Page 49 of Catch Me
“Please, you’ll probably listen to my pain and then head right back over to Jason’s, heffa.”
“And leave me here to deal with her lactose-induced farts alone,” I add.
Mya bursts out laughing at my silly comment.
“I’m going to remember that, Vee.” Ari points at me but her lips twitch as she tries to hold in her laughter.
It’s only with these two that we can go from crying one moment to laughing the next.
I blow Ari kiss.
“Love you. Now that we’re all here, since it was me who texted Mya to let her know you were here in the first place, start talking,” I insist.
“Yeah, tell us what happened this time,” Mya adds.
Ari groans again, tossing her hands in the air with her usual flair. She was a drama major in college before she chose to drop out once her YouTube channels took off.
“Well,” she starts, “Ron and I were having a civil discussion over where we wanted to go for this year’s vacation. He wants to go to Hawaii. Honestly, I wasn’t quite down for it since, you know, all of the complaints I’ve seen online from Hawaiians about their lands being taken over by overtourism and gentrification.”
“Right,” I say.
“I’ve heard about it,” Mya adds.
“But he insisted. Said it was one of the best vacations he had as a child, and he deserved it after getting his promotion earlier this year.”
“Oh, please,” Mya mumbles.
My lips twitch but I don’t let out my laughter.
Ron Walker is a perpetual underearner. He’s worked in technical retail for years. But he’s yet to hold one position with one company for more than a year.
Ari tells us it’s because he insists he can do more and the higherups won’t give him a chance.
For the most part, Mya and I refrain from passing judgement since Ari insisted he treated her right.
“I finally agreed to Hawaii, but I wanted to add on a couple of days here in L.A. Of course, to see my girls.” Ari looks pointedly between Mya and me, and being the closest to her, I squeeze her hand.
“I figured since we had a layover in L.A. anyway, why not extend it a little and I could see my two besties. He has people in L.A., too. So naturally, I volunteered to meet up with his family out here for a visit.”
She pauses and rolls her eyes.
“He went off. Saying I was adding too much to our itinerary on purpose to make him look bad.”
“What?” Mya asks.
“How does that make him look bad?” I ask.
“Money and time. He said it added too much to the trip, and when I offered to cover the expense, he said that I’m always throwing the fact that I make more money than him in his face.
“Then he claimed that just because my job is on YouTube, I think I can take off as much time as I want and that I don’t think about or consider what people withrealjobs have to deal with, like limited PTO.”
“Not him throwing your hard work in your face,” Mya says.
Ari is the very successful owner and operator of three Lo-fi YouTube channels. When we first met, she admitted to us that she didn’t have an interest in acting or drama as a career, but her parents had insisted that she go to college, and she liked the few theatre classes she’d taken in high school.
It was during her sophomore year of college that she started her first channel when I made an off-hand comment about how listening to classical music is helpful while studying.
The following year that channel blew up and had more than half a million subscribers.
