Page 89 of Beautiful Noise
The next morning I woke to the sound of my phone vibrating with a call. It wasn’t until then that I realized I was still in bed alone. I reached for my phone and fumbled to answer snuggling deeper into the pillow without checking to see who was calling. After last night I assumed it would be Leijah since she was literally the only person I spoke to these days.
“Hello…”
“Kori…” I frowned at the sound of my mother’s voice and groaned my disappointment.
“What do you want?” My tone was dry. There was no point in pretending I felt anything other than annoyance from her being on my line so early in the morning.
“To talk.”
I laughed arrogantly. “Yeah no, hard pass on talking to you. I’ve exceeded my limit of being mishandled by you.”
“I deserve that but I’m asking that you hear me out.”
“You definitely deserve it.”
“Kori…”
As much as I wanted to and reserved the right to hang up in her face, I decided to be the bigger person. “Talk and I’m warning you, if I don’t like what you have to say, I’m hanging up and you’ll be blocked. I refuse to keep setting myself up to believe you care only for you to prove me wrong. I love you and Dad but I will not let you make me feel like I’m the problem.”
“I can’t and won’t speak for your father…” My heart sank a little knowing he was still refusing to see things from my perspective. “But I will speak for myself and what you’re asking is not unreasonable.”
“Honestly, I’m no longeraskinganything of you. I don’t need…”
“I’m well aware that you don’t need anything from us, Kori, but you do want something.”
I sat up and pushed against the back of the headboard. “You want my acceptance and I’m embarrassed to say you shouldn’t have to beg me to respect your life choices. As your mother, I should have offered that acceptance freely and I haven’t.”
I blinked a few times, not believing she was admitting fault. “Yes, you should have.”
She exhaled a sigh. “You and I aren’t that different.”
“We are.” I frowned harder.
“We aren’t. We both care about the men in our lives. We stand beside them. You’ve chosen a side with the man you care about and so have I. The difference is not with us Kori but with the men we’ve chosen to care about.” She paused. “Your father is?—”
“A controlling asshole,” I murmured and I swear on God I heard her laugh. It was light but she laughed.
“He’s a complicated man with stern beliefs that tend to make him hard to love butnotimpossible to love. He’s a good man, Kori, he just has his ways about him.”
I pulled my lip between my teeth to stop myself from saying the first thing that came to mind. Instead, I elected to give myself time to consider my words carefully. Growing up, my father had been good to me. Not perfect, but good. Now that I had a new perspective on what my life was, I realized his conditional love had always been there. It didn’t make me hate him, but I didn’t have to accept who he was if he refused to do the same.
“He’s my father. I love him. I don’t like him and I don’t have to let him in my life if he refuses to accept me, who I am now and not who he wants me to be. The same goes for you.”
“I know,” she huffed. “Regardless of what you think, I do love you. We both do and I’ve missed you. I want us to work this out.”
“Work what out?” I frowned.
“Having a relationship.”
“And what does your husband think of us working things out?”
“You let me worry about him. This is about us. As much as I didn’t like it, your words cut deep. He is my husband, butyouare my daughter. I have to find a way to be there for both of you. I haven’t done the best job of loving you both equally.”
My anger dissipated a little but I still felt slighted by both of them. “We can work on it.”
“Good. I’ll leave things here for now but I wanted to reach out. Maybe we can talk soon.”
“Maybe,” I admitted honestly. I wasn’t sure how I felt but I was grateful she was trying.