then I’m going to be the only one doing the talking. She’s not goi
ng to open up in return. I might as well take my chances talking to a wall and expecting it to respond.”
“So what’s the problem then, Asa?” Wyatt frowned. “Hunter or Carmen’s inability to let you in?”
“Don’t they kind of go hand in hand?”
“Well…” Wyatt’s forehead creased. “Would Carmen deliberately hurt you?”
“No.” The response was swift and sincere. That was one of the few things he never had to question when it came to Carmen.
“Then it doesn’t matter. Hunter doesn’t matter. And you don’t need to go looking for any reason to have faith in him. You don’t owe him that. But you can have faith in Carmen instead. Have faith in the fact that if she wouldn’t do something to deliberately hurt you, there’s a pretty valid reason why she wants Hunter back.”
Asa was quiet for a while, letting Wyatt’s words float around in his head and wondering what it’d be like to tell Carmen it didn’t matter, that they could get past this and go back to how things were at the beginning.
It was a comforting idea, that. It felt so easy to do, too. But that wasn’t how these things really worked, was it?
“I could do that, you know,” Asa murmured, looking down at his feet. “I could just put my faith in her and disregard Hunter.”
“But?”
“But the minute I do that, we’re going to fall into a cycle. She’ll do something that I’d never be able to understand and then expect me to have faith in the fact that she knows what she’s doing. It would only allow her to never let me in.”
“Are you sure about that, though?” Wyatt frowned. “About her never going to let you in?”
“I asked her,” Asa said, sighing. “Before I walked out, I asked her if she was ever going to let me in. I didn’t ask her to let me in right then and there. I asked her to tell me if she was ever planning to.”
“And she said she needed time? Because you could give her—”
“She didn’t ask for time.” Asa’s eyes flickered to Wyatt’s, confusion and hurt swimming in them. “She said she didn’t know.”
Wyatt winced, his head jerking back at the secondhand punch-to-the-gut. “Ouch,” he muttered, averting his gaze.