“Go on. Speak to him,” a familiar voice said from beside Carmen and she tilted her head to find Wyatt looking at her, no traces of his usual happy-go-lucky nature.
Carmen swallowed, then looked away from him and towards Asa again. “He said he hates me,” she said in a small voice.
“I didn’t know he said that to you,” Wyatt muttered, looking at Asa too. “But it’s in Asa’s nature to feel every single emotion so deeply. So if he said he hates you, those words came from a place of so much pain.”
Carmen looked down at her feet, the merciless claws of guilt digging into her insides and tearing away at her.
“I’m not saying that to make you feel worse,” Wyatt told her. “I’m telling you that because if he was that hurt, then it’s because he loved you in equal measure. And all that love can’t have simply vanished into thin air. So go to him.”
“Do you...” Carmen hesitated, not feeling too comfortable about voicing her thoughts to someone she didn’t know well, but she reminded herself that this was good. That letting someone in on how she felt could actually help her right then. “Do you think he’d want to talk to me?”
Wyatt looked away from Asa and met Carmen’s eyes. “If you’re asking me if he’s going to go easy on you, then the answer is no. Forgiveness isn’t Asa’s greatest forte.”
Carmen sighed tiredly. “That I know.”
“But...” Wyatt knitted his brows as he tilted his head slightly. “Despite all the ways he’s going to try to infuriate you or give you the cold shoulder, I think that, at the end of the day, he does miss you.”
Asa was closing his locker now, completely oblivious of the two people observing and having a conversation about him.
“Well…” Carmen huffed out a deep breath, making up her mind as she took out her phone and sent a text to her dad, asking him not to come and pick her up. “Guess I’m going to have to find a way to put up with his hostility until he cracks. It’s not like I don’t deserve it,” she muttered the last bit to herself.
Wyatt chuckled, the seriousness in his posture fading away slightly. “Good luck with that. You’ll need it.”
They stood there for a second longer, but Carmen snapped out of her uncertainty when Asa started to walk out of the school building, deciding to take that leap of faith. Turning to Wyatt, she threw him a quick goodbye and then picked up her pace before breaking into a sprint as she ran towards Asa.
Always towards Asa.
Carmen had made up her mind to fight for him. She wondered if perhaps her mind had already been made up ever since that instant her soul had struck a match with his, igniting a spark in each other that just wouldn’t die.
•••
Carmen found herself standing in front of the building that housed the school’s indoor swimming pool, a separate block that was within Reichenbach High’s premises but a minute’s walk from the school itself.
She’d seen Asa disappear into it a few minutes ago, and instead of following him in and doing whatever it was that she felt she was supposed to do, she was standing out with her feet glued to the spot.
It had dawned on her just as she was about to open the door that she didn’t exactly have some master plan. Carmen was utterly clueless as to what she would do once she found Asa.
“I’ll hold on, even when you’re pulling away.”
Asa had given her his word, hadn’t he? And he’d lived up to that promise, too because he had come back after the fight that November morning. He had come back to her.
And maybe it was time Carmen did some of the holding on now. Maybe it was time she showed him that walking away wasn’t the only thing she was capable of.
And so with her heart in her throat, Carmen gripped the handle of the door and pulled it open. Having come here a few times before when her spare periods had fallen on the same hour as Asa’s, Carmen had no trouble making her way towards the bleachers that surrounded the pool. Her eyes swept over a few guys in swim trunks who were seated, either scrolling through their phones with a towel hanging over their bare chests, or just jogging around as a warmup exercise before they dived into the water.
Carmen couldn’t find Asa, but then again, she could see only a handful of the swimmers here, so she figured he was in the changing rooms with the rest of them.
The thought hadn’t finished crossing her mind when she felt someone touch her waist from behind in an attempt to get her attention.
It was too light a gesture, the fingers just brushing her hip for a fleeting second so Carmen couldn’t tell if it was Asa’s hand or not. She would have definitely recognised the familiarity of his touch had it lingered for a moment longer.
The face that came into view once Carmen turned around wasn’t Asa’s. But it was a face she was familiar with nonetheless.
A face she’d seen in the hallways, in the cafeteria, around the parking lot. And definitely a face that didn’t place a smile on Carmen’s.
“You lost?” Carson William’s smooth-as-honey voice, accompanied by the usual raspy undertone, fell on Carmen’s ears as he directed the question at her.
Carmen’s lips parted, as if to
