For one painful moment, a vision of his eyes flashed before hers. Eyes that were anything but an ordinary brown. She recalled that hint of desperation, that look of exhaustion when he thought no one was looking. The kind of exhaustion that was more than just a need to sleep. It was the kind of exhaustion that ran bone-deep and drained one’s soul dry.
Despite her better judgment, Carmen turned around and began walking towards the direction of the lockers. Who was she to question Asa’s feelings for Willa? If he wanted her help, then she was willing to offer it. More so now than ever.
If his heart-warming act of doing the right thing at the cost of what he wanted were any indication of the kind of person he was, then Carmen would like to be there for the entirety of it. She’d like to be there to see what he looked like beneath his skin and bones.
20.
Only Human
Asa had one of his worksheets tucked between his lips as he tried—but failed—to clear away some of the clutter, in what looked like an aftermath of a hurricane, inside his locker.
“Hey,” someone said from next to him. He knew the voice belonged to Carmen, but when he turned his head around to face her, his mouth fell open anyway, and some of the paper from his mess of a locker fluttered to the ground in a slight whoosh.
He was prepared for the midnight hair and the thundercloud eyes, but goddammit, Carmen was grinning at him. Her teeth was a little crooked, a testament of her being human and not celestial like she seemed to be, and that knocked the breath right out of him.
Carmen was only human. Human. Human.
“H-hi.” He blinked, opening his mouth to ask her how she was doing, but how do you force yourself to speak when no arrangement of the twenty-six letters from the alphabet seemed adequate in her presence? She was all mismatched things that fit together. How do you ask someone like her how they are doing? Which part of her would he be asking?
Asa didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him. Yes, he was a bookworm. Yes, he read. Yes, he was normally good with words. But Carmen seemed to have crushed his literacy then and there which was just the most ridiculous and amazing thing that he could’ve ever imagined happening to him. A week back, he wouldn’t have even spared this girl a second glance if he’d brushed past her in the hallways. But the minute—no, the second—he’d picked up the art journal, that had changed. Because now that he knew of her existence, she was all that seemed to be there. As if Carmen West held the core of the entire universe within herself and commanded his soul to sing to her tune whenever she was within reach.
There he went again, with those damned words. As if every fibre of his being knew too well than to simplify her into mere words, so that every single thing she did was automatically turned into poetry. He might just top his AP Literature class with Carmen by his side; he might be able to create masterpieces instead of the same old mundane papers he wrote for assignments.
“Um, Asa?”
Her voice brought him back to the now, pulling him out of his thoughts gently, the way his mother sometimes tugged at his chin to turn his head her way. It was oddly comforting.
“I’m sorry.” He smiled then dropped it. How was he supposed to act whilst talking to her? His hands felt useless too and were just hanging down by his sides. So, he tucked them into his pockets and leaned back slightly against his open locker, the edge of one of his squeezed books tickling the nape of his neck. “Were you saying something?”
“Well…” She bent down, picking the worksheet that had slipped from between his lips. He had totally forgotten about in the mere heartbeats that had passed since she called him. “I was wondering if, you know, you still wanted me playing matchmaker?” She smiled almost teasingly at the end, a playful glint in her otherwise guarded eyes, making warmth flood him at the fact that he, Asa, had somehow evoked that emotion in her.
But then her words registered, and Asa would’ve choked had he been consuming anything.
“What?”
She tilted her head to the side slightly, and he almost tilted his head too in order to match her gaze. But he caught himself just in time. There was no need to make himself look like a bigger idiot than he already was in front of her.
“Sometimes painting gets boring,” she said. “Said” was too shallow a word for someone with her depth, though, Asa thought. “I don’t mind playing cupid once in a while.”
“So, you’ve done this before?” he asked with wide, awestruck eyes. Get a grip, he chided himself, she’s just a girl, not the view of a sunrise from a hilltop.
And God help him, she laughed. She laughed.
Carmen laughed and there was another shooting star brought to life in the empty spaces of his ribcage, making him feel a little more whole in that tiny moment.
“Of course not!” She shook her head, traces of the laughter left in her voice, her smile, and her eyes. “But, if we’re being serious, I really appreciate you giving me back my journal. So…” She shrugged, looking away,
