Last of the M&H + Grape + oh, that's it.
Title: Baby
Prompt: Grape 11: Rocket Science; Milk & Honey 12: Broken Heart (last of the M&H! :D)
Rating: G
Word Count: 1,888 (ahaha that’s awesome)
Story: Carmen
Summary: Carmen tells us about her relationship with Aidan (FINALLY!).
It was pretty complicated, my relationship with Aidan. If you want to call it a relationship. I can tell you this much. He was… sweet. Very, very sweet. We met him in secondary school, Clara and I, but I think he and Clara connected a little bit better. At the very least, he seemed to be a little more comfortable around her. The two of them interacted pretty easily. He wasn’t as close to us, but sometimes he ate lunch with us, and the three of us always worked together when we had to do a group project and we were allowed to choose our partners. Because we all thought that we were reliable. He thought we were reliable, and we thought he was reliable. Clara and I already knew that we were reliable with each other.
Sometimes he liked working by himself. And he liked to take charge, too If we were doing a group project, he would always be the one to divide up the work between the three of us. And he was usually the one to finish his work first. He’d show it to us and he’d always check up on us, too. He was really efficient. He didn’t really look like it because of the way he liked to dress, but he loved getting things done, and he loved getting them done ahead of time. But like I said before, he and Clara always interacted the best. They always talked in low whispers, or they always talked over in the corner or something like that. Sometimes they would talk together at school functions, they would walk over to the corner and they would always talk really quietly. And that sort of thing… made me suspicious, you know? Wouldn’t it make anyone suspicious? If you always saw the same two people together, wouldn’t you start to think something about them? You’d start to wonder if they were going out, wouldn’t you?
Well, some people thought they were brother and sister. They looked so similar, and they acted so similar, too. They both had the same hair color (or at least a similar hair color), they both had the same eye color even though they denied it. You know what their argument was? “My eyes are green. Aidan’s eyes are hazel.” But it didn’t matter. You’d have thought they were twins unless you knew that they weren’t related.
But mi Clarita never seemed like the type of person who would fall for a boy. She seemed like the kind of person who needed to be introduced to a boy, or who needed to have a boy ask her out so that she could think it over and finally say yes or no. She had never seemed like the kind of person who grew very close to boys, except for mi hermano. She had a huge crush on mi hermano. She never actually told him anything about it, but I could tell from the way she acted around him. She always got these huge blushes on her face whenever he talked to her or whenever he touched her-whether it was by accident or on purpose. She finally pulled me into my bedroom and made sure the door was closed before she said, “Elizabeth… I think I have a crush on Esteban…”
She thought she did? I knew she did. I was just waiting for her to finally say something about it.
So to see her with Aidan all the time was kind of… odd. So one day after school, I asked her about it. One day, back during the end of our first year in secondary school, I decided to bring it up rather slowly. I remember I said, “So, Clara… is there something going on between you and Aidan?” I remember grinning at her and adding, “Are you two… you know… dating?” She blushed-oh God, she turned so red-and she shook her head really quickly. So quickly that I thought her head was going to fall off. And she answered me in a really quiet tone of voice. She told me that no, they weren’t dating. They were just talking. She wouldn’t tell me about what, though. But apparently they talked about it in depth. And after I while, I started to wonder if they were talking about me. I was never a part of these conversations, and sometimes, while I was waiting for them, I would catch them looking at me. We’d just stare at each other for a few seconds, and then they’d go back to their conversation and I’d go back to whatever I was doing. It wasn’t total rocket science. It was just… deduction. Really good deduction.
Then came the day. Yes, that’s the sort of thing that has to be italicized. It’s got to be emphasized. Because it was the day. It was the day that I knew I’d deduced everything correctly. Turned out, it really was not rocket science. They were talking about me. I just didn’t know what they were saying. But when the day came, I found out what it was. It was a day that mi Clarita couldn’t go home with me because she had something important to do after school. So there I was, getting some of my books out of my locker and taking my sweet time, and suddenly I heard someone call out, “Carmen!” Then I turned around, and there he was with his bag on one of his shoulders and his hat in his hand. He always wore a hat. And he would always get in trouble for wearing it in school And that’s right, he called me Carmen. He was the only one at school who did. Not even Clara did-she didn’t even bother calling me Liz. But Aidan cared enough to call me Carmen, which I found… nice. And weird. Yes, at the exact same time. He looked kind of nervous, though. Like he wanted to tell me something but he didn’t know how I was going to react.
“What’s up?” I said to him, because in all honesty I was pretty confused. He’d never acted like that before. Or actually, he had. I just hadn’t noticed it until later on. He often acted… different… around me. Like he wanted to impress me. Or something like that. I hadn’t noticed it before then, but I could see it especially on that day just because he seemed so awkward. A lot more awkward than normal. It was pretty obvious. Especially when he walked over to me and put his hand on the locker door. I remember this whole thing perfectly. No matter how long I’m dead, I’ll remember the day perfectly. It’s just one of those things that you can’t erase from your memory.
And… well… he asked me if I wanted to go somewhere with him. Without Clara. Which had me confused for a while-wouldn’t anyone be confused? But he kind of just looked around and I could’ve sworn that I saw him blushing, even though he looked like he didn’t want to be. I remember the exact five words he said, the exact five words that got me. “I think you’re beautiful, Carmen.” Yep. It probably sounds cheesy of me, and it probably sounds stupid of me, but the fact that he told me that I was beautiful was what really dragged me in. I mean, he was a nice guy. He was kindhearted, he was considerate. There wasn’t anything about him that you could hate. He was a great person to be around, but he was very selective about who he befriended. Probably because he was so awkward. But when he bonded with people, he really bonded with them.
Like me.
We did typical boyfriend/girlfriend stuff, you know? We went places together, we went to his house, we went to my house-we started going to Esteban’s flat after Mami and Papi died since that’s where I lived, and he’d tease us like hell for every little thing we did. We had our talks about whatever we felt like talking about. We had our… er… moments… Couples do that. Why should we have been any different? And it was like that for a few years. We really enjoyed each other’s company. He told me I was beautiful, I told him thank you. He told me he loved me. I told him I loved him too. That was how it was during secondary school, right up through the summer after our final year there. We were just… together. It was just common knowledge after the first year or so that we were… an item. We were Aidan and Elizabeth, except to each other. To each other, we were Aidan and Carmen. We didn’t use those little pet names like “Love” or “Baby.” We were just… Aidan and Carmen. Occasionally I slipped and called him “Baby,” but then we just laughed about it and went on with our lives.
I’m not sure who broke whose heart more. I feel like I was the one who broke his heart more. Let’s put it this way, just to make things easier. Love is not, and I repeat, not rocket science. It may be difficult at times, it may have your head reeling at times, but it is not rocket science. You fall in. Sometimes you stay in because someone special catches you. Sometimes you fall out because someone didn’t catch you, or because the person who did… wasn’t as special as you thought they were. Sometimes you don’t even fall at all. Some people are like that-they just don’t want to. With me… it wasn’t that Aidan wasn’t special at all. It wasn’t even that he wasn’t as special as I thought he was. It was just… that… he kept giving. And giving. And giving. And I couldn’t do anything except take it all in. And that made me uncomfortable. For a long time, I liked it, because it made me feel important, you know? It made me feel good about myself because I knew I was special to him. But after a while I realized that hey, I could just take and take and take. I had to give back, because if I didn’t, then how would he feel about it?
I tried giving. Really, I did. But I think we both felt awkward about it. Or at least, he felt awkward about it, which in turn made me feel awkward about it. I think we both knew what my intentions were, but he was basically just telling me the same thing without words. Let it go, Carmen. You don’t have to. So I did let it go. In fact, I let everything go. I let him go. I probably shouldn’t have. That was probably even more stupid than how the relationship started, was how it ended. Neither of us actually wanted it to end. But I think maybe I just… wanted some time away. Because I knew what I wanted. And he knew what I wanted. But maybe we just needed some time away from each other to figure out how to go about doing that. So I was the stupid one. I broke his heart. And I broke my own.
I’m sorry, Baby.