Then There Was You(13)

“Anything?” she asked expectantly. She stared at me with those piercing green eyes, and for a moment I found myself crumbling, but I quickly regained composure.

“What’s there to tell?” I murmured, sliding my feet out in front of me, slouching in the seat.

She looked up thoughtfully, “Oh lots of things, like how many siblings do you have?”

I stared at the floor. “One.” That’s all I’m giving her.

“Brother or sister?” she asked curiously, tilting her head a little.

Ugh. I caved. “Brother.”

She scribbled it down and returned her gaze to me. “See, this is getting easier, right?” Her warm smile caused one corner of my mouth to quirk upward despite my efforts to stop it. There was a softness in her eyes that I tried to ignore.

She looked at me as if I would suddenly spill all my secrets just because she got me to answer one simple question. “How old is he? What’s he like?”

“He’s ten, and he’s a brat. Are we done here?” I quipped.

She glanced at the clock. Shaking her head, her soft curls bouncing around her face as she said, “No, sorry. You’re stuck with me just a little bit longer.”

Dammit.

She looked down at her notebook as if she were reading from a checklist. “How about your mom and dad?”

Refusing to look her in the eye, I grumbled, “What about them?”

“Can you tell me a little bit about them?” she asked, leaning toward me, eager to hear what I had to say.

I cut my eyes at her. “Why? Why do you care?” I folded my arms across my chest and turned my head to glare out the window.

She put her pen down and closed her notebook, laying them both on the seat beside her. “I care, Chris,” she said softly, but with fierce intensity, “because I want to help you.”

I glanced down at the notebook, realizing for the first time since I’d been there that I was ‘off the record.’ I looked back up at her as she watched me, soaking me in, and thought for a minute she might have been telling the truth. Something about the look in her eye, and the sincerity in her voice—it felt so fucking real.





I watched him as he squirmed in his seat, readjusting his arms and sliding down against the back of the sofa. We both sat in silence for several seconds.

One of the first rules I’d learned in counseling was in order to get people to talk, fill the room with silence. Silence is awkward. At some point, to make things less awkward the client will speak. So, in this case, stubbornness was a virtue.

I patiently waited for Chris to speak. I could hear the ticking of the clock above my head, but I didn’t let it distract me. I was going to get him to talk today.





“My dad’s in prison,” I blurted. Damn. Why the fuck did I just do that? Now she was gonna ask me all kinds of questions about it when I really didn’t want to talk about it at all.

She looked at me sitting there, contemplating her next move. And then, as if she heard my silent plea she said, “I’m sure it’s hard for you to talk about it, so I’m not going to force you by asking you all kinds of questions you don’t wanna answer. So when you’re ready, I just want you to know that I’m here to listen if you need to talk about it.”

I couldn’t move or speak. I really think this woman gets me. I sat there, staring at her and trying to figure her out. She was so different than the last counselor who sat behind his desk, barely making eye contact with me while he made his judgments and told me, in his own words, what a fuck-up I was. But Mrs. Honeycutt… it’s like that woman heard my fucking thoughts. She didn’t glare at me over her glasses behind her desk. She sat right there across from me, leaning in, genuinely interested in what I had to say.

“My brother’s name is Mitch,” I said, surprising myself.

She nodded. “So your ten year old brother, Mitch, is a pest?”

I chuckled, relaxing a little. “Yeah, the day before I came here, he wanted me to play basketball with him in the driveway, but I was too busy doing my own thing. And then—I swear he did it on purpose—his basketball bounced back to the front porch where I was sitting and knocked over my soda, so I yelled at him.” I suddenly realized there was a hint of sadness in my voice. I feel really bad about yelling at him now.

“You feel guilty about that, don’t you?” she asked, nodding.

I sat there for a second. Did I just open my big mouth and let this woman inside my head? Fuck. “A little.” A lot.

She leaned on her elbow on the armrest of her chair. “Do you regret it and wish you could call him up and apologize?”