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12
MONTY
Iheard her come up behind me.
I was sitting in the park, observing a couple having a picnic. I had been walking, trying to clear my head, and had gone as far as I could before I happened upon the family—a husband, wife, and daughter—laying a blanket. The little girl got distracted and began running around excitedly, chasing a butterfly that was fluttering in the wind. Her mother was laughingly trying to catch her and steady her on her feet while her father continued to set the picnic up, throwing a comment here and there. The image was so sickeningly domestic that I just had to sit down and watch it for a while.
And the more I watched it, the more depressed I felt. But I couldn’t stop.
I had been sitting there for nearly thirty minutes before I heard her come up behind me. I knew her by her stride, the confident unapologetic way she walked, a gait that was damn near a stomp. It always made me smile to hear it because it was like she was coming to take the world by storm and didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought about it. Today, there was an uncharacteristic drag in it, a bit of hesitance. It told me that an apology was coming even before she blurted out, “I’m sorry,” behind me.
I turned to regard her. If her words had not spoken of an apology, the regret on her features would have. “What for?”
A slight breeze rustled in the ensuing silence, and I noted the slightest shiver. She wasn’t wearing her jacket.
“For the scene back there,” she finally said, blushing as though remembering it. “And for…all the stuff I said to you. You didn’t deserve it, and I blew everything way out of proportion.”
I watched her cringe as she thought about it, and her words rang with honesty. With her tense body language, she seemed to be anticipating some sort of angry response or refusal to accept her apology. Strangely enough, I wasn’t really mad at her. I had been irritated and admittedly hurt when she confronted me in the ice cream shop, but after some time and space, I understood her point of view. It had been a kneejerk reaction, and in hindsight, I should have let her know before I left, especially since she still didn’t trust me enough. She didn’t know enough about me to trust me, I admitted to myself, and as much as the thought stung, it brought with it a certain kind of acceptance.
So, no, I couldn’t place all the blame at her feet. Kayla was clearly a woman who’d had her trust broken before, perhaps several times in the past. It would take time for me to earn her trust.
“Come here,” I said, patting the spot beside me. For once, she obeyed without putting up a fight, quietly sitting down beside me. It was so strange to see my little spitfire so meek that I smirked.
“Can I expect this type of compliant behavior from now on?” I asked.
She pursed her lips in response, but there was some mirth in her eyes, which showed she was only pretending to think about it.
“Not likely,” she said. “But Iamsorry.”
“Tell me about your relationship with your father,” I said, and her head snapped to me at the sudden change of subject.
“What?” she asked aloud.
“Your father,” I repeated. “I know a little bit about you two from what he told me, but I want to hear it from your perspective, especially since you have such a different view of him than I do.”
“He told you about me?” Her eyes were wide with surprise and wonder.
“Here and there,” I said, not wanting to completely give up my friend’s confidence or give Kayla more reason to suspect me. “He mostly spoke about you and your mom and how much he regretted losing you two.”
Kayla’s lips tightened at my assessment.“Yeah, well, he had a funny way of showing it.”
There was clear bitterness in her tone when she said it, and it probably told more than she had intended.
“He wasn’t around much?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”
“Sure, I understand.” I shrugged. “It’s just that when you apologized, I was under the mistaken assumption that you wanted to make it up to me. You know, for the clear humiliation I faced back there.” Truthfully, I didn’t even care about that part. I’d stopped caring what people thought about me a long time ago, but I knew she probably thought she had bruised my male ego or something.
She narrowed her eyes at me slightly. “Are you guilt-tripping me right now?”
“I dunno. I don’t think so. But I gotta say, calling me a deadbeat in front of everyone kinda stung a little.”
She blushed, and I knew I had her right on the hooks. Kayla seemed like a very principled person, someone who would do whatever it took to right a wrong and maintain her integrity. Unfortunately for her, I was a bastard who was perfectly willing to take advantage of that, so I gave her a sad face, figuring that would do the trick. Kayla rolled her eye, clearly not buying my devastation, but the struggle was clear in her face. She didn’t seem to know what to say next, but I waited patiently until she finally gave a resigned sigh.
“There isn’t much to tell,” she muttered. “When he left, I was too young to remember much, only faint impressions of him…I dunno, reading me a bedtime story or sitting on his lap or being carried or something. You know, stuff like that. But not enough to remember much of who he was or what he looked like.”
I nodded. According to Beau, his wife and daughter had left when the latter was three, so it made sense that she had no concrete memory of him. “How did you two meet again?”
