“You always have an excuse when it comes to acknowledging your faults, Isles,” Asa muttered, feeling tired now. Tired that he was stuck in this loop with her. Tired that they kept going around in circles, repeating the same mistakes, inflicting the same pain. It just went on and on and on.
And God, Asa was tired.
“And what would you rather have me do?” She smiled, but it was cold. And the shivers it sent through Asa’s bones were anything but pleasant. “Should I mope about my flaws like you, Asa? You want me to waste away my days wondering how I’m never good enough? How I don’t deserve anything good? Would you prefer if I had the self-esteem of a peanut like you?”
And Asa laughed then. It was a sad laugh nor a short laugh.
A broken laugh.
Because, goddammit, mothers knew best and his had been right last night.
“That’s…” Isla cleared her throat, regret flashing in her eyes. “Listen, that’s not—”
“Actually, Isla, I’m done listening,” he said quietly, shaking his head. “I’m just done. Done with the constant wondering why you keep falling off the wagon and waiting for you to get your shit together so that we can be okay again. Done with always asking myself when you’d stop taking out all your frustrations on me. Done with believing there must be something wrong with me because even though I’m the only person who’s stood by your side and never left all this time, you seem to have no qualms about breaking me over and over again. There’s nothing wrong with me. There can’t be. Not when it’s you who claims to love me but goes ahead and hurts me more than anybody else ever has. That’s not love. And I’m tired of you justifying yourself by using our friendship as an excuse.”
Isla’s hands were shaking where it sat on the table top, close to the steaming mug, and he wondered, for a second, if she was going to throw it at him.
Instead, he watched as she pushed her chair back and rose out of her seat unsteadily, pressing her lips together.
“Thank you for the aspirin,” she told him in a quiet voice. “And the breakfast.” She tucked a strand of her light hair behind her ear. “And the coffee too.”
Asa scoffed and shook his head. “You’re still not going to give me an apology, are you? Not even for the shit you just said a minute ago?” He threw his hands into the air, so many emotions washing over him at once that it was hard to focus on one particular feeling. Rage. Sadness. Nostalgia. Longing. The need to feel Carmen’s reassuring hands hold his face. “Is it honestly that hard for you to just say you’re sorry?” He searched her face for any signs of remorse, any indication that she wanted to apologise.
He didn’t find any such signs, though. And it made him wonder if it was just Isla growing more remorseless or himself losing the ability to read her like an open book.
Both cases frightened him, but this was no longer his problem. Her burdens were no longer his to carry. And when he watched her turn around and walk away without a response, he felt a weight slowly slide from his shoulders, and he could stand that much taller now.
When he watched her open the door and slam it shut behind her, something in his chest broke away. It was as if there had been a rock lodged between his lungs, or somewhere right in the middle of his ribcage, and watching her leave was what finally loosened it. As if his heart was literally liberated by a burden that weighed far too much.
Maybe this was the hardest step in that road to self-love. Because even though he’d chosen himself, he’d also lost something big. Something that had been a part of him for so long.
Maybe learning to love yourself was never about the situations where you won repeatedly and wore a triumphant smile on your face as if you could conquer the world if you put your mind to it.
Maybe sometimes you had to lose a piece of your heart so that you could work on making it whole again.
Sometimes, no matter how much it hurt, no matter if it felt like you were using a chainsaw to cut off one of your own limbs, you just needed to let go of the things that no longer brought you peace or joy.
And as much as it pained Asa to admit it, his deteriorating friendship with Isla Martin was one of those things.
39.
Hook, Line, and Sinker
When Asa walked into school the following week, one hand loosely wrapped around the left strap of his backpack and the other hand running through his dark hair absentmindedly, he felt a hand grab the back of his shirt all of a sudden and slam him into a wall.
His bag softened the blow of his back hitting the hard concrete, and his jaw fell open, bracing himself for a punch, or a kick—something—however the second his eyes registered the familiar but angry face of Wyatt, his shoulders slumped against the wall, and a breath of relief escaped his mouth.
“You goddamn moron,” Asa muttered, knocking Wyatt’s hand off of him. “The heck was that for? You scared me!”
“Now you know what that feels like then,” Wyatt snapped. “Do you know how many times I called you or texted you throughout the freaking weekend? The last time I saw you was in front of Hendrickson’s office, and then you weren’t in school for rest of Friday! I thought they’d suspended you, or worse.”
“Well, depends on your definition of worse, really.” He shrugged, feeling a little bitter again. “Because if worse means I’m no longer allowed to be a participant
