Extra Ordinary

25.

We sat on a bench in front of the gym. Asa was still in his yoga outfit -sweat pants and a t-shirt- and stared ahead in the distance with his arms crossed.

"My parents came by," he finally broke the silence, after what felt like hours. "The day before the tournament. I was--" 

Asa's voice trailed off, but I didn't need any more of an explanation to know why that wasn't good. Asa wasn't living with his parents, didn't even have the same surname as them anymore, and I assumed it was all for a reason. 

The real question was a completely different one. 

I followed Asa's example and looked down at my feet on the pavement below us. "Why didn't you tell me? I would've understood." 

"The same reason why I asked a ridiculous fifty dollars for 'protecting' you when you first approached me." 

My eyes shot up to Asa. "What?" 

Asa kept his gaze trained on the ground. His shoulders rose and fell.

"You're one of the cutest guys I ever met and I wanted to scare you away." He frowned. "I wanted you and I wanted to scare you away simultaneously. Does that make sense?"

"I--"  I opened and closed my mouth, realising I didn't exactly have words ready to follow up with. No, not really. It didn't make much sense to me, especially the part where I was one of the cutest guys he'd ever met. 

Despite telling myself I shouldn't like Asa anymore, the red crept up to my burning cheeks anyway at the compliment. I couldn't stop my treacherous body from responding to him.

Asa leaned against the bench, tilting his head back to look up at the sky. He let out a humourless chuckle.  

"You're right. I haven't had relationships. Or many friendships... Not any, right now. That's why my aunt and uncle are so protective. They've seen people come and leave and me fucking it up."

"This happened before," I muttered. "You've done what you did to me with your 'assistants' as Cindy put it." 

"No," Asa replied, rubbing his temples with his eyes squeezed shut. "No," he repeated. "Not like this. I never told any of them about my psych. Nor about the fact that I used to do mathlete competitions, that I was a researcher, and I don't live with my parents anymore."

"You didn't exactly tell me those things either."

My sheepish remark made a ghost of a smile flicker across Asa's face, but his brows furrowed immediately after. 

"I wouldn't have told you. Because if you knew about me -- I thought." Asa paused. "I thought you'd-- It's not right. I mean, if you have to trick yourself and your conscience to keep doing your job. If you have to ignore your gut twisting, telling you it's not right every day, then it's not... Right?" 

Asa's cobalt blue eyes darted to me. He seemed to be searching for something. An answer. Some sort of reaction. 

"Right," I agreed, because I figured Asa needed me to. 

Asa's gaze shifted to the pavement again. "I was sure you wouldn't want anything to do with me anymore if you knew. Why would you? I was so sure you'd judge me and be disgusted and then... you weren't." 

For the second time today, I found myself at a loss for words. Here I was, thinking Asa didn't give a shit about what people thought all this time. I mean, you needed to have a certain type of 'fuck everyone's opinion' attitude to ride a pink Barbie bike as a male teenager. 

But that was a different kind of not caring. Or rather, it was not caring on another level. A pink bike and rumours about schoolyard fights with jocks weren't comparable to developing killer algorithms.