She turned to look at him then, pulling her eyes away from the road outside. “Well.” She paused. “You aren’t a player.” It didn’t sound like a question, and it didn’t sound like she was uncertain about her words.
No, Carmen said that like she was stating the sky was blue and something in Asa’s chest—right smack dab in the middle of it—lurched forward as if being hurled from a cliff.
“No?” he asked, his truck coming to a slow stop in front of her house. His eyes quickly scanned the address plate on her front gate, making sure he’d gotten the right house.
“No,” she said. And then she pulled her eyebrows together, wrinkling the skin on her forehead. “What? You’re not sure of yourself?”
“No, it’s just…” he trailed off, eyes fixated on the floor of his truck, seeing but not caring about the empty gum packet he’d carelessly discarded there. “It’s only natural for people to assume that of me, given my popularity and looks and whatnot.”
But you didn’t, he wanted to add. Why didn’t you, Carmen?
“I don’t much care for assumptions,” she mumbled, averting her eyes when he looked up at her.
“It’s not like the assumptions are too far off,” Asa quickly said, feeling restless for some unknown reason. “I mean, I do fool around—”
“Why are you doing that?” she cut in sharply, her lips twisted into a scowl and eyes narrowed into slits.
Goddamn, he thought, her eyes. Gone was the calm; it was pure storm now.
“Doing what?” he asked, looking away because her stare was too intense. Carmen was too intense.
Again, not Asa’s type. Asa liked simple.
“Justifying what they label you!” Her voice shook with the strong undercurrent of anger, her eyes wild and passionate and, in that moment—in that fleeting, almost insignificant moment—Asa saw the artist in her. He saw the girl who had the ability to soak and engrave the pages of her journal in colours and strokes of her emotions.
Or maybe, he just saw Carmen.
“I’m not justifying it,” he muttered, feeling edgy now and just wanting to get the heck out of her presence. “It’s just—it comes with getting to the top of the food chain. They see Isla, they see a slut. They see Hunter, they think he’s the bad boy with a heart of gold.” Asa scoffed, wondering if Hunter even had a warm, beating heart in him. “And they see me, and think I’m a player, a manwhore too egotistical to be settling down for one girl.” He met her eyes, his ordinary brown drowning in her stormy ones.
“So what? You think it is okay for them to get away with it just because it’s the norm?”
“Hey, I offered to drive you home out of kindness but I didn’t sign up for a goddamn game of twenty questions,” he snapped, shooting her a glare but to his immense bewilderment, Carmen just smiled with a tangible softness.
“Thank you for that, Asa.” She opened the door of his truck and twisted her body around to get out of the vehicle. Adjusting the strap of her bag and smoothening down the front of her shirt, she met his eyes one last time. “Thanks again. I’ll be out of your hair now.”
Shooting him another small closed-lipped smile, she turned around and started walking away, never even bothering to close the passenger seat door.
Sighing in half exasperation and half amusement, Asa leant across the seats and closed the door himself.
In the process of doing so, however, his nose caught a whiff of something lingering in the air. It was subtle and yet strong in its own way. In fact, it reminded him of his kindergarten days when the teachers used to make him paint and he’d always ended up making an utter mess.
Paint. It struck him in full force and he wondered how he could’ve missed it. But it made sense now. Carmen was an artist and it appeared that she left traces of that fact wherever she went.
So, with faint traces of paint smell and the scent of his watermelon-flavoured gum mixing together as one in his truck, he began his drive back home.
19.
Beneath Skin & Bones
Carmen thought her shoulder blades had turned to dust and that her spine wasn’t some heavy bone but a river of still water because of the way she felt so light and unburdened.
Her lips stretched into a wide smile as she strolled into school the next day, seeing past the bodies walking in front of her and instead replaying the scene in her head of when Asa had reached into his backpack and handed over her art journal.
How simply wonderful and terrifying was it that when she’d defended Isla, she’d believed she didn’t deserve any of that kindness back? But hours later Asa had walked up to her and told her exactly the opposite. He’d said “What goes around comes around” like he was telling her that It’s okay, Carmen, I’ve seen you be kind to everybody and here’s some of it for you. As if he was blind to the chaos she carried in her bones.
Don’t kid yourself, Carmen, she told herself. Asa didn’t notice your act of kindness because he was watching you from the sidelines; he only noticed because he happened to be right there that day in the cafeteria, and he must have felt obligated to do something in return.
Carmen couldn’t expect everyone to be like her, could she? Just because she admired his brave heart when he took a stance and stood up for the things he believed in, it didn’t mean he did the same for the same reason. She observed, yes, but that didn’t necessarily mean she was being observed in return.
