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“I’m not sure you want to open that can of worms. What if I ask you something you don’t want to answer?”
“Then I won’t answer.” I shrug. “Though I’m a pretty open book, so it’s unlikely that would happen.”
“Okay, then.” She thinks for a long moment. “What do you do for a living?”
It isn’t until she asks that I realize she doesn’t even know the most basic things about me. I guess I just assumed Aspen had told her something, but maybe I was wrong in that assumption.
“I’m a marketing analyst.”
“And what exactly does a marketing analyst do?”
“In a nutshell, I analyze data to determine the success or lack of success in various marketing techniques,” I tell her.
“And do you enjoy doing that?”
“Yes and no. I have a lot of freedom, which I like. If I don’t feel like going into the office, I can work remotely, things like that. But it can be kind of boring at times. What about you? Do you enjoy being a counselor?”
“It has its moments. I mean, I love helping kids. It’s the very reason I got into it to begin with, but sometimes it’s really hard.”
“Yeah, I can’t imagine some of the things you must hear. Pen has called me before when she’s handling a particularly difficult case, and while she can’t tell me patient information, I get the gist of what’s going on and it’s hard to wrap my fucking head around.”
“It’s horrifying what some children go through. But not all of them are that bad. And it can be very rewarding.”
“Is there a specific reason why you wanted to work with children?” I ask, knowing that there was a reason Aspen got into it, specifically the abuse and neglect she personally dealt with growing up, most of which came from the hands of her perverse, sadistic foster brother. The thought still makes my fucking stomach churn.
“When I was in high school, I volunteered at the children’s hospital for my mandatory volunteer hours. We had to have them to graduate,” she explains. “There was a child there. He had been beaten so badly by his stepdad that he nearly died. Every day I would go in and see him, talk to him, sneak him in treats even though I wasn’t supposed to. I don’t know, I guess in a small way, I felt like I helped him get through it, and I just decided that I wanted to keep helping.”
“Aspen says it’s the hardest but most rewarding thing she’s ever done.”
“It really is.”
“Where did you go to college?”
“I thought I was the one asking the questions.”
“I think it only fair that I get to ask a few of my own.” I flash her a quick smile.
“Cal State.”
“Did you like it there?”
“I did. It was nice because it was close enough that I could commute instead of living in a dorm. What about you?”
“I went to GW.”
“GW?”
“Sorry. George Washington University.”
“But you didn’t grow up in D.C. I feel like I remember someone saying you’re all from Ohio.”
“We are. Pen and I came here first. Sutton didn’t move here until they got together, and then my parents followed once they started popping out babies.”
“So you lived in a dorm? Did you like that?”
“It was okay. I was pretty happy once me and Aspen had our own apartment, though.”
“How long did you live together?”
