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her eleventh birthday, when she had first told them what she wanted to do in life.
    “How old were you when you first realized they wanted you to be something you weren’t?”
    She stopped when she heard how he had worded the question, and was taken aback by his intuitiveness. 
    “I was 10.”
    “That’s a lot of pressure for parents to put on a 10 year old kid,” he said after a moment.
    She sat there quietly, looking wistfully at him.  “Yeah.  It is.”
    “What did you want to be when you grew up?” he asked quietly.
    “I wanted to be a chef, or a writer.  Maybe a food critic so I could combine the two passions I had.  I loved both.”
    “And now you do both, from what I understand.  You cook and you write a blog.”
    “I do what I love.  That’s all I wanted.  They just don’t understand.  My dad’s a doctor, my mom’s a lawyer. I have one younger brother who’s studying to be a dentist, which is barely good enough for them.  Not to mention he’s gay.  I adore him.  And even though he hasn’t come out to them yet, I just know that little nugget of truth will put them over the edge.  Ridiculous,” she muttered.  She stopped her train of thought and shook her head.  “At least he went into the medical field which gave him some points, but I’ve been a horrible disappointment to them.”  Not wanting to have a pity party in front of him, she changed the subject.  “How about you?  What did you want to be when you grew up?”
    He watched her for a moment, then finally answered her question.  “I’ve always been great with numbers, so I knew it would be something where I could figure stuff out, work out equations, things like that.”
    “Ryann told me you used to work on Wall Street.  You know, where all the rich people work.”  She punctuated the statement with a gleam in her eye and a smile touching her full lips.
    It was his turn to cock his head and examine her.  “Yup.  That’s me.  Mr. Money-bags.”
    “What made you leave Wall Street to be a teacher?”
    The windows to his soul seemed to shut a little and she could tell she wasn’t going to get a fully honest answer.
    “I thought it would be good for kids to learn how to manage their money early on.”
    “I wish I had someone teaching me all that stuff.  I kind of learned it on my own through trial and error.”
    “How did things progress with your parents?  Did you go to school?  Did they help out?”
    She smiled softly.  “No.  There was no help from Mommy and Daddy.  Actually, I got a scholarship to NYU for writing.  I got a bachelor’s there, and during that time, my extracurricular activities focused on working for restaurants, learning the ins and outs of the culinary business.  I started writing my food blog, getting my feet wet.  Eventually, I saved enough money to go to Europe to study in Paris —”
    “Le Cordon Bleu.  I remember.”
    “Yeah,” she was touched he had remembered a very short conversation on the elevator weeks back when Ryann had told him that bit of information.  “It was an incredible, life changing experience.  It was right after that when Ryann’s husband died.”  Ayanna got pensive for a moment.  She couldn’t seem to think about one experience without linking it with the other.  She had just gotten home from her final semester of studying abroad, and he had died only a few weeks later in January.  “I don’t wish that experience on my worst enemy.  I never want to see her go through that kind of pain again.”
    “No one would wish that on anyone.  Ryann’s an incredibly strong woman.”
    “The strongest one I know,” Ayanna said in a low voice.  “I admire her more than I could possibly put into words.”
    “She thinks the world of you, too.”  He was steadily watching her.
    Ayanna looked at him, a tender look on her face.  “She’s my bestie, no doubt.  She sees the good in me more than anyone.  It amazes me how unconditional her love is