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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Twenty minutes later.
Damn, I should have picked up a coffee maker on the way home from the elementary school. Zoey's house has every cooking gizmo and gadget under the sun in her well-organized cabinet.
Clutched in a death grip in my hands is the coffee bag full of beans, and a part of me resists the real urge to pet the coffee bag and say my precious like it's the One Ring. I take another quick glance into her kitchen cabinet. Its beauty would put any Scandinavian woodwork design magazine to shame. And no damn coffee maker. Not a filter, not a grinder, not a single bit of anything coffee-related. I give the neat kitchen a dirty look. I know evil when I see it. No coffee maker? Seriously?
Like a drug dealer in some Breaking Bad episodes, I roast the beans in a flat pan and then pop them in a blender. I use another pot to very carefully distill the sweet juice of the gods. The liquid gold pours out, and every drop counts. Not the best-made coffee ever, but the coffee hits the spot.
I take my cup out the door to the porch. Steam comes up in flavorful plumes and a herbaceous burnt gift. Coffee made without a machine and I feel like a hero. A backlog of business inquiries, tweets, and YouTube comments waits for me, and I dig.
The sun moves across the deep blue sky. My fingers type away each reply on the managed YouTube accounts. Finally, I'm in control of my little world, conquering the administration dragons. The sound of crunching tires on the driveway alerts me to the approach of my cousin's old pickup, an ancient Ford that's seen better days, but it's got that old, worked on, beloved look to it. The door opens up and out tumbles my party drunk best friends and a sober driver rolling her eyes at the bunch.
"Hey," I wave.
I quickly get into a video call with Zoey. "Let's knock out these introductions."
"Hello," Zoey says.
I check the calendar on the phone and see she's set for the rehearsal for The Tour YouTube singing contest later tonight. The reality TV mixed in with a singing show's time commitment is insane. She crowds into the camera, her long dark hair going everywhere. My best friends walk up the porch, and I introduce them as they climb the steps.
"Hey, Zoey, this is Carly from the CakeMe YouTube channel." Carly waves to the little phone camera. Her short haircut is just above the shoulders. Carly's sun-kissed honey skin has a pleasant glow to it for the thumbnail pictures later. She mouths at me that she finished the Spanish show notes for the post. One less thing for me to worry about. My Spanish has never been strong.
