Apology, Apology, Apology

In high school Ty used to come over to my house on Sundays at 7 PM when his parents thought he was attending Catholic night mass. It became our thing. Once we went ice skating, once bowling, sometimes he'd help me with physics homework, and one night we just sat on the floor of my bedroom shedding our biggest fears and explaining why we thought we were the way we were. There was something personal I said, something about how I viewed the world, about what scared me, and he made fun of it. Like, pretty quickly. On one hand it was almost refreshing because my concerns were just a joke to him. On the other hand I felt my safe space had been abruptly broken. I told him so, and he kind of scratched his head and the night wound down, and he went home. He called me there apologizing. "I just realized really how much of a jerk I was. I was asking you all these personal questions and then I made fun of you." Yeah, it was true. I said it was okay.

AZ State Fair, 2011. I miss it.

The next day at school I was attacked. All out mutual friends found me during the day." Ty says sorry," they all explained. Sometimes people were sincere--mostly flippant. He hadn't said why he was apologizing. He just sent everyone he could to say sorry. A girl I didn't know stopped me in the hall and asked if I was Alice. She said sorry on behalf of Ty. I even got a few calls after school. This was before social media, so he must have just announced before his classes, at lunch, etc. "Hey, if you know Alice, tell her I'm sorry." Ty called at night and asked if I had gotten the message. Yeah, I had. I didn't really know how to process the day. I mean, it's not like quantity matters in apologies, but it was such a creative way for him to know he meant it? Maybe? I still don't know for sure I guess. But I held nothing against him. That was that. He went on to ask me to prom, go to college, and we lost track of each other.