“No, I do get it,” he said, leaning backwards and relaxing against the seat, as his gaze remained on the field. “Sort of, I mean. Wyatt’s a fan. I’m not. He just makes me tag along with him to watch the games. But I don’t know, I just forget the football terms and roles of the different players easily.” He paused, smiled to himself, and then shook his head. “Swimming is so much simpler, honestly.”
Carmen stared at the side of Asa’s face as he said that, wondering if maybe sitting on these stands and hearing the crowd roar and their school’s name being chanted during every achievement reminded him of what he was missing out on this year.
“I’m really sorry that you can’t be a part of the meet, you know,” Carmen told him seriously.
Asa’s eyes snapped to hers, mild surprise evident in them.
“Thank you?” He sounded unsure of what he say. “I don’t think you’ve ever brought it up before.”
Carmen’s shoulders lifted into something resembling a shrug, seeming to be at a loss herself. “I don’t know… I guess it just didn’t click for me to ask you about it or we just never had any conversation that could’ve led to the topic.”
“Maybe,” Asa murmured, and then dropped his eyes to his lap as one of his hands began picking at the material of his dark jeans. “But you could have still asked,” he added in a quieter voice.
Carmen’s breath caught in her throat and without permission, her mind raced through various times she’d spent with Asa. Had she never inquired him about his feelings? Had she never asked him if there was something on his mind, bothering him?
He always seemed so put-together in her eyes—he was her solid rock—that somewhere along the way she forgot he needed some solace too.
“I’m sorry,” Carmen said, the apology genuine and raw on her tongue. “It never—I never—I don’t know why I didn’t—”
“I hate it when you apologise to me,” Asa suddenly said, stopping his fidgeting with his jeans and raising his head to meet her eyes. “I really do. All I want to do when you apologise is tell you to stop saying sorry because…well, I don’t even know why. I just feel like I shouldn’t be someone you need to be so sorry around.”
Carmen’s eyes stared right back at his as she drank in his words and let it flow through her. “Then…” she started hesitantly. “What do you…what kind of ‘someone’ do you want to be to me? Who do you want me to see you as?”
Asa’s brows furrowed the tiniest bit and Carmen’s eyes watched his lips part slightly, the wheels in his head turning as his eyes kept flickering between Carmen’s own ones.
“Your favourite hiding place? Your panic room? I don’t know how to put it into words, Carmen.” He shook his head, his eyes never leaving hers, but also somehow leaning in even closer, leaving the rest of the world behind them. “Just somewhere that you can scream into all you want, pour out your heart whenever you feel like it’s getting too heavy and trust that every word you spill would never leave that room. Just for you to know that whatever pieces you give me would be for my eyes only; that I wouldn’t dare give those pieces to anyone else; that I would keep them safe. I just want to be—” He came to an abrupt stop as realisation flickered in his eyes. The next words he uttered weren’t even words, but a single shaky breath; “I want to be your art journal.” One of his hands left the arm of his seat and reached towards Carmen’s cheek, before he froze and pulled away, his fingers curling into his palm as he did so. “Am I asking for too much?”
It was a genuine question, not a rhetoric one, not a mocking one, not a self-sympathising one. Asa wanted to know—to really know—if he was asking for more than Carmen could ever give.
Carmen’s mouth parted, her throat constricting with all the raw emotions that were pouring out of Asa’s very being and filling her up from the inside. She felt an odd prickle at the back of her eyes but furiously blinked it away and swallowed past the painful lump in her throat.
For a painful moment, she wished he would love her less. It made her want to cry—the intensity of his feelings for her. To this day, she wasn’t able to understand it, how he loved her when she wasn’t even the whole version of herself.
And when she continued to look at him then, she knew right down to her bones that he was indeed the safest place she’d ever known. After all, Asa was warmth. And if Carmen did choose to put her trust in his hands, she knew he’d hold on to it with a death grip and never let go.
But, above all, Carmen wanted to let him in. She wanted him to take a sledgehammer to the dam built inside her heart and just let all the pain, and the hurt, and the guilt rush out of her system.
Asa wasn’t asking for too much. He was asking for the one thing Carmen wanted to give him but just didn’t know how to. So with her heart in her throat, Carmen slowly lifted a trembling hand and placed it atop one of Asa’s, the inside of her palm resting gently above the back of his. “No,” she told him softly, and he heard her. Even with all the background noise, he heard her. “You’re not asking for too much, Asa.”
His eyes fluttered shut, a few breaths passed, and when he opened them again, they were a shade darker. “I’ve missed hearing you say my name in that way,” he mumbled.
Carmen frowned in confusion. “What way?”
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