Through Your Eyes

by Ali Merci

  Hunter swept his hair with his palm again. “That’s all I needed you to know. That it wasn’t that I thought there was something wrong with you—” and then, in an uncharacteristically soft voice, he added, “—because there really isn’t.”

  Was it pathetic on Asa’s part to admit to himself that he appreciated the gesture? That it did mean something to him? It wasn’t that he was still looking for validation—not anymore. Never again. But—but, still, there was perhaps a small void that he could now fill up. Another chapter of his life that he could close now and not look back on.

  Asa had satisfied his pride when he’d told Hunter he no longer needed the closure, that it wouldn’t make a difference to him whether he got any or not, but he was somehow glad that Hunter had taken down his own pride and decided to give Asa some of that closure anyway.

  Averting his gaze, Asa found his eyes sweeping over the dark streets, illuminated only by the soft glow of the streetlights. His sight followed the sway of the trees under the gentle wind, and he watched the droplets of water that still sat on the leaves from the earlier downpour fall to the ground as the breeze shook the branches.

  He shuffled on his feet, hesitated, then moved forward until he too was standing in front of the railings that wrapped around the porch. “Yeah,” he finally said quietly. “You were a terrible person. I’d go as far as to saying that you even broke me.” Asa sighed, looked down at his hands as they brushed away fallen leaves from the surface of the wooden bars. “But the breaking was also what made me—”

  “Don’t,” Hunter hissed, the word coming out with such venom that it made Asa stumble back wearily. But when he glanced at Hunter, the loathing and anger he saw on his face wasn’t directed at Asa. Hell, he wasn’t even looking at Asa.

  “I didn’t make you,” Hunter bit out. “I broke you. You made yourself. Don’t give me that credit; I never understood the logic behind all those sayings about how you’re supposed to be grateful towards your tormentor. It’s bullshit. Just plain nonsensical crap. Sometimes there isn’t some huge backstory towards why someone hurt you. There always isn’t some heartbreaking tragedy that makes someone inflict all their suffering on you, too.

  “Sometimes people are just ugly. Sometimes people are just rotten. Sometimes they just take sick pleasure in watching others hurt. Sometimes they feel powerful in being able to cause all that misery and fear. There isn’t always something more beyond the surface of an angry and hateful person. I’m not going to use whatever I went through as a justification for who I am, who I used to be. Carmen went through the very same things, but she didn’t allow herself to turn into a wretched thing, did she? We make our own choices, Asa.”

  Hunter sighed heavily, as if he was releasing so much, too much. “She chose to let it make her; I chose to let it break me.” He knitted his brows together, looking down at his feet. “And you chose to let it make you, eventually. You picked up your pieces, you glued them back together, and you patched yourself up. You. It was all you. You made yourself. So don’t tell me that hurting you was a way for you to build yourself. You wouldn’t have had to do any building if there hadn’t been any breaking in the first place. Don’t give me credit. Don’t give Carson any credit. And don’t ever give the other Hunters or Carsons you’ll run into somewhere down the road any credit either. Because as much as it sucks, there are more Hunters and Carsons out there that you’re going to have the misfortune of meeting.”

  Asa remained quiet for a while, taking in all the words, letting it sink in his mind, allowing it to flow into all those places that still needed a little bit of lighting within him. “Well,” he finally said, clearing his throat. “I guess it’s safe to say that I’d rather have the misfortune of running into a Hunter than another Carson.”

  Hunter snorted from next to him, muttering something under his breath and shaking his head to himself. He tipped his head back, stared up at the sky scattered with stars and exhaled slowly. “You’re actually an okay person, San Román.”

  Asa hummed in response, still feeling all sorts of bizarre about the entire conversation. “And you’re actually capable of being less of an ass, Donoghue.”

  Silence filled the space between them, because, yes, space still existed between both of them. They were two sides of the same coin, weren’t they? The realisation hadn’t hit Asa until now. They were both boys that had been dealt the short end of the stick, that the world had done injustice to when they were growing up. They were both boys whom the world had peeled off its mask for, to whom places infested with hatred and cruelty were shown at too young an age.

  But only one boy had taught himself to spin gold out of it, while the other learnt to turn everything he touched into steel.

  “That’s all I wanted to say,” Hunter spoke after a while, pushing himself off the wooden railings and rubbing the back of his neck. “I wanted to start making amends. I just didn’t know where to start or how to start or who to start with until that day in the locker room, after you took that punch.” He shifted on his feet. “So thanks, I guess, for giving me some sort of direction.”

  At those last words, an old memory played in Asa’s head and he couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped his mouth.

  “What?” Hunter narrowed his eyes.

  “Just remembered something that Isla once said,” Asa muttered. “About me being a compass.”

  “She isn’t entirely wrong,” Hunter said, looking away. “I don’t think Carmen would’ve made the decision to get help until she’d lost you. So, in a way, you nudged her into that direction.”

  Asa glanced at Hunter, and for a moment, the scene of watching him grin with victory on the football field after winning the game flashed in his mind. It made him wonder of the boy he had once been—long, long back.

  “I’m sorry, you know,” Asa eventually said in a quiet tone.

  “For?” Hunter looked utterly confused.

  “Carmen’s mum,” he answered. “Your aunt.”

  Hunter stiffened, the muscles on his jaw tensing, before he looked away. Still he didn’t entirely relax. “She wasn’t just my aunt,” he finally responded. “She was a mother to me too.”

  “Carmen mentioned that once, I think.”

  “Hmm.”

  Asa observed Hunter for a while, before stating, “You love her.”

  The way Hunter’s features softened at the statement is something that Asa would probably need to commit to memory, because he didn’t think there were many things that could evoke such an emotion from him. “Carmen?” A corner of Hunter’s lips actually lifted into something resembling a smile. “With all of my heart. Sometimes I think she’s the only one reminding me there’s a human underneath the machine I’ve become.”

  “You should tell her that some time,” Asa remarked. “If you already haven’t.”

  “One day,” Hunter promised. He met Asa’s eyes. “You’d have made a great friend, you know. Someone I could’ve once identified with, a time before I lost myself. But… but I can also see why we can’t be friends. I get it. For Carmen’s sake, however, acting civil towards each other isn’t too much, is it? We can learn to coexist.”

  “Coexist,” Asa murmured, watching a drop of rainwater from a leaf on a nearby bush trickle down the stem and spill into the damp soil. “Seems fair enough.”

  Hunter nodded, then turned, slipping his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and started walking away.

  Asa heard the footsteps stop, and he turned around to see Hunter walk back towards him.

  “Something else you need to say?” Asa asked, raising a brow with amusement.

  “Just one thing,” Hunter shrugged. “Before I forget.” He took a step closer, and looked Asa dead in the eyes. “I am sorry.” Three words uttered as clear as day and with all the sincerity that was humanly possible. “I realised I never really said the words, and I wanted to get it out, because we’re probably not gonna have an actual conversation ever again after this.” He offered Asa a tight smile
, hesitated as if there was something else he needed to say, and then walked away.

  Hunter stepped into the house and closed the door shut.

  And somewhere in the back of Asa’s mind, a door was being shut too. A chapter was being closed and sealed, no longer an open wound.

  •••

  Asa’s grandpa had once told him that his rash nature and tendency to act on impulse would get him in trouble one day.

  And perhaps his grandpa had been right the whole time, because Asa’s recklessness extended all the way to the manner in which he carried his heart and how he let himself fall head over heels, feeling every single emotion so very deeply.

  And it did get him in trouble, all right. But Asa was beginning to realise love was sometimes worth that trouble. He realised that Carmen West, the hurricane with a beating heart—who had thunderclouds for eyes and the midnight sky for hair and who painted broken moons and frozen suns—was indeed worth that trouble.

  Epilogue:

  An Art Journal

  Late April

  Isla’s funeral was a quiet, simple event.

  That didn’t go to say it wasn’t crowded though. Because it was. Almost the entire school seemed to be there, along with her family and other relatives that Asa had never seen before.

  It was a sea of black clothes, pale faces, and puffy red eyes.

  Asa didn’t know what he looked like. Asa didn’t know what he was supposed to feel.

  He’d lost the Isla he knew a long time back—long, long before she’d taken her own life. Asa had already dealt with her loss, with her absence from his life. He’d grown accustomed to that space in his life that she had once occupied.

  And yet there was something about death that made it all permanent.

  Asa couldn’t cry because his heart had already mourned losing her when she’d been alive.

  “He’d already lost her. He’d already lost her. He’d already lost her. He’d al—” Asa squeezed his eyes shut. He’d already lost her, hadn’t he? So why did it hurt so much now?

  A warm hand slipped into his, soft palm caressing his own rough one.

  He glanced sideways to find Carmen standing by his side, a tired smile on her face, her eyes a little hollow.

  Asa blinked. “Carmen,” he said hoarsely, sounding like he hadn’t used his voice for days. “What are you doing here?”

  “Where else should I be?”

  Asa shook his head, his mind averting its attention from the pallbearers carrying the coffin towards the spot that was chosen for Isla. “You aren’t supposed to be here,” he told Carmen, eyes softening. “I thought we’d agreed already. If Isla knew about the nature of your mother’s death, she would never have wanted you to attend this funeral too. Not when it would mean making you relive your worst memory.”

  Carmen had already lost someone to suicide, and Asa thought she had every right to sit this one out. That was a kind of selfishness that had to be permitted, right? He didn’t want to know what it must be like for her to have to see another family crumble and break the way her own did.

  “I’m sure she was the kind of person who would’ve understood,” Carmen said in a small voice, her grip on Asa’s hand tightening. “But I didn’t want you to be alone.”

  Carmen’s palm slid down his, her fingers finding home in the spaces between his own ones. She locked their hands together, never letting go.

  “I’m selfish enough to put my emotional state of mind first and avoid this funeral,” she murmured, then met Asa’s eyes. “But still selfless enough to keep the panic attack at bay and be here with you.”

  “You’re having panic attacks?” Asa’s breathing faltered.

  “Had it the day mum died,” she replied matter-of-factly. “And then had it the night of Thanksgiving when I was about to fall asleep.” She shrugged. “I’ve been feeling like I’m going to get hit with one ever since I woke up this morning.”

  Asa frowned hard. “You really shouldn’t be here.” He sounded almost pleading.

  “I want to take care of you right now,” she told him, repeating his words from a memory that seemed to be a lifetime away now. “Please just let me.”

  And so he did.

  They stood there together, side by side, under a cloudy, pale blue sky. The sun peeked out from behind the fluffy clouds every once in a while, the light spilling through the cracks in between branches and leaves that hung above them.

  Asa watched as they lowered the casket into the ground. Asa felt as the dirt in his fist made an imprint against the inside of his palm before he dropped them into the grave. He listened as a mother’s strangled cry flooded his ears and ripped out his heart.

  And all along, Carmen never let go of his hand.

  Both of them stood and watched: Asa, unable to cry, because he no longer knew the person being buried into the ground but now suffered a new kind of heartbreak he’d never imagined experiencing; and Carmen, who was too still and too frozen, because she may be physically here but her mind had taken every other part of her to many years back, to another funeral just like this one, except it had been raining heavily that evening.

  The grief was overwhelming, unbearable even, hitting the two of them in completely different ways.

  Still, they held on.

  •••

  Late August

  It was a bright sunny afternoon, and Carmen was seated in a familiar room.

  Gloria had changed the curtains. Gone were the plain white ones. It was a gold, cream, and white polka-dotted one that swayed in front of the window now. And there seemed to be two new additions to the collection of flowerpots that sat on the ledge at the bottom of the glass.

  Carmen’s eyes swept over every inch of the room, a small smile playing on her lips. “I like the curtains,” she told her therapist softly. “And the flowers are great, too.”

  “I’m glad you like them, Carmen,” Gloria replied, that same laid-back tone present in her voice, consistent as it had been since the very first day Carmen had stepped foot into this office.

  “Whenever you speak, you sound like you have all the time in the world,” Carmen said suddenly, clapping her hands together and grinning at Gloria. “Like you’re in no hurry to go anywhere. I like that.”

  Surprise flickered in those rich, dark eyes of the older woman sitting across her. “Thank you,” she said pleasantly, shaking off the surprise. “I’m happy you’re more comfortable here than you were in the beginning.”

  Carmen shrugged, the smile not leaving her face as she noticed that Gloria no longer had those caramel lowlights in her dark hair. She still wore it in a bun, though, letting the usual few strands fall loose and frame the side of her long face.

  Carmen realised Gloria was actually a very beautiful-looking woman, not the kind that you noticed right away, but the kind that artists would appreciate because of the strong bone structure in her cheeks and jaw.

  “You have nice bone structure too,” Carmen blurted, playing with her fingers, the stupid grin from her face not fading away.

  If Gloria was also surprised by this remark, she hid it well. But she did raise a brow in amusement. “You seem to be in quite a good mood today.”

  “I had an epiphany recently,” Carmen said. “Or at least, I realised something.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” she murmured, looking down at her clasped hands and toying with her fingers on her lap. “That I was wrong before.”

  “When?”

  “When I let myself believe I didn’t love him.”

  Gloria leant back against the cushion, folding one leg over the other and regarding Carmen with a composed face. “Really?”

  Carmen narrowed her eyes. “You don’t seem all that surprised that I’m saying this,” she pointed out suspiciously.

  “I’m your therapist, Carmen,” Gloria stated, the pleasantness in her tone always consistent. “You’ve been coming to me for months now. You’ve even graduated high school. That’s how long you’ve been com
ing here. I was just waiting for the day you realised it on your own and told me about it.”

  “Oh,” Carmen mumbled, averting her eyes and letting them wander around the soft tones of the room. Her gaze landed back on the window, where sunlight was streaming through the glass and into the room, flooding the entire place within those four walls with so much light. The irony wasn’t lost on Carmen, as this was also the same place that held all her darkest thoughts.

  Yet here she was, watching the sun illuminate every single inch of it.

  “I kind of miss the rain.” She found herself saying with a soft sigh. The downpour had stopped for a while now, taken over by the clear skies and the blinding sun.

  “I’m more interested in what you have to say regarding your epiphany.” Gloria smiled.

  Carmen’s eyes met the woman’s for a brief second, and she looked away again.

  “They say you are what you read,” Carmen started, pulling her eyebrows together as she pieced the words together in her head first. “That it is the society you grow in that has a huge role in your perspective of things, influencing your thoughts and your actions.”

  “It’s true,” Gloria said carefully. “To a certain extent.”

  “Do you know what they tell you when you’re growing up?” Carmen’s smile was partly sad, partly bitter. “Do you know what they teach you about love? What they repeat over and over again like a mantra until it’s the only thing that pops in your mind whenever someone tells you they love you? Do you know what that very first seed is? The one that they plant inside your head that your insecurities water for the rest of your life?”

  Gloria shook her head. “What do you think it is, Carmen?” Her voice was oddly soft. “I’d like to know.”

  “The fact that you cannot love someone else until you love yourself.”

  A pause.

  “You think it’s not right?” Gloria asked.

  Carmen’s eyes flashed, every bit of thunder and lightning coming to life in them. “I know it’s not right.” Her voice shook, as if every single shackle that had bound her was snapping into two. As if those wings she’d never been born with were finally battling their way from underneath her skin and bones, refusing to stay chained any longer. “It’s bullshit. And I want to rip those words apart with my own hands and set them on fire until they’re nothing but ashes. Until they’re no longer out there to control somebody else’s heart the way it did mine.”