“I see,” Gloria murmured after a while, the concentrated expression on her face dissipating as she once again slipped into that laid-back posture.
Carmen’s eyes met hers. “See what?”
“Why it’s so hard for you to speak about the boy,” she replied. “You think you made that selfish choice when it came to him, that you did to him the one thing you were so afraid of doing. You told him you were in love with him when you hadn’t reached that point yet because you wanted to keep him around, and you believe you’ve done the very thing your mother did.” Gloria paused. “You think you made a choice that worked in your favour, but in doing so, you put someone who loved you in a place of misery.”
Carmen didn’t bother fighting off the tears that gathered at the corner of her eyes. “Yes,” she said in a hushed tone. “But that’s not the only reason.”
“Not the only reason what, Carmen?”
“Not the only reason I don’t like speaking of him.”
There was a short pause. “Oh?” Gloria raised a brow. “What else is there?”
“Talking about him makes it…real,” Carmen said quietly, her heart beginning to race like all those raindrops sliding down the window.
“Makes the fact that you did the one thing you never wanted to do real?”
Carmen shook her head. “No…It makes the fact that I’m actually getting better real. That I’m making progress here becomes real.” She ran an exhausted hand through her hair, feeling the long strands fall over her shoulders. “Coming here for the past ten weeks has allowed me to open up more than I thought I’d be able to, and after each session, I’m able to let a tiny part of my past go. To let go of some portion of all that dead weight. And whenever that happens, it gets easier to let something else in. Whether it’s me telling my dad about my day, or talking to Joyce about my favourite bands, or even feeling comfortable about going bowling with her and Willa on the weekends.”
Gloria’s eyebrows furrowed ever so delicately and she blinked once. “And this is what you wanted, right? To let yourself open up so you can form real connections with people?”
Carmen nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, it is. I can’t even begin to say how much lighter I feel on the inside already.”
“So, then what’s the problem?”
“I…” Carmen hesitated, curling her palms into her fists and feeling the tips of her nails being pressed into her skin. And then she lied, hoping her tone was convincing. “I guess that I never really thought of myself in a place where I could learn to let myself be happy. Where I’d want to stop letting my past have such a huge hold on me.”
But those weren’t the words that Carmen had meant to say initially. That wasn’t the problem. That wasn’t what had recently begun to plague Carmen’s mind.
No, the problem now was that it was also becoming easier to let in all those moments of both emotional and physical intimacy with Asa. It was becoming easier to accept the fact that he’d only ever had her best interests at heart.
It was becoming easier to accept the fact that Asa San Román had been (and maybe still was?) in love with her.
And it terrified Carmen more than anything else in the world to realise that she could truly begin to let herself be loved with such intensity by him—only now, only after she’d let him go.
58.
The Thing About Redemption
The last week of February and the first week of March seemed to blur and blend into each other that it was difficult for Asa to pinpoint exactly when one month ended and the other began.
Months, years, what did it matter? Hadn’t Asa already once acknowledged that his life was measured by lifetimes instead? And hadn’t he decided he’d lived two lifetimes: the world before Carmen West and then the one with her?
He supposed this was the third one: the world after Carmen West.
There was that hollow feeling in his chest again. Asa wondered how it was that something so empty could weigh so much.
Asa had also begun wondering about a lot of things lately, especially about how they never really told you about girls like Carmen West.
Sure, he’d heard of the ones who couldn’t commit to one man, the ones who were just interested in the size of your wallet, or even the ones who only wanted what was underneath your clothes.
But no amount of books he’d lost himself in spoke about girls like Carmen goddamn West.
The kind that was an artist, whose fingertips turned everything they brushed against into something magical. The kind whose heart was a masterpiece that no kind of art could compete against.
The kind that reminded you of the moon, always ready to shine her best against the darkness, so much so that you forgot it had different phases, and she only let you fall in love with half of them. Then you spend the rest of an infinity wondering what the other half was like. The kind that planted seeds inside the crevices of your heart, mind, and soul with every precious word that fell past her lips. The kind that made those seeds flourish and grow with each kiss until you could feel the roots dig deep into the core of your being and build a home inside you. The kind that one day decided you weren’t a home but a temporary resting place, and so when she left, she also left behind that home you’d let her build in
