Under the Water

“Audience? Wha-! What are you doing in my pant's pocket, Audience? You were right next to my butt, Audience. That's precarious,” came out of Chelsea's speakers. She was sitting outside of the Motel's office, because it was the only place in the complex where she could find Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi Chelsea undoubtedly had to hack into.

Once she had gotten to her motel room after the encounter with Toby she had set up her Keurig to brew another cup of coffee and in the minute it took for the coffee to brew she had fallen asleep watching one of the four channels she received on the motel television. By the time she had woken back up it was almost four in the morning, and not to mention her coffee was cold.

She had decided just to put ice over it and drink it outside while she was stealing the WiFi and watching the lazy vlog she was in earlier.

“Sol, get out of my life, Sol!” Toby continued ranting about absolutely nothing. Chelsea shook her head, drinking more of her coffee as she waited through the video.

“What was I talking about?” She heard, remembering it from before, and paid more attention to the video. “Nothing?! Of course I haven't said anything yet. It's only been what, three minutes and twenty six- twenty seven seconds?”

She could see herself sitting in the background with his dog, Gryphon. She had found out the dog's name, not only from Toby stating the name, but also from the title of the video. Which wasn't “Meeting Chelbuscus” but instead “Gryphon Finds a Girlfriend.”

“Gryphon! Gryphon- oh, hot-hot-” she paused the video then, with the first clear shot of herself, and sighed. She looked pathetic. She even felt pathetic. She shouldn't be here, in some other state in a random city. She should be in Pennsylvania grieving. Instead she ran after a month. She couldn't handle even a month without him.

Quickly she began to play the video again, trying to suppress unwanted memories that could potentially cause a panic attack.

“Toby, stop that, I found her first,” Toby said, filming his dog and Chelsea, before going back and forward between himself and Gryphon before he pretended to hear the “Audience”, or his subscribers, say that he was embarrassing them. The rest of the video, after he and Gryphon had left Chelsea, felt rushed and she knew why. He even specifically stated in Gryphon's voice that he should go and get her number. For Gryphon of course, not himself.

Chelsea half smiled, thinking that Toby had plenty of opportunities after, but he never did ask. And then she wondered if she would have just blown him off or not. She was overly nice to people, but was she that nice? Would she do that to Caleb-- ?

“Stop it,” she said, pushing her hands against her face, covering her light blue eyes with her palms. “Stop it. Stop thinking.” Unable to keep the sudden tears at bay, she closed her laptop, grabbed her coffee and briskly walked back to her motel room, making sure to keep her breathing slow and even.

Chelsea set her laptop on the small table near the door, which she had also set up her Keurig coffee maker on, and made for the bathroom with her cup of coffee. She locked the bathroom door, although she was the only person with access to her room besides the manager, and sat in the farthest corner of the bathroom between the toilet and bathtub shower. It was a habit she had formed since she was a little kid, only now there was no yelling, violence, or abuse to hide from. Sitting in a bathroom just made her comfortable. In there, she felt safe to just cry, or sit and think. Bathrooms, however, didn't stop panic attacks, so she had to stay focused on keeping her mind off of Caleb and the car accident.



Later that day, Chelsea had just brewed another cup of coffee as she was watching one of the lame channels on television. She was starting to believe that drinking this much coffee (she had gone through two packages of K-cups in the past four days) was unhealthy. Chelsea, however, preferred the coffee over her nightmares. Oddly enough last night was the first time she had slept with ease in nearly four months. Even getting out of Pennsylvania and wandering state to state didn't help her sleep. At night she still felt alone, and it felt like anything more than a sedentary life would put her into cardiac arrest from anxiety. The only thing out of the ordinary that happened to Chelsea was meeting Toby and Gryphon. In her gut she felt guilty even thinking that Toby was the cause for her short lasting peace of mind.

As she contemplated this, she turned off the television and left her motel room with the intention of walking to the nearest store and buying more coffee and possibly something to eat other than crackers and cereal bars. Once she was outside, she noticed that across the street and down a ways, under that patio she was at yesterday, was Toby. She couldn't be quite sure, he was sitting at a table with a bright green shirt and was on his phone.

Her eyes narrowed, trying to get a better look, but he was just too far away. She still felt guilty about yesterday, and even though she knew the closest store was in Toby's direction, she decided to walk the other way and avoiding him all together.

The next day she noticed the same thing when she decided to try and walk up and down Ventura Boulevard to keep awake instead of drinking a massive amount of coffee. Instead of walking, she sat on her balcony and watched him. This continued on for the next few days. At around the same time each day, Toby would show up and then leave two hours later. After four days had passed of the same thing, Chelsea finally broke and went back inside to start making coffee. Last night she had contemplated going over and talking to him, meanwhile stealing WiFi so she could watch his YouTube channels. The videos made it very obvious to her that Toby that he drank a lot of coffee.

When both her and Toby's cups were done brewing, Chelsea grabbed a few packets of sugar and creamer, that she had stolen from a convenience store when she had arrived (simply because the motel room didn't have a fridge and there was no easier way to obtain creamer for her coffee), and stuffed them in her jacket pocket. She was fully aware that it was the middle of summer in Los Angles, but her oversized hoodie was a sort of security blanket for her.

She was quiet as she walked under the patio, where Toby sat alone, staring at his phone as his thumbs moved across the screen. Slowly, Chelsea sat across from him, setting down the coffee cups and then pulling out the cream and sugar. It took Toby until then to realize that he had company and quickly he looked up from his phone.

“Brought you some coffee,” Chelsea said simply, pouring some cream and extra sugar into her cup.

“Um, hi,” Toby said after a few seconds, stumbling over his words.

“Hi,” Chelsea replied, gingerly sipping at her still hot coffee. They sat in silence after that before Chelsea asked, “You haven't thought of anything to say to me for four days?”

“You know, I did but now that... How did you know I've been here four days?” Toby asked, grabbing for his cup and adding a few sugar packets, before stopping and realizing what Chelsea had just said.

“I could see you from my motel room,” Chelsea admitted, smiling at him.

“Were you stalking me?” Toby joked back to her.

“No. Technically I think that you were trying to stalk me,” Chelsea pointed out and Toby laughed.

“Yeah well... uh-maybe,” he said, drinking his coffee as well.

“So, I watched that video you took the other day,” Chelsea said, moving their conversation along. “And you never listened to your dog's advice on getting my number.” Over the past four days Chelsea had decided that she could maybe use a friend at most from Toby. She didn't have any on this side of the country, she barely had any back home.

Toby laughed, and she couldn't tell if he was uncomfortable or just faking. “Wow, you really know how to put a guy on the spot,” he said, rubbing his forehead as he stared into his coffee cup. “Can... Can I get your number so we can maybe hang out sometime?” He then asked, after collecting himself.

“Sure,” she replied simply and waited for Toby to pick back up his phone and then said her cellphone number.

“You know, I've never had a girl tell me to ask for her number. That's a first,” Toby stated with a matter-of-fact tone, saving her number under the name “Chelbuscus”, before stowing his phone in his pant's pocket and drinking more of his coffee.

“I've never seen a guy's dog tell his owner to get a girl's number before. Or watched that man rant on numerous videos, sometimes saying nothing and then getting millions of subscribers from it,” Chelsea countered, stifling a laugh as Toby began laughing.

“I told you before, it's a complicated thing, with Tobuscus and... actual real life activities,” Toby joked and Chelsea playfully rolled her eyes. “So you said you were in a motel?”

“Yup.”

“You sure you aren't on vacation?” Toby asked, trying to pry deeper into this new girl.

“Not really,” she replied simply, most of the happiness gone from her voice in an instant.

“Business trip?”

“No, do I look like I have a job?” Chelsea tried joking but realized she had only made things slightly more awkward.

“Does it look like I have a job?” Toby replied with the same question, determined to try and keep her happy, when her mood had suddenly changed on him.

“No, but you do,” Chelsea's smile slowly began to creep back onto her face. It was a phenomenon that seemed to only be happening around him lately, whether he was in person or on a computer screen.

“Hardly something to put on a resume,” Toby said, shaking his head and staring back into his coffee cup. “So what are you doing in the motel then?” He asked, trying to gear the conversation back at Chelsea, noticing her effectiveness at avoiding herself.

“I'm kind of... living there I suppose. I've been in LA for about a week now,” Chelsea said reluctantly, expecting him to ask why.

“Where are you from?” He asked instead and surprised her.

“Pennsylvania. Well, I was born in Colorado, moved to Pennsylvania when I was fourteen,” she admitted, suddenly recalling the events of her being removed from her parent's custody and sent to live with her mother's mom. With the distant memories suddenly coming back to her, Chelsea could feel her heart quicken. She was still able to remember the taste of chlorine bleach perfectly. She immediately closed her eyes, drinking the last of her coffee quickly to try and rid the taste from her mouth.

Toby sat and watched the slightly odd reaction, and decided not to continue staring at her, but to go ahead and talk about himself again. “I'm not from here either. I was born in Mississippi before my family moved to Florida.”

“Florida's nice,” Chelsea said, nodding and trying to keep herself involved. “I was there maybe three months ago?”

“On vacation?”

“No, living in a few different motels for about two weeks.”

“Of course,” Toby smiled at her. “So, what are you doing then, moving around so much?”

Chelsea sat and thought for a moment. She knew why, she was running away from her emotions, and whenever they caught up with her she'd leave again and go someplace new. How could she translate that to Toby, however, without telling him everything she wanted to forget? “I guess I'm just trying to find a place I like.”

“Oh. I wish I had time to do that, or well... I guess I already found LA, but to just move around and leave whenever sounds nice,” Toby admitted.

“Why don't you?” Chelsea asked, leaning forward onto the table, resting her head in her hands.

“YouTube. I could barely deal moving fifteen miles to my new place a few years back. Picking up and leaving would kill my YouTube career,” he told Chelsea, finishing his own coffee.

“Maybe when you retire then,” Chelsea joked with him.

“Ha, never. I'll be doing this 'til I'm seventy,” Toby laughed, exaggerating a bit about his popularity on YouTube. Chelsea laughed as well, but before she could think of a witty reply to him his phone began to ring.

“You can answer it, it's fine,” Chelsea told Toby, due to his sudden change in emotion.

“It'll just be a second,” he said standing from the table to answer his phone. “Yeah?” Toby answered, walking away from the table to talk on the phone. He didn't sound to excited to be speaking with whoever had called. Chelsea tried not to listen in to his conversation, instead began singing in her head while focusing on the rim of her empty coffee cup, tracing it with her finger.

“Hey, Chels,” Toby said, walking back to the table, the phone still up to his ear. She looked up to him, already anticipating what he was going to say. “I, uh, I gotta go,” he told her, with the other person still talking on the other end.

“Okay,” she smiled up at him, trying to show him that she didn't much care that he suddenly had to leave. She didn't want him to feel bad.

“Yeah, I kn- I know that,” Toby told the other person, “Just give me- hang on,” he said, trying to cut the other person off and eventually just set his phone back on the table so he could talk to Chelsea.

“So, hey... I didn't really ask before but, do you wanna hang out sometime?”

“Sure,” Chelsea said with a nod, still hearing whoever had called Toby talking on the other line.

“Okay,” Toby said, a genuine smile coming back to his face, he actually looked excited. “Like tomorrow... four thirty? I'll pick you up,” he asked.

“That's fine,” Chelsea said, standing from the table as well, grabbing both her and Toby's coffee cups.

“Great,” Toby smiled, “great.” He picked up his phone again, before stopping and suddenly realizing he didn't know where to pick up Chelsea. “Where do I pick you up, though?” He asked, walking out from under the patio with her.

“Pick me up here,” she told him simply.

“Okay,” he said bringing the phone back to his ear. “Here, tomorrow at four thirty,” he repeated to himself and then they waved goodbye.