When Kaya Perry graduates college, the last place she wants to go back is Layton, the town that she left behind. She left that place with bad memories and no friends, so there is no way she's looking to go back. So it's really a bummer when the job...
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Kaya woke up to the smell of bacon. Glancing at her clock, she saw that it was eight-thirty and sat up, rubbing her eyes. She gazed around her room, wondering how she got there, before shaking her head and climbing out of her bed. The wooden floor was cold and she shivered, walking to her wardrobe to pull out a pair of fuzzy socks.
When she went to the kitchen, Ty was just finishing cooking.
He hadn't noticed her, so she took the time to admire him from behind. He didn't know that she had some feelings for him, but she knew he had feelings for her. Whenever asked, the two continually danced around the topic of relationships, preferring to keep things platonic.
But she noticed things. Things that she hadn't been looking for before. She noticed the little glances her way, how he lit up when he saw her, how he always shifted in her direction whenever they were near each other. Even if Olivia hadn't confirmed that Ty had feelings for Kaya, she would have noticed sooner or later. And Ty had never been subtle whenever he liked someone. Like a moth to a flame, he always ended up near them, trying his hardest to bask in their light.
Before he could turn and notice her watching him, she spoke.
"I thought you had a shoot this morning?" she asked.
Ty jumped, not expecting Kaya to be awake. Kaya was thankful that she had waited until he wasn't holding the hot pan that was still sizzling with bacon grease. He smiled when he saw her and started putting plates of French toast and bacon on the table and got syrup from her pantry. It didn't surprise her that he knew her kitchen so well since he liked cooking at her place more than his. "It was canceled. The shoot was supposed to be outside but it's supposed to rain for the rest of today and tomorrow."
"Oh," Kaya said, taking a seat at the table that sat in the middle of the kitchen. "Thanks for making breakfast, by the way."
Ty shrugged. "It's the least I could do," he said. "I mean, I did come here at eleven at night. I probably woke you up."
"Nah," Kaya said. "I had just sent off a project and was about to soak in the tub." She watched him gulp at the mention of the tub and fought a little smile.
He cleared his throat and doused his food in syrup. Kaya did the same. The two ate in silence and, once finished, cleaned the kitchen together. Kaya had to keep herself from thinking about how nice it was being with Ty in the kitchen.
It was like they could read each other's minds, always moving in sync. They didn't have to speak to know what each other was doing and finished cleaning in no time. Kaya noticed Ty's stare linger a couple of times, and when she caught him watching he turned away, red staining his cheeks. When he wasn't looking, Kaya smiled.
Later that day, Ty left with Kaya's umbrella, promising to bring it back as soon as he could. Even if he didn't have a shoot, he still had work to do on his desktop back at his place. There was only so much he could do on his laptop without the proper software. He scoffed at Kaya's urges to put the same software on his laptop so that he could work on things elsewhere, but he commented that he preferred working in his office at home rather than out in the world where people could see what he was doing.
Kaya finished cleaning her house that day, washing clothes and figuring out if she wanted to continue to renovate the place or not. Though she was still technically living in her mother's home, she had full reign of what she wanted to do with the place because Augusta didn't care. She still hadn't renovated her kitchen, and there were still the two other guest rooms that needed upgrading. She decided that she would sleep on it and come back to the idea the next day.
The next few weeks passed in a blur, without seeing Ty even once. Maybe it could have bothered Kaya that she didn't have any close friends near her and that a lot of people didn't contact her, but she was too busy to notice or even care. Her days were involved in editing videos and working on commissions. When Ty brought her in, he brought her in with a ready-made clientele and she was grateful for it. Though her clients were wary at first, they found that they liked Kaya and her work ethic. She was slowly becoming more comfortable in the quiet in her home, starting to prefer the silence and a clearer sense of self rather than hanging out around people that didn't care whether or not she felt comfortable.
Although she enjoyed being in the comfort of her home, she did sometimes join Ty at his studio. The two of them would work in silence, though when they needed to they would bounce ideas off of each other. She was still Ty's employee, though with her commissions quickly becoming a bigger part of her life she wasn't sure if she would be able to juggle both jobs.
"I can always find another assistant," Ty said one day, as he adjusted the lens on one of his favorite cameras. They had just finished an indoor shoot—another modeling portfolio, like he had done months before. "I offered you the job to get your foot in the door and give you the necessary experience."
"If I left here," Kaya replied, "then it wouldn't look good on my resume. It'd look like I couldn't keep a job."
Ty shrugged. "To the right people, it wouldn't matter. Remember what I said a while back about knowing your worth? Like babe, you've filmed and edited for some big brands in the last few months. Your business is expanding and you're talented at what you do. The fact that it looks like you're job-hopping doesn't matter."
Kaya kept quiet. He was right, but she was still hesitating. She loved working with Ty. They got along well inside and outside of the studio, and he was one of the main reasons she got back behind the camera. But she also knew that sooner or later she wouldn't be able to sustain working as a freelancer and as Ty's assistant. Her business had grown in leaps and bounds and she had gotten really good at what she did really fast. Not only that, but the shoots she went to required her to travel (which was paid for, along with her lodging) and she couldn't sustain that for too much longer.
She knew that she'd have to make a decision.
Soon enough, Kaya realized that it had been a year since she graduated college and she deserved a celebration in the form of vacation. To other people, it may have been weird that she was celebrating being out of school for a year, but to her, it was an accomplishment. When she graduated, she didn't know what she would be doing in a year but there she was, in two jobs that were hard at times but she loved. She had three close friends that supported her, two kids that looked up to her, and she was learning to better love herself.
The vacation was very much needed. She needed time to herself to see if she really wanted to work with Ty or if she would choose the freelancer life. She would see, then, what she really wanted, though she thought that she already knew.
