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...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
It's been Noah's habit lately to walk me back to the house. He began the escort when the creepy guy with the long camera took pictures outside the fence line. I can't help but think it was a holdover of gentlemanly behavior ingrained into the core of him, paparazzi or not. Either way, when I was walking alongside him in the wake of his enormous steps to the house, he stops. Then he took a different direction, past the shed to his motorcycle. He stands in front of the hog in a flannel shirt, faded, oil-stained blue jeans that fit like they'd been painted on, and a pair of nice sturdy boots. The kind of thing people take magazine pictures in front to sell overpriced jeans. I know his pants are regular thick work jeans because I bought him five of them just this month. But you'd think those things were thousand-dollar designer jeans the way they cling to him.
I need to focus. Noah turns back to me and hands me an extra helmet without a word. I look down at the helmet.
"Ok?" He lifts me at the waist onto the tail of his Harley. I stuff the camera into my backpack and put the helmet on. He starts that hog up and it roars. We ride off into the waning light of evening.
On the back of his bike, it was just the two of us cocoon by the air. The world whizzed by and like the butterfly in the cocoon; I was surrounded by him. His woodsy salty ocean sent and his hair flowing behind. He took every turn as if he owned it. He was helmet-free and confident on his motorcycle. I try to avoid touching him because of my small observations about him; he doesn't seem to like being touched. My hand grips the sissy bar tighter behind me. I let the world go by with only us in it. For a moment, like granting a prayer, everything slows down to just the two of us.
I lean in to ask a quick question and bring my lips close to his ear.
"Almost there?" I wasn't really sure where there was, and I can't say I cared where there would be. I want this moment. I wanted to take it as the gift it was. Maybe I can be selfish once every six months.
He nods as we pull in and pass the huge Folsom lake sign. He parks the bike by the side of the road. The area is empty of its normal weekend goers. His hands slide around my waist, and he lifts me off the bike. My weight to him was less than an afterthought as he put me on the back of his hog. Then he grabs his leather jacket from the saddlebag. I take the helmet off my head. Waves roll along the lake. I follow him with my eyes on his back.
He sits down and pulls me down with him into the soft bed of wildflowers. The sun begins its fall from the sky. He doesn't say a word. We sat in stillness together for half an hour.
"Blue," he says in the hush silence.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
He talks?
"My favorite color is blue." His face moves in a small grimace as if he's not used to hearing his deep voice out loud. He shifts his eyes around and looks like he's an attempt to put all the words in the correct order. "I like blue." My mind jogs back to the question asked by the chatroom of his favorite color. His gigantic body radiates frustration, like tying two pieces of string that won't knot.
He tries again, "that is a bluebell and that one over there. And the lupine flower comes out every spring." His big hand strokes the petal of the deep blue flower, gentle. "That orange one is California poppy." He pulls a few small blades of grass around the poppy and gives it more room. Then he sighs, his big shoulders relaxing with the sound.
I guess the no-talking shoe is on the other foot.
My hand tucks the motorcycle helmet closer to me like a divining rock with all the answers. The storm that threatened on the ride glistens in the distance. No matter how far you go, those storms always catch up. My phone rings with a YouTube upload notification triple beep.
"Zoey uploaded." I put the phone down on the mat of wildflowers.
Play.
"Hi, Noah. I don't know if we won, but we were good. Really good. Sabali's song was perfect. Don't miss it. It gets uploaded by The Tour in the morning." Her face breaks into a huge smile. "Ok, Noah, I gotta go. I recorded a cover for you, "Dreams" from Fleetwood Mac. Love you." The song plays.
Noah stares into the distance. The sun makes its last-ditch attempt to stay in the sky as it dips down for the night. He touches my phone, setting the song on repeat. Like a playlist queue to the heavens, thunder rings lightly in the distance.
"Tari, she's not coming back?" He whispers into the night. The chilly night air traced his words. He turns to me and takes off his leather jacket. Noah drapes it around my shoulders. It pools around me as big as a blanket, even with my curves. His smell surrounds me with wood, spice, and salty ocean air.
We sit in silence, and he breaks it again.
"When this is all over, she's not coming back," he repeats. In his heart, he sounds like he knows the answer to his question. The way the words line up has the ring of a door closing.
"No," I replied firmly. I don't want to lie to him. "Not like it was before, it's already changed from the short time I've been here. She's famous now, so it's very hard to go back. YouTube famous differs from famous famous."
The paparazzi hanging around the house. It's a sign of blood in the water. When you're on YouTube, famous people might say hi but it's very innocent. The dollars are direct without all the other industry interests involved. Like doing really well at a high school talent show. People know your name sometimes, but you don't quit your day job.
The difference between YouTube famous and regular famous is they figured out how to commodities you. Like an action figure in Walmart, you have a barcode on your head and everyone's trying to cash in on everything about you.
I move closer to Noah, shrinking the small distance between.
"Do you want to go back?" I ask him.
"No, it's a pleasant night," he replies.
The rain falls lightly on both of us and the song keeps playing on loop.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
A/n
Welp, this is Folsom Lake. Where the book takes place. Yes, it really does look this cool at certain times of the year. Yes, I wish they had sex in those wildflowers because I am a flowers gal. lol, But, the story has to be the story and we gotta tell the tale the way it's told.
