Izan and Mist

Chapter 8 (Izan): I Messed Up

My father and I were close, and throughout my childhood and teen years, he'd been there for me, often with some sage advice after he'd listen to me.

One of the things he'd always told me was, "You'll know when you become a man. You'll never forget that day in your life. You're growing toward it all along, but it has nothing to do with your age and everything to do with that shift in your heart. Right now, you have the heart of a boy, Izan. Someday, I hope you'll have the heart of a man."

And, as I walked into my childhood home, I felt my heart making that shift. For the first time in my life, I looked at things from an outsider's point of view, as someone new coming into my loud, noisy family. Yvette was sitting at the table with one of my sisters, my mother was at the stove and my grandmother was standing at the counter, mixing something in a huge bowl. Another sister was looking in the fridge for a Coke. All of them seemed to be talking at once. My father was just coming in the back door, and two of my brothers were walking into the kitchen from the living room, laughing at some joke.

Yvette was always here, I realized, and instead of her being someone that didn't really register, someone whose presence I didn't think twice about, today I felt like I was looking at an obstacle that needed to be removed.

Why do you even have people in your life I have to be protected from?

Mist's question had echoed her mother's use of the word protected, and my Abuela had always warned me to listen for the echoes life sent your way. That echo and Mist's willingness to walk away from our relationship had scared the hell out of me. She meant it, and she was done; since there was no way I could live my life without her, I had to keep her in it.

When Mist's question hit me, it woke me up to the decision I had in front of me: whose happiness was most important to me?

Mist's.

So I needed to start acting like it. I wanted a future with this woman, this gentle, free-spirited soul with so much inner and outer beauty that she glowed with it. Actually, the truth was I said I wanted a future, but I hadn't done anything to ensure that we'd have one since I'd been so busy trying to keep everyone placated that I'd failed the only one who mattered. Multiple times and in multiple ways.

It was so obvious and I'd been so blind, so sure I could manage all the moving parts of my family and keep Mist happy.

My father had told me when I turned eighteen that he'd tell me about the day he became a man with a man's heart. He'd told me that his family, a very wealthy family, had not been in favor of him pursuing my mother, who did not come from the type of wealth and family name that his parents had wanted for their only son. They made things rough for a long time until my father told his family that he'd married my mother and he was moving the two of them to the States along with his best friend, who had married a French woman. Neither family had been happy with the choices their sons had made, so my father and Yvette's father had removed their wives from the toxicity.

Patting his chest, my father had said, "I became a man the day I told my family we were moving and why. A man protects his wife and family, Izan. He gives them what they need."

Somewhere along the way, I'd forgotten the lessons from that story, but I was hoping I'd remembered in time to make it up to Mist.

We sat down to eat lunch, and Yvette stayed. She'd been trying to talk to me, but I'd been ignoring her and just watching everyone.

"So quiet, mijo," my mother said to me, and I was just that quickly the focus of everyone's attention.

"I'm going to marry Mist," I said.

Yvette and my sisters exploded.

"Why?"

"You can do so much better!"

"She's not good enough for you!"

"That's it," I said, slapping my hand on the table and standing up. "The last bad things I'll hear you say about Mist. She's my choice, she's the woman I love and I'm tired of you being nasty to her."

I pointed at Yvette. "You aren't even part of this family and feel you have a right to say anything you want about my life and my choices. That's my fault for letting you trade on the old family friend familiarity. No more. I won't be bringing Mist around if you're here."

"She's like family," my sister Jacinta protested. "She can be here if she wants."

"But she's not family. If you prefer her to me, that's fine. You won't see me. But you and Pilar are also on my list for what you said about Mist."

"What did they say?" my mother cried.

"It doesn't matter now because it's been said," I avoided her question. "Let's just say it hurt Mist terribly and was pure nastiness."

"Izan, you're my oldest friend," Yvette said. "How can you just throw our lifetime of friendship away for some girl you've only known two years?"

"This is the last I'm going to speak to you. You keep reminding me of our friendship and I let you get away with that. But you've crossed so many lines -- and I let you based on our so-called friendship -- but you aren't my friend, Yvette. If you were, you would have supported my relationship. You would have seen how happy Mist makes me and you would have realized how much I love her. Now, you can deal with the results of your bitchiness -- sorry, Abuela -- and understand why I won't be talking to you again. You no longer exist for me because if you do, I'll lose Mist for good and you've forced a choice between the two of you and I choose Mist, hands down. I've already blocked you on my phone."

Next I pointed at my two sisters. "You can explain to Mama and Papa why I won't be coming around with Mist anymore. You're my sisters. I expected better of you. Mist has never been anything but kind to you and you've treated her like shit. Sorry, Abuela."

My sisters looked both guilty and annoyed. Let them. My grandmother looked on, serene. My mother looked concerned, as did my brothers. My father's face I couldn't read.

"For now, I'm going to continue working at the restaurant. But if any of you try to stop by and talk about anything that's not work related, I'll quit, no notice. I'll just walk out the door and be done. I have other things I could do that I'd probably enjoy more, so it'd be no punishment to leave."

That did get a bit of a reaction from my father.

"It took five years for papa's family to figure out he meant business and he had to move to a different country to show them how serious he was. Don't make the mistake of thinking that because we're not leaving the country, I'm not equally as serious. I love Mist. She's the woman I choose, and more, she's the woman I'm going to protect. Mist is my first priority, and I haven't done a good job of showing it yet, but I'm going to prove that to her over and over again. I'm not straddling the fence between family and Mist anymore; I've completely jumped over to her side."

"But we're your family," Pilar protested.

"You are. And I love you all. But Mist is my family, and I love her more than anything or anyone, even all of you. If there's one thing I know, it's that Mist loves me. And yet, she was willing to walk away from me to not have to be around people who treated her like shit, and I'm included in that. Life without her is something I can't even think about, so I'm fixing myself and making it so Mist doesn't have to worry ever again about being the victim of your poison."

"I like Mist," my grandmother said. "She practiced her Spanish with me."

I smiled at Abuela, apparently the keeper of secrets, and she smiled back.

"I thought I'd come here and get into a screaming match, but I realized how useless that would be. You either get it, or you don't. You either want to be a decent person or you don't. You either want to fix what you messed up or you don't, and no amount of yelling can change that. I get it, I want to be a decent person and I'm going to fix everything I messed up with her. So I'm leaving to win Mist back."

When I got up from the table, my father looked at me, and, with a nod, patted his chest.