Albert, Darwin, and Stinky were three mutts. Albert was tiny but had a big head. Darwin was gray, and maybe had some lab in him mixed with something else. Stinky was just big, fat, and hairy. There was no pin pointing his breed.
As soon as Aspen walked through the door, all three dogs wagged their tails and were all over her. “My boys! How are you? Do you want a walk! Do my good stinky boys want a walk!” Aspen said as she bent down and hugged and petted them. They all were licking her face.
“Dogs, you have three?” Ethan asked, trying to stay away.
“Yep, and I love them all. Albert was one of my clients, and the owner didn’t want him so I adopted him. Darwin, I found him by the river and he followed me home. And Stinky was my brother’s dog.”
“Client? What do you mean?” Ethan asked as Stinky started coming after him with a dumb look on his face as drool started to hit the floor.
“I’m a dog trainer!”
“Of course you are,” he said putting his hand out in front of him. Stinky sniffed it and then licked it. Ethan was horrified.
“It’s just a part time job.”
“So you work at a tea shop, and you train dogs?” Ethan asked.
Aspen nodded and stood up. “I also teach yoga on Saturdays.” She lifted her leg from behind, grabbed it with her hands, and touched the back of her head. “Ta-da!”
Ethan’s eyes were wide open. She made it look so graceful. He couldn’t even stretch out his hands without a cramp. Aspen let her leg back down. “That’s . . . amazing,” he finally said.
“Oh, yoga isn’t that hard.”
“No, I mean, you. You’re just so . . . different and weird.”
Aspen cocked her head. “Is that a bad thing?”
He looked all around her house. “I’m still debating.”
She smiled. “Well, I need to put the dogs out and let them go potty. You can too in the bathroom over there,” she said pointing to the door to the bathroom, then to the stairs. “I have two bathrooms. I have snacks in the cabinet, but we can go to Pearl Street and get pizza. I’ll be right back, come on Stinky, Albert, Darwin, lets go,” she said getting the dogs pumped up and barking.
Once Ethan was alone in the house, he really looked around. The place was just like Joy’s house, but tiny and a taste of Aspen. There was an old 1950’s looking dinner table matching the stove and sink. The refrigerator was a tiny thing, with pictures attached.
He looked at the pictures showing Aspen with way longer hair, nearly pass her thighs. It was lighter, no other colors like the blue she had now. She had a brown dress on and heels. She was posing with some guy, looking really happy. Ethan thought maybe it was her boyfriend, but he got to looking at the guy with the Chevy hat.
He had the same face as Aspen. It must have been her brother. She had other pictures of some friends. The pictures all looked like ancient history.
Aspen came into the house with all three dogs running in. She had two doggie bags in each hand and put it in the trash bin. “Great job you guys! You’re doing so . . .”
Ethan was still staring at the pictures. He looked over to her. Her face went pale. “What you looking at?” she asked closing the door and walking over.
“Just looking at some pictures.”
“Yeah?” she asked. She started to look at the pictures too.
After a while, Ethan finally said, “Your hair looked really pretty that long.”
Aspen eyed him for a second and shrugged. “Yeah, I thought so too. Took me forever. But, I needed change.”
“Why is that?” Ethan asked.
“Just needed it.”
“Is that your boyfriend?” Ethan asked, knowing it wasn’t, to the man he was looking at earlier.
“No way!” Aspen seemed to give a sad giggle. “That’s my brother. Twin brother, actually.”
“You’re a twin?” Ethan asked.
“Yep, my mother could tell you stories,” she started, then nodding her head, “Starting with her home birth experiences. She swears up and down we almost killed her, but no one was stopping her from going to the hospital. But, I popped out first, and then my brother did. When he got long hair, he looked like my transgender sister,” she joked. “We were terrible together. He was the one that brought me out to Boulder.”
“Oh really? Where you guys from then?”
She took a moment. “You promise you won’t make fun of me?”
Ethan was already smiling. “Sure.”
She let out a sigh. “Arkansas.”
Ethan said almost choking on his laughter, “Oh my god, are you serious?”
“You said you wouldn’t make fun of me,” she said in a downward tone. She didn’t seem to care for his outburst.
Ethan stopped laughing. “I am not making fun of you, I promise, I just never thought in my life you would come from a place like Arkansas.”
“Why not? I actually really like Arkansas. It’s more laid back.”
“You just seem like a local I guess.”
“I’ve been living in Boulder for close to 3 years now. So, I am a local.”
“But you aren’t a native.”
“You don’t chose where you come from, but you have a choice where you get to go, Ethan,” she said. It was the first time she said his name, and he had really liked it. “Besides, there is nothing wrong with were you come from. I happen to like it.”
“What part were you from?”
“Have you ever heard of Eureka Springs? I wasn’t born there. My mom and dad moved there when I was older. I was born in Harrison, just an hour away. We lived in a tiny home in Jasper, next to a creek. It’s really amazing up there in the Ozarks. But when Travis, my brother, got old enough, he got his licenses at 16 and started taking road trips. When I was 18, I started to come along. ”
“That’s bull,” Ethan said rolling his eyes. “What about school?”
She didn’t take offence. She never took offence to Ethan, and for some reason, it had drove him so crazy. “We were homeschooled. Besides, we got our G.E.D’s at 16.”
“Course,” he mumbled, trying his best to not roll his eyes.
“He came out here first. But when I tagged along, we went to Texas. Then New Mexico, then to Arizona. Have you ever been to Tucson? It’s actually really awesome there. Not what I thought it would be. Then he took me here, Colorado. I fell in love. I don’t know what it was, but I fell in love with this area. We went on traveling to Seattle, and Canada. We traveled all over, but my soul got trapped here. I loved it so much. I couldn’t leave, I had to come back.”
“Well, I was born and raised in Denver. I don’t know why you would like it here so much. Most people come for the weed.”
“I’ve never done anything silly like that.”
“Seriously,” Ethan asked in a deadpan tone.
“Yep, never touched it, never cared for it. Have you done it?” she asked.
He turned red. “Just . . . a little.”
Aspen shrugged. “Little like the drinking?” she joked.
His face was really red now. He felt embarrassed. It wasn’t like it was first time he drank so much that he blacked out. But talking to this girl, he felt like he wanted to be better than he usually was. “Yeah, something like that.”
“Well, anyways, Joy doesn’t allow that type of stuff, so it’s good I don’t. She was having trouble renting out because of it. Then I came along one day, and she rented out to me, no paperwork, no first month last month stuff. She has two boys who have boys themselves. She said she always wanted a girl. She said dogs were fine. She loved dogs. I had a cat, but it ran away.”
“Well, lucky I don’t live here,” he said in a low voice.
“I’m looking for a roommate, if you know of anyone.”
Ethan tried to think of someone, just anyone, but sadly no face came to mind. “I can’t think of anyone.” He had all those people from last night. Why couldn’t he give a name?
“Oh really? I thought you said you knew a lot of people. Well, get word around, if you can.”
“I’ll try,” he said. “This is a really neat place you got.”
Aspen eyes lit up. “I know, I am so lucky to have found anything. But, even though I can cut my rent by helping out Joy, it’s still a lot. It’s usually 700 a month, which is cheap, like really cheap in his city, but I work in a tea shop, you know? I know that people want around a thousand a month just for one room. This city is crazy!”
“Well, if I hear of anyone, I will give them word,” Ethan promised. “What time is it anyways?”
Aspen took out her phone, and said, “It’s around noon.”
“That’s it?” Ethan asked, wrinkling up his nose. “God, this day is so slow.”
She looked at him, but didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to know what he meant by that. “Well, that’s what happens when you wake up at five. Well, I get up at five. Actually, it’s more like four in the morning.”
“Why the hell do you get up so early?”
She shrugged. “I get a lot more done in the morning. I like that feeling in the morning. Right before the sun rises. Also, I can never sleep.”
“I can sleep. I could sleep every second of the day if I could,” Ethan said, walking around the small living room. He saw that there was an upstairs, but didn’t go up. He sat on the old worn down couch. It had hair and holes all over it. She had a swinging chair in the corner. She followed him, and crawled up into the chair, and started to swing her feet. She looked like a little kid.
“Are you tired now?” she asked, grabbing the sides. Ethan thought she looked more like one of those dancers, he thought. He put his hands over his head, and smiled. He gave a shrug. “Do you drive your father crazy?”
He couldn’t help but to give a big laugh. It came out of nowhere. His laugh made her lips give a slight curl. “Um, why do you ask?” he was still laughing.
Aspen shrugged. “I don’t know. I just got a feeling. What about your mom?”
He stretched his neck and stopped laughing. “Do I drive you crazy?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
He seemed a little stun. He felt kind of embarrassed, like he wanted to change right then and there. “Oh really?” But, by tomorrow she was just going to be a stranger again.
Her face did not look sour though. “It’s okay. You’re not as crazy as Travis. He has some stories he could tell. Always told him he could write a book, which is what he wanted to do one day. He told me when he got old, that was what he wanted to do.”
He gave a smile. “Maybe one day, this Travis fellow and I need to meet. I could show him a good party. Have fun in the city. We would have a blast, turning the city upside down,” he joked. He expected a laugh or even a small smile from her. That one smile she gives when he says anything. But instead, she frowned, and he could see the flame in her eyes flick a bit. It was as if he almost blew out her spirit.
“That would be nice,” she said in a small voice bringing in her legs to her chest. She started to play with her toes. He noticed that her toe nails were lime green and chipped really badly. “He would like that.”
“Well, call him up, where is he?” Ethan smiled, pushing the joke farther. He was going to make her laugh. “I would love to meet this fellow. Where is this Travis buddy boy-”
“Dead,” she cut him off. “He’s dead.”
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