by Ali Merci
Whatever it was that she’d done, she was probably allowing her mind to make it seem worse than it actually was because Asa knew that at the end of the day, Carmen did what she did because she felt it was for the best. Her decisions were never selfish. Of that he was much certain .
“It’s all right, mi amor,” he said softly, running his other hand down the length of her hair comfortingly. “Nothing you did could be so bad that it’d be unforgivable in my eyes.”
Her eyes grew the slightest bit watery at the edges, but Carmen seemed to have a stronger grip on her emotions this time around because she didn’t cry. Not a single tear was shed, her resolve as unwavering as Asa’s feelings for her.
Maybe that should’ve been the third flag. He was fighting to keep their relationship, while she was fighting to keep her composure.
“I didn’t mean it,” she eventually said, the words almost muffled by the choked tone of her voice.
Asa’s frown deepened. “Didn’t mean what?”
Carmen’s chin shook in Asa’s grip as her bottom lip trembled, causing the bubble of dread in his gut explode and trickle down his bones, flushing out any warmth that resided there.
“What I said that night.” Carmen gulped, blinking back tears as she struggled to maintain her calm guise. “I shouldn’t have said it… I—” Her voice cracked and she snapped her mouth shut, pressing her lips tightly together.
Asa’s mind flashed back to the morning of their fight, trying to pinpoint anything Carmen had said that was possible of placing her in such obvious conflict. But nothing stood out to him as something she’d want to take back; nothing she’d said that day was so cruel that she’d apologise this profusely—
And then it hit Asa.
Carmen wasn’t talking about the morning of the fight, was she?
“I shouldn’t have said it that night.”
Night.
What night was she referring to?
“Night?” He blinked, staring at her with a blank face.
Was it possible to see hearts break in the eyes of people? Because Asa thought he just saw Carmen’s crack in the way her eyes filled with anguish.
“The night of the party,” she explained, the words sounding as if she’d held her breath while speaking them.
What had she said during the best night of his life? What had she said that held so much significance that she now wanted to take those words back?
“Carmen.” He smiled in confusion. “There was nothing you told me that night that you need to take back, okay? You didn’t say anything wrong at all, nothing to apologise for regarding that party. It was perfect, mi amor. Perfect. Nothing you said or did back then had any problem.”
Carmen’s grip on Asa’s wrist tightened, if that was even possible.
“Yes,” she whispered, voice shaking as swallowed audibly. “Yes, it had.”
Asa’s brows pulled even closer together, and a small laugh left his mouth. “Love, trust me, you didn’t say anything wrong during that party. I would remember, okay? I’d remember because I can recall every single millisecond of that night. How could I not? It was the night you told me you were in love with—”
The realisation slammed into Asa like a truck full of explosives, cutting off his oxygen, stopping his heart and shattering the ground beneath his feet, all within the blink of an eye.
Time could freeze, right? Didn’t time have the ability to just stop? It had to, it just had to.
Because that’s what it felt like to Asa right then.
Everything was so still; he would be able to pick up on the sound of a pin dropping to the floor.
But everything was also spinning. So did time really freeze? Because Asa was still frozen, and his mind was just utterly and hopelessly blank right then. But his eyes could still see Carmen’s mouth moving, his wrist could still feel the pressure of her fingers, and Asa could definitely feel his heart breaking, breaking, breaking.
It wasn’t the kind of heartbreak where it just snapped into two or three. No, Asa felt his heart crack right in the middle and felt those cracks slowly spread over his heart until it was only a web of raw hurt and agony.
Then he felt pieces of his heart begin to crumble—piece by little piece breaking away and falling to the shaky ground beneath his feet.
“I love you too, you know.” Carmen had said that, hadn’t she?
“I’m here, Asa. I’m here, with you, and I’m telling you that my heart is yours for the taking.” She’d said that, she had. Those were her words. Hers.
Carmen had to have meant them. You wouldn’t tell someone you loved them unless you meant it. That kind of cruelty wasn’t something Carmen West was capable of. No. Asa refused to believe that. Then why was she saying she wanted to take back what she’d said?
“Asa.” Carmen’s voice sounded like it was coming from behind a wall partition, like it was something familiar but foreign at the same time. Something Asa had known but no longer recognised.
Asa couldn’t respond. Everything was spinning. But everything was so still.
“Asa.” Her voice was louder this time, and he felt a tug at his wrist.
The reminder of the physical contact sliced through him and his hand that was caressing her hair fell limply to his side. Asa let go of her chin, feeling like his fingers were set on fire at the touch and tried pulling his hand from her grasp.
Carmen’s grip only grew more firm as Asa stepped back, his breath suddenly coming in harsh gasps. He put more force into his actions before managing to yank his arm back from her hold.
Disbelief. Hurt. Denial. And an ocean of emotions he’d never be able to name crashed over him in a single monstrous wave, causing him to stumble backwards.
“Asa?” Her voice was becoming clearer to him now, and he could detect the plea in it. “Asa, say something. Please.”
But all Asa was capable of in that moment was to shake his head slowly to himself and stare at her with confused, horrified eyes.
“I don’t care if you never say it back to me. When I tell you I love you, I say it because I do. Not because I’m expecting something in return.”
Asa had told her that seconds after he’d told her he was in love with her, right here in this very room.
He’d told her he never expected for her to say it back. So why did she when she never meant it?
“Asa, you need to unders—”
“I told you that I didn’t tell you I was in love with you just so that you could say it back someday.” The words were leaving Asa’s mouth, but he didn’t feel like he was the one currently occupying his body.
“I know,” Carmen said in a small voice.
“I told you that I just wanted you to know that you are loved,” he continued, but the voice didn’t belong to him. “You were the one who told me that you’ll say it back to me one day.”
Carmen’s expression crumpled, dissolving into one of fear and guilt. “I know,” she whispered, never taking her eyes off Asa.
“And even then, I never asked you when exactly you were planning on saying it back. I was content with the fact that you actually wanted to do so in the future.”
“Asa, I’m s—”
“Don’t,” he cut her off, shaking his head. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry. I’m sick of hearing you say those two words.” Asa’s hand fumbled around for his bag, fingers trembling. “Your words mean nothing to me,” he whispered, too stunned to speak any louder. “Not after this. Not anymore.”
“Asa,” she choked out. “Asa, please. Let me explain at least? I didn’t do it to hurt you, I didn’t. I’d found something that felt really good and I just didn’t want to lose it—”
“But you’ve lost me now,” Asa’s voice remained a whisper, his head swimming while everything else around him remained still and composed. “If you had never said it back, maybe it would’ve stung a little at first, but it would definitely have passed. I would’ve been okay. But this.” He kept shaking his head as his hand finally landed on his
bag and held on to it as tight as humanly possible. “You—you told me. You told me you loved me. Why would you—why?”
Carmen’s eyes were pleading as they looked into his. “I know my words don’t mean anything to you anymore.” Her voice sounded broken. “But it wasn’t all a lie, Asa. I had strong feelings for you, I still do. It just wasn’t love yet. I lost myself in how good and real it felt that before I could fall in love with you, I fell in love with the fact that you loved me instead. That’s where the problem was: I couldn’t give you what someone only in love with you would be able to.”
Was that even the truth? Asa didn’t know—not anymore. He could no longer recognise the person standing in front of him. He wouldn’t stop shaking his head, not willing to listen, believe, digest that he was the only one in love this whole time.
Reality didn’t make sense anymore.
“Asa?” Carmen asked tentatively. “Please say something. Yell at me. Shout. Please. I’d take the yelling and the screaming, but don’t stay silent. Please.”
She wasn’t in love with me. She wasn’t in love with me. She wasn’t in love with me, Asa thought.
Carmen West wasn’t in love with him.
This was worse than unrequited love. This was the person you were irrevocably in love with telling you they loved you back and then ripping that sacredness away.
“Asa, just say anything—”
“I hate you,” he whispered.
Carmen recoiled, her entire body moving back as if she was physically pushed by an unseen force.
“Don’t say that.” She shook her head, a horrified expression on her face. “Please don’t say that to me.”
Asa walked backwards, the last few pieces of his heart drifting down to the floor where a hundred different feet would walk over them someday.
He didn’t take his eyes off her as his hand moved towards the door, searching for the knob.
He found it the same instant he heard the last bell of the day ring, a brutal reminder that the rest of the world was still going on. Time was still ticking and the universe didn’t stop for Asa to learn how to breathe again.
“But I have to hate you, Carmen,” he told her in a pained voice. “Because if I don’t start hating you, then I’ll go on loving you—” Asa’s voice broke and he turned around, vision blurring with unshed tears, “—and I don’t want to love you. Not anymore. It hurts too much.”
And then Asa was running out of there, away from the hurricane that was Carmen West, out into the cold December air, and towards his truck—where he’d no longer find sanctuary but the ghost of a girl with midnight hair and thundercloud eyes haunting the empty passenger seat.
56.
Breaking Free
They never tell you about boys like Asa San Román.
People always warned you about the heartbreaker who was constantly looking for the next girl to damage, or the one who was only interested in your body and a good time, or the one who had a superiority complex.
But they never told you about boys like Asa.
The kind that didn’t do half measures, the kind that believed in giving all or nothing, the kind that knew what he wanted and wasn’t afraid to fight for it even if he was going to be the only one fighting. The kind who gave and gave and gave without asking what the other person was willing to offer.
The kind that when he loved, he let himself fall hook, line and sinker.
The kind that eventually realised there was poverty in allowing his heart to give pieces of itself away too many times.
The kind who one day said enough, and then plucked his presence out of your life, leaving coldness where he’d once brought warmth.
The kind that loved you too much, that the only way he knew how to cope after losing you was to turn all that love into hate.
And Asa now hated her.
He had been the embodiment of the sun’s warmth, and Carmen had let herself soak in it for as long as she was able to until she decided to leave, taking all that warmth with her and turning the place he’d used to occupy in her life cold.
Asa’s absence was cold in the way he never met Carmen’s eyes in the hallways, in the way they would walk past each other with the faintest brush of their arms as if they were nothing but strangers walking in opposite directions.
As if his laugh wasn’t Carmen’s favourite sound, as if his voice wasn’t one that she’d recognise anywhere, as if every time she caught herself staring all she’d hear in her head was a breathless “mi amor mi cielo mi sol” followed by a pained “I hate you I hate you I hate you.”
Carmen didn’t know how to describe it, that feeling in the pit of her stomach when she had to catch herself before heading towards his locker, or before she’d accidentally think of winding her arms around his neck and kissing him on the jaw.
She didn’t know what to name that disturbing knot in her chest every time she couldn’t do something, because she needed to remind herself they were strangers now.
Strangers who’d once been intimates.
Strangers who knew the feel of their bodies pressed so hard against each other that they would’ve moulded into one. Strangers who knew the taste of each other’s lips, who knew how their fingers had found home getting tangled in each other’s hair.
Strangers who knew the warmth of each other’s embrace, who knew one’s obsession with the season of autumn and the other’s love for Harry Potter. Strangers who knew one’s love for art and the other’s addiction to ice cream.
They’d been strangers once before, but it only hurt this time around—which begged the question: what was really meant when someone called someone else a stranger?
Did they mean “Oh, I’ve never met them before, but I think they’re in my Calculus class”?– or did they mean “I used to know them, used to think they were a forever love, but we can’t be in each other’s presence now”?
Carmen didn’t want to be a stranger in Asa’s eyes, but he’d been selfless for so long that if making her a stranger was what he wanted, then she needed to accept that he had all right to do that one thing for himself.
•••
The rest of the month didn’t fly past.
It took its time, the sun rising all too fast so that Carmen couldn’t lose herself to the comforts of sleep and the moon embracing the sky excruciatingly slow so that the hours in between dragged on forever.
By the time New Year’s Eve rolled around, Carmen’s mind had gained some sort of clarity. She was ready to accept the fact that she couldn’t do the healing process alone. She needed help. Help that she was pretty sure her father himself wasn’t in the best position to offer.
She’d spent the better half of the last two weeks weighing the pros and cons of deciding to get therapy, and honestly, it all boiled down to one thing: the simple fact that Carmen was going to need to open up to a stranger, someone who she wasn’t supposed to form an emotional attachment with because they were only going to be temporary. Someone who was going to be gone once Carmen was better and ready to fight her battles by herself.
But she knew she was strong enough to take the next step. She knew she had it in her, and truthfully speaking, Carmen wanted to stop living in the past because the present kept slipping through her fingers, and it kept altering her future with each moment she missed.
She needed to get back some control of where her life was heading. But it wasn’t just going to come to her, was it? She needed to fight for herself, for that hopeful future.
It stung to know that Asa wouldn’t be a part of that future, but Carmen tried not to dwell on it too much. Because if she did, all she’d feel was guilt and a tugging at her heartstrings that she wasn’t able to understand.
A loud bang from the kitchen snapped Carmen out of her reverie, and she sighed from where she was lying sprawled out lazily on the sofa.
“Try not to break everything in there!” Carmen called out, shaking her head and reaching forward to grab the TV remote. Her father had to get a new one b
ecause she’d chucked and broken the older remote at the wall next to Hunter’s head after Thanksgiving.
“The things in the kitchen just never cooperate with me!” Hunter yelled back, sounding aggravated.
“That’s probably because you’ve never let yourself be acquainted with the kitchen!” Carmen flicked through the channels, all of them playing some sort of New Year’s special movie.
The smell of popcorn wafted over to where Carmen was, and she looked up just as Hunter kicked her legs off the couch to make room for himself, holding a large glass bowl in his hands.
“It’s not my fault my father has a whole army of helpers to take care of everything in the house,” Hunter said, seating himself next to Carmen as she herself got into a sitting position and crossed her legs on the couch. “They look at me like I’m a nuisance every time I try stepping into the kitchen.”
“Yes, it must be terrible to have someone do everything for you.” Carmen laughed lightly, digging into the popcorn and grabbing a handful.
Hunter was quiet for a while before he responded, “When you have enough people who you’ve never seen before come and go…well, home just stops feeling like home, you know? It’s as if—as if I’m the outsider there, if that makes sense.”
Carmen offered him a soft smile. “It makes perfect sense.”
Hunter was about to smile back, but then he just rolled his eyes and leant back into the cushions. “Yeah, yeah, that’s more than my dose of deep conversation for one night.” He snatched the remote from her grasp and began looking for something good to watch.
She sighed and reached for another handful of popcorn, wondering if her father was having a pleasant enough time at his colleague’s New Year’s Eve dinner party. They’d both planned to go together, but Carmen had had a change of mind at the last minute, suddenly craving to just stay back home and take a break from the outside world.
Her dad had offered to stay back too, but it wouldn’t have been the best thing for the two of them to cancel at the last minute, and besides, this was the first time Carmen could remember her father actually feeling ready to mingle with a group of people so she had wanted him to go. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t with her right then. It meant more than she could ever say that he was actually willing to stay back and spend the night with her. It was more effort than she’d ever seen from his side in a really long while.
