Page 86 of Famous for a Living

Brody is your typical Hawaii-based, abs-of-steel-meet-humor content creator, using both his six-pack and his baby blues along with his mildly humorous videos for a winning combination.

He’s five years younger than me.

Run-of-the-mill in the creativity department.

Sticks mostly with regurgitated trends. And when running low on ideas, simply lifts up his shirt in the mirror for a selfie to see him through the dry spell.

Oh, and he has not so subtly asked me out on two occasions.

Both times I politely turned him down with distance as an excuse, and both times he took it fairly well.

“Cat Cranwell.” It’s loud in the background on his side of the phone. A hum of people and clattering plates as though he’s in a restaurant. “So. Where is this mysterious place you’ve run off to lately? City girl has gone a long way off from New York City. It looks from the videos like you might be inching closer to my world every day.”

My fabricated laugh tinkles as I turn in my boots, following the six-foot or so path I’ve created in my pacing. I appreciate, though, that he hasn’t brought up the elephant in the room about my life.

“I am getting closer to Hawaii, it’s true.”

“Getting your fill of nature, too, from the looks of it. You know the offer still stands to come out for that kiteboarding lesson sometime. We could make a great team of it.”

Zing.

And there, so casually proffered, is the magic word I wanted to hear.

Team.

He’s up for partnering.

For whatever reason, whether because day by day I’m making a little more progress crawling out of the pit I fell into or because of lingering feelings, Brody is willing to have his name associated with mine.

He hasn’t shut the door on me entirely.

Which means he may be up for a project idea.

And some bartering.

“Actually, Brody, I did have something in mind I wanted to ask you about . . .”

And as I break into the same pitch I’ve thrown to half a dozen other creators the past three days, I try hard to ignore the plethora of distractions around me.

Keep my head down from midday sunshine that makes the snow covering our surroundings shine like crystals. Avoid catching the eye of any overfriendly locals I’ve come to know from my frequent trips to the coffee shop of late.

And I have made frequent trips to the coffee shop.

It wasn’t three days after I talked to Serena about my coffee shop experience that she called to say she had just so happened to talk with a Jeep company and was able to work out a partnership with a rental in exchange for the occasional snowy, grinning-as-I-lean-on-the-side-of-the-machine, dramatic-backdrop-of-mountains-behind-me posts. It was a miracle, given my last collab ended up featuring a portable nursing pump even though I am neither nursing nor with child, and I quickly snatched it up.

For a couple days I watched the weather, and the second the clouds let up, I took the afternoon off, pushed all the snow off the convertible, and drove it (very, very slowly) down the mountain.

I swapped the adorable, impractical car for the rugged, towering machine. The tires themselves come to my waist. The treads could cradle a small child.

When Jax saw me driving back up to the office, tires chewing up gravel and spitting it out, his jaw dropped. Apparently I had secured one of those military-grade, all-but-bulletproof Jeeps rumored in dark corners and alleyways to successfully roll down the side of a cliff without a dent.

In fact, those were the first words out of Jax’s mouth when I stepped out of it. “Cat. Wouldn’t that be so cool to video you . . .”

The answer was no, for the record.

A resounding no.

So while the Jeep may have been overkill (and unfortunately now forces me to shoo off all the males in town like fruit flies), the new drive was worth every single brand post. I didn’t even mind telling people how wonderful it was as an all-terrain vehicle. This is one partnership where my zeal on-screen is genuine.