For so many reasons.
“I’ll let the other girls know.”
“Thanks.” Feeling like a jackass, I got back to work, greeting customers and answering phones.
June melded into July in a flurry of work, school and Rob. That night I did some programming for the first time in ages, other than what I did on a regular basis on Rob’s site or promoting his channel online. It was crazy how popular “At Home with Rob” had become. Obviously people got famous on YouTube, but usually it wasn’t a guy talking about building tables or refinishing a floor.
Yeah, but look at Rob.
At this point, I could hardly stand to read his comments. He laughed at the sexual propositions and girls who were like, Rob, I think I love you. But the subscriptions kept ticking up, though he didn’t get more orders than he could handle, despite the impressive number of women who liked watching him build things. The longer we dated, the less I liked imagining countless women gawking at my boyfriend. But fuck it, I’m happy he’s got a following. Maybe we can parlay it into sponsorship money somehow.
Too bad more people weren’t willing to spend money on his beautiful furniture, and I had no idea how to rectify it. He was still doing construction full-time, making tables and things on nights and weekends. Between that extra work and my classes, we didn’t spend as much time together as I wanted. At the end of June, Stuart’s house hadn’t sold, and I was three months away from living with him and my mom, still considering Rob’s suggestion about moving in together.
Sunday morning, I got up and checked my email. There were some bullshit “jokes” from a guy in one of my classes. He was always sending me stuff like, “God, this assignment was a bitch. I wish I had boobs so I could get an A too, right? LOL.”
My classes were a mix of people my own age and guys coming back to school after being downsized or whatever. So I faced two different brands of discrimination: the usual internet kind from immature dudes who hadn’t learned better yet, and graven-in-stone prejudice from fifty-something men with a sincere belief that I was an intellectually inferior being.
Most of my professors were okay, but there was one weirdo who was constantly digressing to tell Vegas stories, most of which included strippers: his favorite anecdote involved a woman wearing nothing but Saran wrap. I could only wonder if the other two women in class with me were the same level of revolted. Another thing that pissed me off—group projects. Because the guys I was partnered with treated me like a personal assistant, demanding I handle PowerPoint presentations and the graphic portion while they did the “hard” stuff. I’d noticed, too, that the faculty didn’t seem to take me quite as seriously. They tried to steer me toward graphic design, like I was an artist who knew some HTML, not a real programmer.
But I ignored that crap and pushed on, coding as assigned. It was exhausting to fight about it, and since I had nothing to prove, I usually went with the flow. I’m not here to impress you idiots. Sighing, I checked forums and the cloud for my next project. Moving on.
It had been forever since I checked any of my favorite web comics or humor sites, so I took my laptop downstairs to surf while I ate my cereal. As usual, my mom wasn’t around. These days, she spent most days at Stuart’s, helping him improve the curb appeal of his house. I suspected that wasn’t all, but that was the last thing I wanted to think about.
Scrolling through my feed made my eyes glazed over. I’d missed all kinds of cuteness: baby owls, meerkats, regular cats, a dog that could dance...then a headline caught my eye from MaryJane, a site similar to Jezebel, only with more traffic and shares. At Home with Rob: His or Mine? For a few seconds, I just stared. No way. I clicked through, just in case it wasn’t a coincidence. Nope, my Rob was featured on the main page, his latest vlog embedded. My stomach churned as I read the “article”:
For pure handyman hotness, we’re crowning him the king of delts and lats. Ladies, he definitely knows what to do with his tools, and he can fix anything. We’re calling him the best thing on the internet this week. The best part is, you have weeks and weeks of delicious to glom. It might even be helpful to those who need actual help with home improvement. I can’t speak to that because every time he picks up a hammer, my ovaries melt. There’s just something about a guy with a tool belt...
It got worse from there, devolving to a complete dissection of his features, like he wasn’t a person. In comments, they approved of his shoulders and chest, claimed his ass needed work and that he had an odd brow ridge, but his eyes were just too sexy for words. I skimmed through, so mad I was practically shaking. Over a hundred already, some threaded so deep you couldn’t even read them. HotThing998 wrote: Oh, shit, yeah, I need some of that. I’ll just duct tape his mouth so he can’t bore me by talking. I pretty much wanted to burn down the whole internet; Rob would die if he saw this. But the post already had over 500 shares. When I checked his channel, the number of subscribers had quadrupled, and his views were through the roof.
As I stared at the screen, my phone rang. Rob. “Hey, you.”
“So it seems like I’m internet famous.” His voice was quiet. “If the guys on the crew see this, I will never live it down.”
“It might help your business,” I said faintly.
“Maybe.”
“Are you mad?”
“Not at you. At the world, a little. No matter what I try to do, it always comes back to one thing, huh?” He sounded so tired.
“Want me to come over?”
“I’m spending the day with my parents. My mom and dad are stressed, getting ready for Nadia’s visit later this week.”
“Right, she’s bringing Mr. Hot Ginger to meet the family.”
Happiness sparked through me when Rob laughed. “Is that what you call him?”
“Yeah. You’ll understand when you meet him.”
“The ginger part, maybe. You think he’s hot?”
He can’t possibly be jealous, given that the whole fucking interwebz would like to bang him wearing nothing but a tool belt and work boots. I’d read so many handyman porn scenarios while skimming the comments on both the MaryJane site and his YouTube channel. It appeared modern womanhood, as a collective, had a secret fetish for guys who worked with their hands.
“He’s good for Nadia,” I said, skirting the question.
“You’ll pay for that dodge, next time I see you.”