by Ali Merci
The remark stung, but Carmen let it roll off her knowing that this was just Asa’s hurt doing the talking for him. Broken hearts did and said whatever it needed to for self-preservation. She would know. She’d know better than most people.
“But you knew Dad was picking me up these days?” Carmen asked, something like awe lingering in her tone.
Asa’s brows furrowed in confusion, but other than that, he didn’t give much away. “Yes.”
There was a fluttery feeling in Carmen’s chest near her left breastbone, upon hearing that Asa had actually cared enough to make sure she had a ride back home.
“Well, if you’re not going to ask, I’m still going to tell you.” Carmen shrugged, deciding she might as well spit it out now. “I asked him not to come.”
Asa’s eyes were still fixed on the road, not giving Carmen any signs of acknowledging what she’d said.
“Because I was hoping that we’d be able to do this,” Carmen went on, gesturing to the truck and the space between them.
Asa didn’t respond.
Carmen sighed heavily and ran a hand down her face in mild frustration. “Because I miss you, Asa.” Putting into words what she was feeling was refreshing in a way she’d never known—terrifying in the moments before she spoke them and soul-satisfying once she’d got them out. “I miss you, okay?”
“Okay.”
Her breath hitched at the outright dismissal of her words, of her attempt—regardless of how tiny it was—to voice out what she was feeling.
“I’m trying to tell you how I feel, Asa,” Carmen said, feeling frustration simmer in the pit of her stomach.
“And I recall telling you that your words mean nothing to me. Because when it comes to you, Carmen, words are just that: words.”
Carmen’s chest clenched at the reminder of what was probably one of the worst days of her life. The image of Asa’s face flashed in her mind, the look of utter disbelief, that heartbreak in his eyes where warmth was supposed to be. She had put him through that.
It had been words with which she’d let him believe she was ready for a relationship back then, and it had been words with which she’d ripped away that belief from right under his feet.
Sadly, it was only words that she had right now too. Except, this time, she hoped Asa would be able to see that it came from a place of vulnerability and raw honesty.
“Hunter told me what you did for him last week,” Carmen said after a few minutes of heavy silence.
“Yeah, well.” Asa shrugged, his hand tightening around the steering wheel. “Didn’t do it for you.”
“I know,” Carmen told him softly. “You did it for him.”
And that makes my heart fall a little bit more.
But Carmen decided now wasn’t the best time to say anything she hadn’t planned on telling him.
“Is that why you’re here?” he asked, shaking his head to himself slightly. “To thank me for Hunter?”
“No,” Carmen murmured, her eyes drifting towards Asa’s profile. “I didn’t know what I was going to say to you, but then I ran into Marlene and…”
Asa’s head tilted towards her, not exactly taking his eyes off the road, but the gesture was enough to let Carmen know that he wasn’t expecting her to say that. It was more acknowledgment than he’d shown her the whole ride so far.
“We, uh, we started talking and…” Carmen shrugged despite knowing that Asa couldn’t see the gesture. “And something just struck me when she mentioned that she was afraid to get involved with you because of Isla.”
Asa brought the truck to a stop, and Carmen’s eyes flickered to the windshield, only then realising that they’d already reached her place.
But Carmen didn’t make any move to leave Asa’s presence. Not yet.
The silence stretched on, unnerving and making Carmen’s heart do somersaults in her chest. How was she supposed to word it? How was she supposed to start? Did she slowly build up to it?
“He was the first person to tell me he loves me,” Carmen blurted, her tongue not waiting for her frantic thoughts to catch up. The words had slipped past now, and there was no taking them back.
Asa’s forehead creased, and he turned his head to finally meet Carmen’s eyes for the first time that day.
Something happened. There was an explosion in Carmen’s chest.
It was as if a barrier had burst wide open and all the caged butterflies had broken free and they were now flapping their wings in every single crack of Carmen’s being—and the feeling was driving her insane.
Was this what it was like to truly open yourself up to the emotions a certain someone could make you feel? To let in everything that one single person was capable of sending your way?
“Uh,” Carmen paused to clear her throat, “Mum and Dad. Well, I had a complicated childhood so—so it was hard, I guess, for them to tell me they loved me. And the rest of my relatives, well, they pretended to just not notice my existence.” She looked down at her lap, her hands toying with each other. “But Hunter, he, uh, he just…he would just casually say those three words to me, you know? When we were playing together or when we were about to say goodbye for the night and go back to our own homes. I mean, at his age, all the guys tried to act cool and not hang around their little sisters or any girls for that matter. But he never cared, you know? He wasn’t afraid to show that I mattered to him, that he’d rather spend his lunch breaks at school with me than the other guys.”
Carmen sighed deeply and tilted her head back on the seat, letting her eyes flutter close for a brief moment.
“But,” she opened her eyes and pulled her brows together, “but then he grew up and was no longer the boy who wasn’t afraid to show love. In his place was a brick wall, closed off to everyone, not showing even a sliver of emotion. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I knew him in a way nobody else ever did, but the minute I saw the tiniest crack in his armour, I just held on to it with both hands and didn’t want to let go. I couldn’t give up on the one person who made me feel belonged when I was a kid.”
When Carmen turned to look at Asa, she found his eyes already on her. They were conflicted, confused, hurt, angry—a myriad of emotions that kept crashing into each other and fighting for dominance.
“Why?” he asked quietly, shaking his head at her like he genuinely didn’t understand—couldn’t understand—what she was doing. “Why now, Carmen? Why are you even telling me this?”
“Because I’m tired of looking at you from across the hallway and feeling myself lose you all over again,” she told him, her voice growing hoarse. “And this is me trying to give you a piece. Trying to let you carry something of mine with you. You must have wondered why I just welcomed Hunter back with open arms, and while I am honestly sorry for doing so without ever considering your feelings, I do want you to understand where I was coming from. And that it wasn’t a place of me wanting to hurt you, but from a place where the six-year-old in me just wanted her brother back.”
Carmen watched him for a moment longer, searched his eyes for something—anything—but she came up empty. But that was okay. It was okay because Asa had crossed the entire bridge towards her time and time again, not stopping at a midpoint and waiting for her to meet him halfway. But Carmen was standing at that midpoint now. She was telling him that she was ready to walk that bridge too.
And if Asa needed time to process the fact that Carmen was now willing to build the very bridge that she’d burnt to ashes, then she supposed he wasn’t asking for too much.
Carmen had taken that first step; she’d shared with him the very first piece of herself. She was finally finding her way back to him, and it was both the ending of one thing and the beginning of something else all at the same time.
So, with her heartbeats a little steadier and her breathing a lot more calmer, Carmen climbed out of the truck and began walking towards the familiar door of her home, away from Asa.
And she hoped and hoped and hoped it’d be the last time she’d
ever walk away from him.
•••
“What are you doing?”
Carmen looked up at Hunter’s voice, the small smile on her face stretching slightly further.
“Breaking my crayons.” She grinned at his incredulous expression.
Hunter blinked once, dropped his stare to the colouring sticks in Carmen’s hands and the ones scattered over her desk, and then met her eyes once again. “I can see that,” he said slowly. “So let me repeat my question, what are you doing?”
Carmen shrugged, exhaling loudly, and as she did so, a wave of self-content washed over her, making her feel a little lighter on the inside than she had in the past few months.
“They’re a reminder,” she responded.
“Of the fact that you can break things?”
Carmen smiled again, the memory slowly unfolding and playing out in her head, and she could swear that she felt it right then: the ghost of Asa’s hand brush against her fingers from the time when he had placed those broken halves into her palm.
“Of the fact that broken doesn’t always mean completely useless,” she told him softly. “And shouldn’t be assumed as trash.”
Hunter’s brows furrowed, ocean blue eyes narrowing at her curiously as he leant his shoulder against her doorframe, with one hand still clutching the handle.
Carmen sighed. “I mean, these can still colour, right?”
“You’re weird,” he told her seriously. “But I happen to like you, so I guess I’ve got to tolerate your philosophical moments.”
“Please,” Carmen let out a tiny snort, “you love me.”
“Yeah?” His lips twitched at the obvious repression of a smile. “Says who?”
“Says the fact that you stay over every single time your dad is out of town,” Carmen told him with a raised brow. “And your dad’s out of town a lot.”
Hunter offered her an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “Well, get used to it. Because you’re not getting rid of me anytime soon, if ever.”
“I don’t want to get rid of you,” Carmen said warmly, noticing that he didn’t exactly acknowledge the fact that he loved her. Surprisingly enough though, Carmen wasn’t upset about it.
She didn’t doubt it anymore; Hunter did love her, even while struggling to break down that steely armour he’d grown so used to enveloping himself with. And Carmen was okay with letting him take his own time to grow comfortable with the shift in their relationship compared to how it had been the beginning of senior year and all the times before that.
“Don’t you miss your home, though?” she asked in an attempt to change the topic, moving to sit on her bed with her legs outstretched in front of her and her back resting against the headboard.
Hunter pushed himself off the doorframe and hesitated before stepping into her room, a piece of cloth balled up in one of his fists. Placing the maroon material on her desk, he dragged the chair towards the bed and stopped right across from her before dropping down on it.
“Home is wherever you are,” he told her with a simple shrug of his shoulders, but Carmen noticed he looked slightly tensed, almost as if he didn’t particularly like admitting that.
And for some reason, Asa’s face flashed through her mind: hurt, disbelief, betrayal, heartbreak.
“Don’t,” Carmen said quietly, causing Hunter’s eyes to snap towards her. “Don’t let me have such a huge place in your life. Asa did, and all it brought him was pain.”
“Well,” Hunter paused, observing Carmen for a while before smiling softly, “you’re worth the pain.”
Carmen pursed her lips, looking at him with slight weariness, not truly believing what he was saying. And as if trying to prove its point, her mind replayed the very words Hunter had uttered to her in the school hallways when he’d walked in on Asa holding her hand.
“You know, in a twisted way, the two of you would actually be a perfect fit for each other.”
Carmen didn’t say anything and just watched Hunter with a conflicted heart and sad smile as his words from what felt like a lifetime ago resounded in her head.
“That boy may like broken things but you’re not broken, Carmen. You’re a goddamn abomination.”
Hunter had said that to her, he had. But it was also Hunter who was telling Carmen now that she was worth the pain. He was telling her that he believed that.
It was hard to digest what he was saying now when he’d unblinkingly ripped her heart to shreds before. Carmen wondered if it was the same for Asa. She wondered if he, too, doubted Carmen’s words when she’d opened up to him about Hunter a few days back.
But maybe, just maybe, Asa would come to realise that the cracks that Carmen had inflicted upon his heart were capable of being sewn together by only her. Just like Carmen was beginning to realise Hunter’s words now was drawing out the venom of his previous ones that’d crept into her being.
Because sometimes, and only sometimes, the ones who broke certain parts of your heart were the only ones who could truly help you patch those pieces back together. The ones that could cause that kind of damage were sometimes the very ones you allowed to step across your threshold, the ones you deemed were worthy of the pain they’d brought. The ones you loved more than you hated despite what they had done to you.
Carmen was ready to fully acknowledge and accept the fact that she wanted to love Hunter more than she hated all the pain he’d brought, and she could only hope with every fibre of her being that Asa could find it in him to love her more than he hated what she’d done as well.
“Hunter, it’s okay.” The words left her mouth before she could truly register them.
His observant gaze turned puzzled and he knitted his eyebrows together. “What’s okay?”
“Us,” Carmen told him softly, leaning forward and slipping a hand in his. “I forgive you, you know. It’s okay. We’re okay.”
Hunter just continued to stare at her, his Adam’s apple bobbing as the conflict in his eyes grew. His mouth fell open, slightly moving as if he was just about to say something to her, before he seemed to have a change of mind and clamped it shut.
“What is it?” Carmen asked with a gentle tone, knowing that he was only finding it difficult to say whatever he wanted to, because it was important, because it mattered to him.
“Uh, I…” Hunter cleared his throat and leant back in the chair, fixing his gaze on one of the legs of the bed. “How come you never asked me why I had a sudden change of heart? Why I wanted to stop holding Mum’s death over you?”
Carmen’s heart clenched at how Hunter still referred to her own mother as mum.
“I didn’t want to push you,” she admitted with a sheepish smile. “You always get annoyed when asked to talk about feelings and all that…” She shrugged, letting the sentence hang in the air.
Hunter’s gaze softened and he lifted one of his legs, placing it on the bed and nudging her foot with his. “You ask me whatever you want whenever you want,” he muttered, looking away again. “I promise to try and not snap.”
Carmen’s chest swelled with affection and she offered him a small smile. “Okay then.” She nodded towards the piece of clothing on her desk that Hunter had brought in with him. “Can you tell me what that is?”
Hunter chuckled lightly and then reached behind his head to grab the cloth before throwing it straight at Carmen’s face.
She took a hold of the dark red material once it slipped down to her lap and began to stretch it out. “What on earth is this?”
“My jersey,” Hunter mumbled under his breath, lifting one tensed shoulder in an awkward shrug. “The first away game of the season is just around the corner and, well, I’d like it if you were there, wearing my number.”
Carmen’s eyes grew wide as she stared at him in a mixture of awe and bafflement, before she looked down at the front of the jersey in her hands and saw the number 17 in big, white lettering with the team name Vikings above it in a much smaller font.
Turning the jersey around, she found the
same number printed on the back, but this time with Hunter’s last name, Donoghue, sewn above the 17 instead of the team’s name.
“I know a lot of guys give it to their girlfriends, but…” Hunter scratched the side of his head. “But you know me, I’m more of a family guy than the romantic type. Can’t deal with all that lovey-dovey shit.” He looked like he wanted to add something else but hesitated and pressed his lips together.
Carmen waited as a beat of silence slipped past, and then Hunter spoke again:
“Football and you—they’re the only aspects of my life that matters. So it only makes sense for you to have my jersey number.”
Carmen bit her lip, and she didn’t know if it was to stop the gigantic smile from breaking out on her face or to prevent happy tears from pooling in her eyes.
“I…” Carmen blinked, glancing down at the maroon-coloured piece of clothing and then back at Hunter’s composed expression. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You can say that you’ll wear it,” he remarked, lifting a brow.
“Of course, I’ll wear it, you idiot.” Carmen laughed, affection lacing her voice. “Thank you,” she mumbled in a softer tone. “This means a lot because I know how much you’ve loved the sport ever since we were kids.”
It looked like Hunter wanted to say something again, but this time he refrained himself for good and just settled for a small smile in Carmen’s direction.
“He’ll come around, Carmen,” Hunter said with a small sigh after a minute or two had passed.
Carmen’s eyes snapped up from examining the jersey, and she frowned at him curiously. “What?”
“San Román,” Hunter shrugged. “I don’t know if you’ll ever end up together or not, but he will forgive you, that much I’m certain of.”
Carmen’s eyes dropped back to her fingers that were playing with the lettering on the dark red material in her hands. “You don’t know that.”
There was another sigh from Hunter. “Yes, I do,” he muttered, rising up from the chair and beginning to walk towards the door. “Because the one thing he and I have in common is our love for you, even though it’s on two completely different levels. Either way, he would know what I know: that you’re worth the pain.”
