Warner Park

Chapter Seventeen

*Mature Rating Reminder: This chapter contains sexual scenes towards the end. You can skip to the last few paragraphs if that's not your thing. Thank you for reading! 🫶*

Andrew

I met Cynthia at our favorite coffee spot for our third business meeting together.

Well, it was actually her favorite coffee spot... I didn't care. I never really drank anything more than drip coffee, and I always just took it black. It was honestly all the same to me.

According to Cynthia, Daily Buzz Cafe in Santa Monica had the best cappuccino. She lived just a few blocks down and walked over, so it was convenient for her and that's all that really mattered to me.

Cynthia had been incredibly helpful. Not only in connecting me with the real estate company that had the open studio in Malibu, but she was also a wealth of knowledge in the business world. I had no one else in my life to guide me the way she did.

I had officially dubbed her as my career mentor, which she knew, and also my third closest friend after Vince and Gary, which she probably didn't know. I'd been talking to Aubrey on the phone a little here and there too, since he still hasn't rejoined the group chat or taken anyone else's calls.

Gary said Aubrey did this sometimes, claimed it was for immature dramatics... But last night, Gary admitted to me that this was the longest Aubrey had ever ghosted the group, and that he was a little concerned about him. So was I, because Aubrey had said a lot of things that I knew were red flags -- I'd been there. So I made it a point to check up on Aubrey a lot these days, the same way Gary had done for me when I was struggling.

"I already ordered you a black coffee," Cynthia said sitting down with me at a booth outside. I smiled. "And I ordered my cappuccino, so it's going to be a second..."

"That's alright," I pulled out a menu from the table's tray, "want me to get us food?"

"No, no, don't worry about it. I only have an hour today, so let's get to talking while we wait."

Cynthia looked down at her phone and I noticed she had, to my completely untrained eye, the coolest eye makeup on. It was...different. She had lined the top of her eyes with three different colors, yellow, pink, and blue.

This was why I trusted her when she told me to make myself social media accounts for my yoga business. Not because she had a gorgeous, somewhat eccentric style in such a formal profession, but... I could see how she carried herself with a confidence that naturally made me want to follow. She had confidence that she knew what she was doing, and she didn't care about being different. She expressed herself how she felt she needed to.

I hated taking pictures of myself, and as a kid who grew up in rural Alaska, social media wasn't ever a thing on my radar. It was not something I was even remotely interested in participating in. I never had. I refused to, even once I moved to Fairbanks... The closest I'd gotten to being glued to my phone was my journey with dating apps.

Cynthia had insisted I do this, the whole social media thing, and I believed in her.

So... She helped me set up an @AParkerLAYoga handle across nearly everything. I bought a tripod for my phone and spent a day running around from Long Beach up to Malibu taking photos of myself. I felt like an idiot, but I did it.

By the time I finished, I actually found it fun to get into advanced poses properly before the camera timer on my phone went off. That might be my new thing. Could that be considered a sport? It should be. I loved doing it.

Aubrey had made a comment during the campout about people coming to my classes to 'see me do yoga.' I felt like he seemed to be on to something...

I sent my accounts out to my clients over the last week and I had followers. I had a lot of followers. I wouldn't have believed this many people would care, or how this would be helpful, but already it was positively affecting my business. I also had a handful of overtly sexual DMs, which was another reason I thought maybe Aubrey knew what he was talking about. Cynthia told me those DMs were normal, and not to worry about it.