Asa remained quiet for a while, taking in all the words, letting it sink in his mind, allowing it to flow into all those places that still needed a little bit of lighting within him. “Well,” he finally said, clearing his throat. “I guess it’s safe to say that I’d rather have the misfortune of running into a Hunter than another Carson.”
Hunter snorted from next to him, muttering something under his breath and shaking his head to himself. He tipped his head back, stared up at the sky scattered with stars and exhaled slowly. “You’re actually an okay person, San Román.”
Asa hummed in response, still feeling all sorts of bizarre about the entire conversation. “And you’re actually capable of being less of an ass, Donoghue.”
Silence filled the space between them, because, yes, space still existed between both of them. They were two sides of the same coin, weren’t they? The realisation hadn’t hit Asa until now. They were both boys that had been dealt the short end of the stick, that the world had done injustice to when they were growing up. They were both boys whom the world had peeled off its mask for, to whom places infested with hatred and cruelty were shown at too young an age.
But only one boy had taught himself to spin gold out of it, while the other learnt to turn everything he touched into steel.
“That’s all I wanted to say,” Hunter spoke after a while, pushing himself off the wooden railings and rubbing the back of his neck. “I wanted to start making amends. I just didn’t know where to start or how to start or who to start with until that day in the locker room, after you took that punch.” He shifted on his feet. “So thanks, I guess, for giving me some sort of direction.”
At those last words, an old memory played in Asa’s head and he couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped his mouth.
“What?” Hunter narrowed his eyes.
“Just remembered something that Isla once said,” Asa muttered. “About me being a compass.”
“She isn’t entirely wrong,” Hunter said, looking away. “I don’t think Carmen would’ve made the decision to get help until she’d lost you. So, in a way, you nudged her into that direction.”
Asa glanced at Hunter, and for a moment, the scene of watching him grin with victory on the football field after winning the game flashed in his mind. It made him wonder of the boy he had once been—long, long back.
“I’m sorry, you know,” Asa eventually said in a quiet tone.
“For?” Hunter looked utterly confused.
“Carmen’s mum,” he answered. “Your aunt.”
Hunter stiffened, the muscles on his jaw tensing, before he looked away. Still he didn’t entirely relax. “She wasn’t just my aunt,” he finally responded. “She was a mother to me too.”
“Carmen mentioned that once, I think.”
“Hmm.”
Asa observed Hunter for a while, before stating, “You love her.”
The way Hunter’s features softened at the statement is something that Asa would probably need to commit to memory, because he didn’t think there were many things that could evoke such an emotion from him. “Carmen?” A corner of Hunter’s lips actually lifted into something resembling a smile. “With all of my heart. Sometimes I think she’s the only one reminding me there’s a human underneath the machine I’ve become.”
“You should tell her that some time,” Asa remarked. “If you already haven’t.”
“One day,” Hunter promised. He met Asa’s eyes. “You’d have made a great friend, you know. Someone I could’ve once identified with, a time before I lost myself. But… but I can also see why we can’t be friends. I get it. For Carmen’s sake, however, acting civil towards each other isn’t too much, is it? We can learn to coexist.”
“Coexist,” Asa murmured, watching a drop of rainwater from a leaf on a nearby bush trickle down the stem and spill into the damp soil. “Seems fair enough.”
Hunter nodded, then turned, slipping his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and started walking away.
Asa heard the footsteps stop, and he turned around to see Hunter walk back towards him.
“Something else you need to say?” Asa asked, raising a brow with amusement.
“Just one thing,” Hunter shrugged. “Before I forget.” He took a step closer, and looked Asa dead in the eyes. “I am sorry.” Three words uttered as clear as day and with all the sincerity that was humanly possible. “I realised I never really said the words, and I wanted to get it out, because we’re probably not gonna have an actual conversation ever again after this.” He offered Asa a tight smile, hesitated as if there was something else he needed to say, and then walked away.
Hunter stepped into the house and closed the door shut.
And somewhere in the back of Asa’s mind, a door was being shut too. A chapter was being closed and sealed, no longer an open wound.
•••
Asa’s grandpa had once told him that his rash nature and tendency to act on impulse would get him in trouble one day.
And perhaps his grandpa had been right the whole time, because Asa’s recklessness extended all the way to the manner in which he carried his heart and how he let himself fall head over heels, feeling every single emotion so very deeply.
And it did get him in trouble, all right. But Asa was beginning to realise love was sometimes worth that trouble. He realised that Carmen West, the hurricane with a beating heart—who had thunderclouds for eyes and the midnight sky for hair and who painted broken moons and frozen suns—was indeed worth that trouble.
Epilogue:
An Art Journal
