by Ali Merci
Asa sighed, his breath fanning the top of Carmen’s head and fluttering a few strands of her hair ever so slightly. “But when she loves, she does so with every inch of her existence. She’ll give and give and give, until she forgets how to stop giving.” His fingers trailed down Carmen’s scalp, tangling themselves in her hair as he messed around with her dark locks. “She’s the kind of person who never makes you doubt the intensity of her love, even if it does make you question her sanity from time to time.”
“Sounds like someone I know.” Carmen smiled, tilting her head up to look at Asa.
His eyes met hers as he looked down at where the side of her face was pressed against his chest. Carmen’s ear was right next to his sternum, and she could her the faint thumpity-thumps of his heart. The calming effect it had on her was indescribable.
“I’m not stubborn,” he pointed out, a small smile on his lips. “And my cooking skills are nonexistent. Unless its normal stuff like sandwiches. But Ma says I’m a disgrace to the Mexican cuisine.”
“I meant the part about not forgiving easily—”
“I am not as bad as my mother. She would literally take her grudges to the grave—”
“—and the part about loving wholeheartedly and irrevocably.”
Asa’s mouth snapped shut at that, and he stared at Carmen, surprise flickering in those eyes of his.
“And you’re passionate too,” Carmen pointed out. “It’s like you feel so much you don’t even know what to do with those feelings sometimes.”
“I can handle my feelings just fine,” Asa muttered, punctuating his words with a gentle pull of Carmen’s hair. “Just not when it comes to you,” he admitted in a small voice.
Carmen stopped breathing for a moment. And then her heart went into overdrive.
“Why do you love me so much?” The question slipped past her attempts to stop it, her voice cracking as she searched Asa’s eyes relentlessly for an explanation.
She felt him freeze beneath her, his arm tense around her waist, his fingers grow slack and loosen their grip on her hair.
And then, after a moment, he exhaled.
He exhaled as if he was breathing out all the air that was left in his lungs, and if it were possible, he pulled Carmen even further into his body.
“I don’t know, Carmen,” he told her earnestly, voice thick with emotion. “I don’t know how to tell you in words. I only know how to show you. And even then, it couldn’t possibly reveal even a third of what I actually feel.”
And maybe that was it, the one thing that was their biggest difference and also what allowed them to complement each other so well—he didn’t have the words to tell her he loved the midnight shade of her hair and could only show it by running his fingers through them. And she didn’t know how to show him how obsessed she was with the gold of his eyes, but could only talk about them in pure poetry.
But words could only prove so much, and actions didn’t always speak volumes. There had to be a little bit of both.
“All I know,” Asa spoke again. “Is that the world was black, white and a couple shades of grey. Then you happened. And now leaves aren’t just leaves, September isn’t just a month, rain isn’t just rain, autumn is no longer just another season, and art isn’t just art. You change the world, Carmen West. And all I want to do is see it through your eyes.”
And Asa had done it; he’d managed to gather ‘a little bit of both’, managed to arrive at that balance. He’d found the words to say to her.
If she uttered those three words now, would he believe her? Carmen couldn’t help but wonder as she stared into his eyes, all words abandoning her at his confession. But three words remained; three words sat at the tip of her tongue, begging to be released.
Not yet, she told herself. She still had a lot she needed to say.
There was another pull of her hair. “Say something.” Asa smiled, but it looked a little uneasy.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Carmen whispered in a haunted tone. “Not tonight, anyway.”
Asa untangled his fingers from her hair and used his knuckles to stroke her cheekbone. “Then tell me something I can believe,” he whispered back, never breaking eye contact.
Carmen paused to gather her thoughts, running her mind through every possible way she could just to start this conversation but coming up empty each time.
“I don’t know where to start, Asa,” she told him in an apologetic tone. “I’m sor—”
“Shh.” He shook his head, placing his finger on her lips. “No more apologies for tonight, remember?” He took his finger away, dragging it down her bottom lip as he did so. “Just…just start at the point that you feel is the beginning.”
Carmen’s thoughts floated to tonight’s game, when she’d finally found the courage to run after Asa. The football field flashed in front of her eyes—the passionate players, the wild crowd, and the hyperactive cheerleaders.
“She was popular,” Carmen began, averting her gaze from Asa’s and trailing her eyes over the patterns her fingers had started to trace on his chest. “Dad said she was popular because she had a fierce spirit and a kind smile, but my aunt Viola used to say Mum’s popularity came from her ability to seduce anything that walked.”
“Your aunt is an idiot, no offense.”
“I honestly don’t mind.” Carmen sighed, her mind flashing back to the wretched night of Thanksgiving. “She wanted to have fun, I guess. Didn’t want to settle down until she’d lived her life to the fullest and tried everything that her heart desired. At least, that’s how Dad put it.” Carmen’s hands stopped drawing invisible patterns on the t-shirt Asa was wearing and instead grabbed a fistful of it and tucking her head underneath his chin. “She had a reputation though, amongst the guys during high school. And despite meeting Dad in college, despite falling in love with him and leaving her old ways behind so that she could get involved in a serious relationship, that reputation still followed her. People never really let her forget.”
Asa’s hand went back to her hair, his long fingers stroking it all the way from the roots down to the tips.
“And just like the boy who cried wolf, nobody believes a slut when she cries rape.” Carmen laughed darkly, the bitter sound scaring her own self. Almost on instinct, she tilted her head back and glanced at Asa; he didn’t seem shocked or scared of her, though.
“Dad had gotten into a student exchange program at that time, and he wasn’t at campus with her, so everyone thought she’d taken that chance to cheat on Dad. They didn’t believe her. Told her that she was only accusing the guy of rape because she hadn’t expected to get pregnant and a baby was something she wouldn’t be able to hide from my dad. They said she was just looking for a scapegoat, that the pregnancy was a result of an affair, not an attack.” Her grip on Asa’s shirt tightened. “A lot of people sympathised with Dad. They felt even sorrier for him when he believed my mum. They thought he was too in love with her to see reason.”
There was a long stretch of silence, before Carmen felt Asa’s fingers take a gentle but firm hold of her chin, urging her to meet his eyes.
“Carmen,” he said in a cautious tone, releasing her chin and using that hand to brush away stray strands from her cheek. “The pregnancy… the child…”
“Yes,” she answered the question that he was too much of a soft-hearted person to blatantly ask. “And you can say the words out loud, Asa.” She let go of the death grip on his t-shirt and brought her hand up to his face, tracing the curve of those slanting cheekbones. “I don’t really have a problem with the circumstances of my birth. I don’t see myself as some aftermath of a college horror night.”
Asa’s mouth slowly stretched into a soft smile, those eyes of his growing almost dusky as he continued to gaze her with a mix of pride, sorrow and… and something else raw and unfathomable.
“You are crazy strong, I hope you know that,” he mumbled, caressing the apple of her cheek with the delicacy of a feather.
Ca
rmen’s mouth twisted into a slight frown. “I don’t always feel strong though.”
“So?” His finger traced the curve of her ear. “You’re allowed to break.”
An image of broken crayons flashed in Carmen’s mind, causing the edges of her mouth to curve up into the tiniest of smiles.
I love you. Three words sat on the tip of her tongue. But would he believe her? Would he, really?
“It was after she died that things really exploded.” Carmen sighed. “That family was fractured when Hunter’s mum died in a horrible accident. And when mum also died, that fracture spread, I guess. It spread until the whole family just cracked and broke apart. There was no place for me there and where I wasn’t welcome, Dad didn’t want to stay either.”
A few more beats of silence passed, and Carmen found herself enjoying these little quiet pauses, breathing in his scent and soaking in the comfort of his strong arms while his fingers continued to thread through her hair and his other hand remained secured around her waist, holding her against him.
She liked this. She liked how he knew her enough to know that this wasn’t her unloading all the extra weight on him, that this wasn’t her looking for comforting words or testaments of her self-worth or even advice on self-love. Asa seemed to understand the fact that all she wanted to do—really wanted to do—was let him in.
And Carmen appreciated that more than words could say.
64
Three Words
The silence stretched on, calming and comfortable. They weren’t saying anything, but Asa’s lips still wore the ghost of a smile as he leant his head back on the bedframe and played with Carmen’s hair.
“Carmen,” he said after a while. “How come you know so much about what happened to your mum?” He leaned away from the headboard and looked down at Carmen. “I mean, I guess you would have gotten answers about your birth from your dad but the circumstances of her attack? The judgment and accusations she had to face? Those were long before you would’ve been born. And I know it’s not my place to say this, but your dad must have been smoking something to tell you all the details of her suffering.”
There was a light slap on his leg followed by Carmen sighing. “Dad’s not an idiot. He knew that all the shaming my mum was put through wasn’t something that I needed to know. I had a right to know about my birth, why my biological father wasn’t in the picture, why my relatives weren’t very welcoming of me. And so he gave me the answers I needed. But the other things—the things about my mum’s reputation, about how she was shunned—those I learnt from my extended family.” There was another heavy sigh from Carmen. “I mean, I was a kid back then. It wasn’t hard to eavesdrop whenever I heard my mother being mentioned in conversation. And—and I don’t know, the looks Cole’s mum used to give me made me feel like I was doing something wrong, so I was always careful about what I said and how I acted. Until I just grew used to keeping to myself and not speaking much at all in that house.
“I guess Dad finally saw how unhappy I was there,” she continued. “And decided to move back here. But I still remembered the looks, the bitterness when they spoke of my mother…and I just grew up thinking she must have done something bad in order for them to feel that way about her. Turns out she didn’t do anything bad, the only thing that was so wrong in her family’s eyes was my existence. I suppose they believed —believe—she should’ve lived…and that I should be the one buried six feet under.”
On instinct, Asa’s arms tightened their hold around her, as if there was any chance of protecting her from the damage that had already been inflicted on her. “It wasn’t your fault if your mother died giving birth to you, Carmen,” he sounded almost angry. Angry for Carmen. Angry at the rest of the world for taking away a little girl’s childhood because of something way beyond her control. “She chose to have you, didn’t she? Why would anyone in their right minds possibly blame you?”
There was a pause in the air.
It wasn’t one of those comfortable ones. It wasn’t one of those small stretches of silence that punctuated every little confession that spilled out of Carmen’s mouth. This was different. Asa felt Carmen tense under his arms, squirm for a bit, and clench her fist around the material of the t-shirt he was wearing.
“Mum…” Carmen cleared her throat before continuing. “Mum, she didn’t—she didn’t die during—it wasn’t because of childbirth.”
Asa’s brows knitted together, the hard frown on his face deepening even further. “Oh?” he asked, perplexed. “Then that’s all the more reason why they can’t blame you. People really blow my mind sometimes.”
“They can,” she said in a small voice. “Blame me for her death, I mean. I—I’m not saying they’re right in doing so or that I’m justifying their words or their actions but—but I can see why they’d think that I’m the one to blame.”
Asa opened his mouth, about to ask her why she’d let herself think that; how exactly her mother died that it continued to haunt her to this very moment; how come it was so hard for her family to accept her mother’s passing away if death came for everyone at one point in their lives. Wasn’t death natural?
And then he clamped his mouth shut, because Asa wondered if perhaps the death of Carmen’s mother wasn’t due to natural circumstances. If maybe the reason Carmen seemed to be in so much pain and carry heartbreak in her eyes was because she’d inherited that pain from someone who’d left it behind for her.
Asa’s eyes landed on Carmen and for the third time that night, he watched. The roots of her hair on her forehead seemed to have formed tiny beads of sweat, her palm that was resting on his arm felt clammy, her eyes kept darting in all directions as she kept opening and shutting her mouth with a kind of desperation on her face he hadn’t seen before. Subtly, he shifted his hand that was loosely hung around her neck and moved it lower, lower enough that it slanted across her chest and he could feel the pulse of her heart.
It was beating fast. Too fast. And something told Asa it had nothing to do with their close proximity.
His eyes trailed over her face once more and swept over her obviously distressed posture.
Was he, someone who claimed to love her, going to actually put her through saying the words when it was so blatantly visible how much she was struggling right in that moment? Was Asa really going to ask that of her?
He wasn’t an idiot. He could come to a vague conclusion as to how her mother died. And whether Asa was in love with her or not, he didn’t think he’d want to put anyone through actually speaking out the words. Hell, as much as he despised Hunter and as much pain as that boy had caused him, Asa didn’t think he’d ever do that to him either. There were some lines you just didn’t cross.
And so, Asa lifted an arm from around her and placed it on her cheek, tilting her face towards him. “Carmen,” he said gently, with a small nod of understanding. “It’s okay. You don’t need to tell me right now if you can’t.”
Surprise flashed across her soft features, before confusion settled into the depths of her eyes, filling it to the brim. “But—but…” She shook her head, sitting up straight and leaning away from his embrace. “I need to let you in. I need to tell you. You said I didn’t open up much, that we couldn’t work if I remained closed off. I need to do this, don’t I? I don’t want to leave you in the dark. Not anymore.”
Something inside Asa hurt. It hurt so much to know that the way he’d delivered his words made her think he needed absolutely every single piece of her that she had to offer. That wasn’t what he’d asked for: it wasn’t what he’d meant.
“Carmen,” he murmured, running his thumb across her forehead and down her temple. “I asked you if you were ever going to let me in, and you told me you didn’t know. And so I walked out.” Asa lowered his head, brushing the tip of his nose against hers. “But you’re here. And you’re giving me a way in. This is all that I ever wanted. This is all that I asked for—for you to show me you’re willing to actually open up and let me in. I never demanded
for you to tell me all that there is to know within a single night itself. I just needed a sign, some sort of proof that you were actually willing to do some of the giving too.”
He angled his face and then pressed his lips to her cheek. “I open up quickly. You don’t. I get that. People have their own pace when it comes to letting others in. I just never knew if you were ever going to do so when it came to us. You’re showing me now that you do want to make this work, that you want me to understand, and as long as that’s the case, as long as you’re making the effort on your part, I don’t see why we can’t go at your pace.”
He smiled down at her, trailing his finger along her jaw. “Everyone’s always talking about taking things slow when it comes to the physical aspects of the relationship, always preaching about being patient with your partner until they’re ready to take things to the next level and not to force them into doing something that they’re not comfortable with…but nobody ever warned us about this—” he gestured between the two of them, “—about patience being needed for someone letting you in mentally and emotionally too. That forcing someone to open up is just as bad and pressurising as forcing them into doing something physical. But making you feel pressured is the last thing I ever want for you in this relationship, I need you to believe that.”
“I do believe that.” She smiled back at him, and then leant forward to kiss his jaw. “I do,” she breathed, her voice so quiet that Asa felt her words against his skin long before he heard them. “But to be fair, I should’ve come to you sooner and told you I needed a little space to figure things out, that I needed to get some professional help so that I could come to a point where I could make a completely rational decision. I didn’t though, did I? I just went ahead and crushed your heart because I was still too scared of getting help, scared of admitting to myself that I needed the help. It was only after I lost you that the magnitude of the situation really sunk in…and I knew I needed to do something or else I’d lose myself forever.”