A broken marriage.
A new job.
She works as a Personal Assistant on the ForNoah Youtube channel.
Noah is on the autistic spectrum and she fixes things for him.
He's a shipwright and creates beautiful works of art.
She's a woman starting over who meet...
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Three weeks later.
Expanding a YouTube channel isn't easy. If you upload too much content too quickly, you run out of new ideas faster. If I do a short video of everything Noah's created, his YouTube subscribers might like it. Maybe... What's more likely is that I'll be that evil producer bitch. The she-devil who is changing everything about the channel they love. Time for the mob to revolt. Perhaps because Noah's channel with his friends was never really about the outside world. It's more of a look into his life and his friends. Maurice is a fireman, his sister Sabali going to college to become a music teacher. Noah's sister Zoey singing her covers. Finally, Noah sometimes plays and builds these beautiful things. That is the YouTube show in a nutshell. The fancy stuff I do doesn't fit the style.
It makes almost anything I try to do feel like an intrusion. As if I'm walking into the secret garden and, in my wake, I'm tripping over all the potted plants.
The expansive workshop wall has tools lined up perfectly. I walk on past all of it on the wall. Each tool in tidy order and labeled. The chisel, mallets, clamps, all in order with such care.
I stop in my tracks at the sound of the outdoor shower. I can be a creep and runoff or I can announce myself like a grownup and then walk away. Option two it is.
"Hello?" I say around the corner.
The water stops. Maurice walks out from the outdoor shower. He's shirtless in swimming trunks. His hand rubs the towel across his thick, honey brown chest. Yet again, holding food out to a starving woman, Mr. Black Kryptonite.
"Tari, you caught me after a workout," he says with a smile. "When I was driving in this morning, I saw someone with a camera at the property line. It's an unfortunate sign that my sister and Zoey are gaining popularity in the contest. The camera guy looks professional." Maurice warned, and a part of his body shifted to the unseen camera guy's possible location.
The threat knocks through the lust haze. "Like paparazzi?" My eyes swing out to the property-line fence, not catching the camera guy. Dang, my gaze, as if drawn to his chest, locks back on. That towel moves against the thick ropes of muscle. He talks about this morning's workout, and I only catch every other word while I watch the towel.
"What's the plan for today?" he asks.
"Huh?" Maurice cuts into my man thirst.
"What is on your agenda today? Do you need any video from me?" He grins, this damn sexy man. "I can't promise you a fire. We're hydrant flushing. It's been pretty slow." Poor Maurice, not realizing the magically mysterious ways of thirsty women on the internet. Hot firefighters emptying thick streams of water in uniform. Lubing up hydrants in the heat, while having the possible chance of all those foamy streams of water to coat the overheated bodies of firefighters. Oh, naïve man. It would break the channel with views.
