Page 34 of Wait a HO HO HO Second!

“So, my guess is, someone called you out on it and forced you to face it,” Joy deduced.

“Yep,” he agreed. “A philosophy professor about two weeks into the first semester. We had to write an essay. It was called, "Why are you who you are?" Or something like that. We had to include the parts of ourselves we thought we’d inherited, meaning we had no control over them. We had to identify which parts of ourselves we chose or constructed during our childhood, and which parts emerged from chance or unexpected encounters. Once we had that down, we had to take it a step further and include the people, ideas, and environments that shaped our beliefs and, in turn, our behaviors. It was eye-opening, to say the least.”

“Like deconstructing a sandwich, only it was yourself,” Joy said.

Kian’s laughter was soft, but he nodded. “A good analogy. That assignment broke me. I was in crisis mode and had to seek counseling to learn how to change those behaviors, make amends to those I had hurt, and become the kind of person I wanted to be.”

“Is that what this is?” she asked, motioning toward their now-empty plates. “Is this making amends to those you hurt?”

Answering that question was tricky. It would require him to wade into quicksand and pray he didn’t get stuck. But she also deserved an answer that wasn’t flippant or dismissive of what he’d done to her.

“In therapy, I had to make a list of everyone I hurt over the years. Your name was the first on the list,” Kian explained, avoiding her gaze. There was no way he could look into her sweet eyes if he planned to get through this. “Over the years, I’ve reached out to everyone else on that list to apologize. It was Mom who told me to wait to talk to you.”

“Lorelei told you not to apologize to me? I find that hard to believe.”

“In fairness, I understood why. She’d spent years building you up, showing you that what I’d said about you wasn’t true and that you could be whoever you wanted to be. Waltzing in to preen like a peacock about my self-enlightenment, her words, not mine, would only make you feel you had to forgive me to keep working with her.”

Biting her lip, Joy tilted her head from side to side a couple of times. “That’s possible. It’s easy to understand why she might think that, especially in the early days when she was helping me through school and teaching me the things I never learned because I didn't have a mother.”

“Ironically, she was protecting you by leaving her own flesh and blood out in the cold.” She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up his hand. “That wasn’t meant as a dig at you or my mother. It was actually good for me. She was parenting, even if it was a decade too late. That was a turning point in my relationship with her, too. We learned to communicate better, to love without judgment, and to finally form the bond that should have been there from the start.”

“I’m glad you had some years with her that weren’t steeped in the pain of the past,” Joy whispered, the tone of her voice was sincere if not a bit sad.

“Me too. When Marci called me six months ago to say Mom was gone, I lost it. It took me a month to even remember what had happened, but when I realized how poorly I had treated the hospital staff, I reached out immediately. They said they understood, being used to grief and all that, but their response was a little too pat for me. Honestly, that apology was easy. The hardest part was the name that still sat at the top of my list. When I arrived a few weeks ago, I intended to apologize for how I had behaved at the hospital when Mom died.”

“And you did.”

“By the time I did, it was no longer necessary. At least that was what my heart told me. Like you didn’t hold it against me.”

“Because I didn’t,” Joy admitted. “I understand grief, Kian. Losing my father at such an early age taught me that we do things out of character when our world tips upside down. We have to offer people grace when they’re facing the same thing.”

“But it wasn’t out of character for me, Joy. That’s the thing. At least not when it comes to how I’ve treated you over the years.”

“Maybe it wasn’t out of character for the old Kian, but I have eyes and ears, and I’ve seen the new Kian. The one who respects people, listens, shares ideas, and doesn’t insist on being the loudest voice in the room. I still didn’t like you, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t see your growth as a person. Besides, I forgave you years ago for what you said and did to me. If I hadn’t, I’d be one miserable sack of a woman, and I refused to give you the satisfaction of knowing you broke me. I took all those insults you hurled at me over the years and used them as steps to climb. Now, here I am,” she said, motioning around the room. “You’re irrelevant to me now.”

Only a slap across the face could have surprised him more than what she’d said. Did he deserve it? Yes. Did he like hearing it? No. That was the most painful thing anyone had ever said to him, and people had said many painful things to him. Then again, maybe it wasn’t what was said but who said it.

“Irrelevant. That’s a tough pill to swallow, but I’ll take it. Enjoy your evening, Joy.”

Kian stood, but she grasped his forearm and pulled him back down onto the couch. “What I meant was that your behavior all those years ago is irrelevant to my life now, Kian. I’m an adult who doesn’t spend my days thinking about what happened in high school. Do I still think of some of those barbs when I look at you? Yes. They still ring in my head, but I don’t let them linger anymore. Two things can exist at once. I can be pissed about the way you treated me and no longer care about it at the same time. We were kids with no life experience.”

“Boys will be boys?” he asked, but she shook her head vehemently.

“Absolutely not. Boys don’t have to be cruel to girls, no matter the situation. Boys can learn to be decent human beings if the people raising them stop using that as an excuse and instead teach them how to treat women respectfully.”

“You’re right,” Kian agreed, and she sat back, surprised. “You thought I’d defend myself with that excuse?” Her slight nod told him she’d probably thought that for years. “I tried that excuse in therapy, and it did not go well, my friend,” he said, laughing at the memory. Joy joined him, even as she tried to hide her smile behind her hand. “My therapist told me I had a choice. If I wanted to continue seeing her, I had the next week to learn why saying ‘boys will be boys’ was nothing more than an excuse to avoid holding myself accountable for my own actions. If I didn’t want to do that, she’d drop me from the practice.”

“Harsh,” Joy said, raising a brow. “She could have explained it to you since you were paying her.”

“Sure, she could have, but would it have the same impact as asking questions and learning the reasons myself?”

“Probably not. That’s true,” Joy conceded.

“Don’t get me wrong, I was mad when I stomped out of her office. I needed to cool off and decide whether to continue with her as my therapist, so I stopped at a food truck for lunch. I ate at a table and watched some kids playing on the jungle gym. A little boy kept running up to a girl, tugging on her ponytail, then running away. The little girl was getting mad. You could see it on her face. The boy’s mom kept telling him to stop, but he wasn’t listening.”

“She should have hauled him out of the park,” Joy said, frowning. “Why would she let him do it more than once?”

“I wondered the same thing. I was getting pissed for the little girl,” he said, shaking his head as he laughed. “But then the boy ran up to the girl and tugged it again. This time, the girl turned around and slugged him right in the nose!”