Chapter 61 Joshua's Study Materials
When Chloe finally emerged from the teenager’s bedroom carrying the completely scraped-clean plate, Nathan was standing in the dim kitchen, quietly pouring himself a glass of ice water.
Hearing her soft footsteps, he turned around. "Mission accomplished?"
"Please. Soothing defensive little boys is practically my Olympic specialty, isn't it?" She placed the empty plate into the stainless-steel sink with a triumphant smirk. "You'd better not forget exactly how I expertly handled you back in the day when you threw tantrums."
"That's completely true," Nathan chuckled softly, walking over to turn on the faucet. He rolled up his sleeves and began washing the dishes. "You were always the gentlest."
Chloe stood intimately beside him, leaning her hip against the granite counter, watching his large hands work the sponge.
After a long, comfortable silence, her expression turned serious. She lowered her voice to a whisper. "About Mason's actual biological background... we should absolutely never tell him, right?"
Nathan paused mid-scrub. He turned the water off and looked down at her, his dark eyes unreadable.
"I just think things are perfectly fine exactly the way they are," Chloe nodded firmly. "He shouldn't have to carry that trauma."
"Then we will leave it buried forever," Nathan agreed smoothly.
Chloe smiled, leaning her shoulder against his bicep. "He absolutely adores you, you know. He's fiercely protective. He's constantly trying to ruthlessly secure the top spot in your heart."
Nathan smiled faintly, looking back down at the sink.
Chloe stepped fully into his personal space, tilting her chin up. "Hey, Professor... tell me the absolute truth. Am I still your number one?"
Nathan looked down at her. He didn't say a single word.
He remained exactly in the same position, his hands still covered in white, soapy foam. He simply turned his head slightly, leaned down, and pressed a breathtakingly soft, lingering kiss directly to the corner of her lips.
Then, still completely silent, he lifted his head, his dark pupils entirely filled with her reflection.
Chloe pursed her lips, a brilliant, thoroughly satisfied smile breaking across her face. "Okay. I got your answer."
"I love you, too," she whispered.
With that, she confidently rose up on her tiptoes, wrapping her clean hands around his neck, and kissed him back.
This time, Nathan didn't flinch. He didn't aggressively pull away or invent an excuse to push her off. Instead, he completely surrendered, leaning down to return her kiss with a desperate, agonizingly slow gentleness.
Under the pale moonlight streaming through the kitchen window, it felt like they were instantly transported back in time, seamlessly rediscovering the absolute, intoxicating rhythm they had perfected in their youth.
But suddenly, the hairs on the back of Chloe’s neck violently stood up. They both simultaneously felt the heavy, lethal weight of someone staring at them.
They jerked apart, both turning their heads to find Mason standing dead center in the hallway. He was gripping an empty glass of water, glaring at them with an expression of absolute, unfiltered disgust.
Chloe and Nathan quickly took a massive step away from each other, both forcing incredibly awkward, guilty smiles like two teenagers caught making out by their parents.
Mason, however, acted as if he hadn't seen anything traumatic. He marched into the kitchen, aggressively filled his glass from the fridge dispenser, turned on his heel to leave, and then violently spun back around.
"Listen to me. I do not care if you two are dating," the teenager declared, his voice cracking slightly. "But I will absolutely, fundamentally not accept you guys having a baby!"
With that terrifying ultimatum delivered, he stormed back down the hall, violently slamming his bedroom door shut.
"Good god," Chloe muttered under her breath, fanning her flushed face. "Who exactly does he get that terrifying, borderline psychotic possessiveness from?"
"You, obviously," Nathan replied utterly deadpan, picking his sponge back up.
Chloe sighed heavily. What else was she supposed to do with her little brother? She was just going to have to aggressively spoil him until he stopped seeing her as a threat.
The next afternoon, Chloe and Joshua were back on the middle school campus, aggressively trying to film a promotional video for a new teen apparel campaign.
Honestly, Chloe found the entire ad script completely unbearable and borderline cringeworthy.
Joshua, however, was directing the camera crew with absolute, unhinged passion, aggressively declaring it his absolute best script of the entire fiscal year.
The bizarre storyboard featured two beautiful high school girls aggressively competing for the attention of a moody, popular jock. They fought over him in the library, at the lockers, and on the field. But in the final twist ending, the jock completely ignores both girls, choosing instead to intensely lock eyes and walk off into the sunset with his male best friend.
Chloe stood behind the monitors, thoroughly confused. She nudged Joshua. "Why do literally all of your ad scripts end with the two guys ditching the girls to hang out together?"
"God, you are so unbelievably out of touch!" Joshua groaned, shooting her a deeply condescending look. "In today's market, if you don't aggressively play up the intense bromance chemistry, absolutely no one on social media is going to share the video!"
"Bromance?" Chloe blinked. "I've literally only ever heard of provolone, brie, cheddar..."
"Hold on, what century are you operating in?!" Joshua completely abandoned the camera, staring at her in horror. "It's a foundational pillar of slash culture in the modern fan fiction world! Basically, the primary demographic absolutely loves analyzing romantic, unspoken tension between two male leads."
Seeing Chloe's completely blank, utterly clueless expression, Joshua aggressively pulled out his iPhone. "This is an emergency. I have an entire folder of beginner educational materials saved. I am sending them to you right now so you aren't completely useless at your job."
Chloe immediately adopted a highly serious, studious posture, ready to receive the critical marketing data.
Joshua typed rapidly. "I just texted you the password and the URL. It's a temporary shared link from a cloud drive. You need to save the files to your local device immediately before the server link automatically expires."
"Link?" Chloe stared down at the blue hyperlink in her iMessage, completely paralyzed, entirely unsure how a shared cloud drive functioned.
Seeing that Joshua had already sprinted back to aggressively direct the actors, she felt far too humiliated to ask him for technical support. She decided to temporarily suppress her confusion.
When the crew broke for lunch, she finally hunted down Mason, finding him sitting alone at a table in the school cafeteria. She immediately shoved her iPhone directly into his face.
"Hey, tech support. Can you open this for me? Joshua sent it. He said it's highly important study material for my job."
Mason took the device, glanced at the text thread, and looked up at her with absolute, unfiltered incredulity. "You genuinely do not know how to click a basic Dropbox link? Jesus Christ, Chloe, what forgotten corner of the planet did you crawl out from?"
"I literally just woke up from a coma from outer space! Are you happy now?" Chloe crossed her arms defensively.
Mason rolled his eyes aggressively. He tapped the short link on the screen, instantly redirecting the browser to a secure file-sharing page, and hit Download All.
"Isn't this literally just the exact same thing as sending a really big email attachment?" Chloe commented, watching the progress bar.
"Not even remotely close," Mason muttered, not even bothering to look up. "This is a decentralized cloud server. The file is hosted remotely, and one click automatically syncs it for local download or streaming. Do AOL email attachments from 2003 offer this kind of encrypted bandwidth?"
"Oh..." Chloe drawled, genuinely impressed. "Modern technology is terrifying."
The media file was massive and took a solid three minutes to buffer.
Just as it hit 99%, Joshua began screaming Chloe's name from the courtyard set, desperately demanding her approval on a lighting setup.
"I'll be right back!" Chloe yelled, sprinting out of the cafeteria.
Mason leaned lazily against his chair, idly watching the progress bar on her screen hit 100%. A loud notification dingechoed from the speaker.
Curious about what kind of corporate marketing data took up that much storage, Mason accidentally tapped the primary video file to open it.
In an absolute, blinding instant, highly aggressive, deeply explicit, moaning audio blasted at maximum volume from the iPhone's speakers.
Three passing 8th-grade boys immediately skidded to a halt, gathering around Mason's table with massive, absolute grins on their faces.
"Whoa... Mason! You are an absolute legend!"
"Dude, I never would have guessed you were into this kind of hardcore stuff!"
"Wild stuff, man! Send me the link!"
"Shut up! This isn't mine! It's my sister's phone!" Mason screamed, his face flushing a violent, catastrophic crimson as he frantically mashed the power button, completely locking the screen and cutting the audio.
He violently shoved his chair back, sprinting out of the cafeteria and storming directly onto the active commercial set. He aggressively hunted Chloe down behind the monitors and violently slammed the iPhone directly into her chest.
His voice was a furious, hushed hiss, brimming with absolute humiliation. "Chloe! What the absolute hell did you just make me download in the middle of my cafeteria?! You are an absolute, disgusting pervert!"
Chloe stumbled backward, catching the phone, utterly confused. She blinked, completely baffled as to why the teenager was suddenly having a meltdown.
Teenage boys really did have the most unpredictable, hormonal tempers!
She unlocked the screen and innocently tapped on the paused video to see what the marketing data was.
Her eyes blew completely wide open in sheer, absolute shock.
Was this seriously the new advertising trend among modern youth?!
This was entirely explicit!
"Why the hell are you watching that out in the open hallway?"
Chloe jumped violently. Michael had just walked onto the set to check on the production, and had stopped right behind her, easily catching a full glimpse of the wildly inappropriate screen.
Chloe’s entire worldview was violently crumbling. She looked up at her boss, completely dazed. "Joshua explicitly told me this was vital demographic study material."
Michael immediately spun around, his voice echoing across the courtyard with terrifying, corporate authority. "Joshua! Stop sending your coworkers your degenerate slash fiction right now!"
"I’m so sorry!" Joshua shrieked from across the set, instantly dropping his clipboard and sprinting behind a light reflector to hide.
"The modern world is changing entirely too fast," Chloe murmured, staring blankly at the brick wall. "I cannot keep up. I genuinely cannot."
Michael ruthlessly snatched the phone out of her hand. With three quick swipes, he permanently deleted the entire downloaded folder from her hard drive. "You absolutely do not need to go out of your way to understand this degenerate subculture."
"Hey! Why did you delete the data?!" Chloe snapped out of her daze, trying to aggressively grab her phone back. "Joshua said this specific dynamic is incredibly lucrative right now! I have to understand market trends!"
"It is completely unnecessary," Michael said coldly, handing the wiped phone back to her. "Elite, high-end marketing ideas absolutely do not come from blindly pandering to internet trends."
He looked her dead in the eye, his tone surprisingly serious. "Chloe, use your own goddamn brain. Do not just blindly consume whatever garbage other people hand you."
With that, he lightly smacked her on the top of the head with his rolled-up production folder and calmly walked away toward the director's chairs.
Chloe rubbed her head, scowling at his retreating back. "Yeah, yeah. You're the brilliant visionary boss. You know absolutely everything. Whatever."
With Michael physically looming over the set like a hawk, the production crew moved with terrifying efficiency. They managed to wrap the entire commercial shoot before 3:00 PM.
The crew packed up their gear, said their goodbyes, and quickly scattered.
Chloe stood on the curb, checking the time on her phone. It was still incredibly early in the afternoon, and the thought of taking an Uber back to the empty mansion alone seemed agonizingly boring.
She smiled, a brilliant idea forming. She was going to surprise Nathan at the university and finally see exactly where he worked.