Chapter 21

" C an you tell me why you're here, Solomon?"

King internally cringed as he sat across from the counselor that he'd been assigned to as a part of Bradley U's Counseling Services. The room was painted in what he assumed was supposed to be a calming light-blue shade. But all it reminded him of was the blue-haired woman he'd allowed to be all over him at Jock Jam. The one whose name he didn't know and whose face he couldn't even remember. He remembered what Lila's face looked like when she saw him, though. The disappointment and the hurt. He was pretty sure that image would be burned into his brain forever.

He nervously rubbed his hands on his knees. "Could you call me King, please? It's my middle name and what I like to go by. When people call me by that other name, it's…uncomfortable for me."

She wrote something down in the notebook she was holding before looking back up at him, her smile apologetic. "My apologies, King. I assure you, it won't happen again. The whole point of this center is to ensure that you're able to find a safe space, and I appreciate you taking the initiative to set that boundary up front."

Dr. Hatch seemed almost grandmotherly…if said grandmother rocked a white pixie haircut and reading glasses attached to a rainbow-striped beaded chain.

"Uh, thanks," King muttered. Dammit, why was this so hard for him?

"You seem to attach a lot of meaning to your name. Could you tell me a little bit about that?"

King cleared his throat, feeling the fight-or-flight response rising in his body. But he tried to wade through the feelings instead of pushing them away. Might as well just rip the Band-Aid off…

"Okay, so, I'm named after my father. He named me after himself and calls me Junior. And I hate it. I hate him ." King swallowed the lump in his throat as he processed what he'd just said.

Dr. Hatch nodded encouragingly, giving him the confidence to continue.

"The first time I caught him having sex with someone who wasn't my mom was when I was seven." He gulped down another lump in his throat. "Of course, I didn't understand what was happening then, but the older I got, the more and more I understood just the kind of man my father is. He's never been faithful to my mother the entire 25 years they've been married. And the worst part? My mom knows. My mom knows, and it kills her, yet she still stays with him. She's always on his side, even when he treats her like shit."

He could feel a few errant tears tracking down his face, and he swiped them away angrily. "This one time, I packed a bag for me and for my mom. So we could leave and start over. And when I told her what I'd done, she slapped me across the face and told me to go to my room."

"How old were you when that happened?"

"Ten."

"So it would be fair to say that you grew up in a home that was emotionally, verbally, and physically abusive?"

"I'd never thought about the emotional part of it before, but yeah, I think that's fair to say," King responded.

Dr. Hatch wrote something down and then steepled her fingertips under her chin. "I'm so very sorry that the two people in your life who should have protected you, who should have loved you above anything else, didn't care for you the way they should have," she said kindly but thankfully without pity.

"Thank you," King replied. Then he shook his head. "Honestly, I'm afraid that I'll turn out just like him, that I'll end up hurting the people I love. That's why I…"

"That's why you what?"

"I loved someone—hell, I still love her—and I ended things. And now everything feels hollow. We just won the national championship in soccer, and the only person I wanted to celebrate with was her."

"Have you told her how you feel?"

King shook his head. "I'm pretty sure she hates me now. I mean, I pretty much did everything in my power to guarantee that she despises me. I let her think I didn't care, that I didn't want to be with just her. That I was interested in other people. None of which is true."

"Why do you think your default is to self-destruct rather than to trust?"

King mulled that over for a minute. "I honestly don't know. Maybe it's because I was feeling too dependent on her or because I realized I was in love with her. I just could picture myself letting her down or overwhelming her with all of my shit, and those thoughts gutted me. She's way too good for me, anyway."

"No relationship can ever be perfect, King. In spite of your best efforts, there will be times when you unintentionally let your partner down. The important thing is whether or not you're willing to put work into it. Allow it to grow. To communicate with honesty and integrity, even when it seems difficult. To acknowledge harm and be humble enough to apologize."

King thought about Lila's face when she'd angrily called him Solomon. How immediately she looked stricken and remorseful. Like the last thing she wanted to do was hurt him. And then she'd sincerely and instantly apologized to him, even though he was the one who had goaded her and prodded at her until she broke.

"That actually makes a lot of sense."

Dr. Hatch smiled. "I'm glad you think so. All that said, I do think you have some healing to do, and some narrative reframing definitely needs to happen if you sincerely want to overcome these inclinations. But if the desire is there, I think that you'll get to a place where such a bond will be met with feelings of love and safety instead of uncertainty and fear, whether it's with this particular person or someone else down the road.

"Regardless, you need to become comfortable with who you are individually and be secure with your own personhood, whether you desire to seek a partnership or not. The most important relationship you can have is with yourself."

She adjusted her glasses and looked right at him. "Are you willing to put in the effort to grow, King? If so, I'd love to keep seeing you to help you as you work all of this out."

"I'd like that," King replied, agreeing to meet with Dr. Hatch twice a week for the next couple of months. As he left the counseling services building, he could feel the weight on his shoulders lightening, just a little bit.