It sort of made him giddy. It also sort of put him in an unusually bright mood that he was up before his parents were and even went all the way and prepared breakfast for the three of them.
He’d just turned around to place the last plate on the table when his mother stepped into the kitchen with a baseball bat in her hand. Her jaw dropped open the exact moment Asa’s eyes widened in shock.
“Qué estás haciendo?!” both of them barked at each other in unison, looking at the other like they’d sprouted another head.
“What am I doing?” his mother asked, looking offended. “What are you doing?!”
“Geez, Ma.” Asa let the sarcasm thickly coat his words. “You tell me. What does it look like I’m doing?”
She narrowed her eyes, and wagged the bat at him. “You keep running that mouth of yours, and you’ll find out just how handy a baseball bat can be.”
Asa’s nose scrunched, and he frowned at the object in his mother’s hand. “Wait, why do we have a baseball bat? Nobody in this house even watches the damn sport.”
“Watch your mouth.” She glared, obviously sick of asking him to speak in a decent language.
“Do you know how innocent the word damn is compared to the words other teens speak?” he asked wearily.
“You are not those other teens,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “And neither am I their mothers. Now, what is all this?” she gestured with the bat towards the breakfast table.
“Breakfast?” Asa answered.
His mother closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I can’t deal with you sometimes.”
“He actually gets it from you,” his father piped up as he too entered the kitchen.
“The two of you are always teaming up against me,” she muttered. “But, what I meant was, why are you awake this early? And all this food—don’t tell me you prepared it!”
Now it was Asa’s turn to look offended. “I’ll keep that in mind the next time I think of doing something nice for you guys.”
“Hell is freezing over,” his father declared, dropping down on one of the seats and serving himself. “But if we’re all going to die today, it might as well be on the one day that our mijito prepared breakfast for us.”
“Very funny, Dad.” Asa rolled his eyes, pulling out one of the chairs and sitting down too. “The sixties called. Apparently, they want their joke back.”
His father shot him a deadpan look while his ma just burst into laughter, joining them at the table once she’d set the baseball bat aside.
“You know,” Asa said after swallowing a mouthful of food, “you never told me why you came in with that thing in your hand.”
“No reason.” She brushed it off.
“She thought it was a burglar when she heard sounds coming up from the kitchen,” his father answered, earning a glare from his ma. “I told her there was also the smell of food being cooked so it was only you, because burglars don’t normally break in to cook themselves breakfast. But when does your mother ever listen to me?”
“Is it that hard to believe I’d do this?” Asa asked, frowning. Maybe he needed to do these simple gestures of affection more often.
“Of course not, cariño.” His mother smiled softly, blinking once in assurance. “We’re just pulling your leg, your papá and I.”
Asa only grunted in response, before he suddenly remembered why it was that he’d been in a good enough mood to wake up without his mother needing to yell at the top of her lungs.
“Oh, by the way, Ma,” he paused to take a quick gulp of water before swallowing and setting his glass back down, “just a heads up. I’ll be running late today too.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She sighed dramatically, shooting him a sideways glance. “You’ve got other priorities now.”
“Oh my God,” Asa muttered under his breath. “She’s a friend. I told you that already.”
“That’s what they all say in the beginning,” his father said in a serious tone.
The beginning.
Goddamn, the beginning. When had that been, again? Asa felt that it was a lifetime ago, as if everything else before Carmen West simply ceased to exist.
Did the existence of a beginning foreshadow the existence of an ending? Because he didn’t think he’d bear to live through it. There could be no end to the phenomenon that was Carmen—there just couldn’t.
“There he goes.” His mother’s voice reached his ears. “Zoning out again.”
“I’m here, I’m here,” Asa said hastily, ignoring the warming up of his cheeks and neck. “Anyway, it won’t be like the other days. I’ll be even later than usual.”
His mother stopped lifting the spoon to her mouth, and set it down as she frowned at him. “And why’s that?”
“Umm.” He rubbed the back of his neck uneasily. “We’re kind of hanging around the place.”
“Hanging around?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “There’s this girl who joined our school a few weeks back. I’m just gonna show her around.”
“The same girl you’ve been giving a ride?” His father furrowed his brows.
“No, that’s someone else.”
“So, there are two of them?” His mother looked at him with a bewildered expression.
Asa choked on his water, sputtering and coughing, as he tried to speak amidst it all. “No, Ma!” He looked at her with incredulity all over his face. “Of course not!”
“Okay, calm down,” she said, struggling to contain her laughter. “I was just kidding.”
“Willa’s the one who just joined recently, and she’s only a friend. Nothing else.”
“So, your mum was right then,” his father piped up. “Willa’s only a friend but the other one who you’ve been driving home is more?”
Asa
