3. Hudson
Normally Hudson Millerhad fairly neutral feelings about social media. But whoever had created this latest coffee order from hell, that was, according to the customers, ‘blowing up on social media!!!’ deserved to have to be the one to make every last goddamn order.
And if it was just teenagers who were ordering a drink that had more steps than the 95 Theses, that would be one thing. But it was adults who should know better than to try shit like that on their way to work.
The demanding stares of the fifteen people waiting by the pickup counter for their drinks was only made worse by the machine that was printing out more labels from customers who had ordered ahead. The probability of them all also ordering the drink he and his coworkers had lovingly referred to as the Unicorn Vomit Coffee was far too high for his liking.
The store was far too swamped for him to hide in the back and deal with inventory and prepping more coffee, which was his preferred method of work, always.
“You know what sucks?” Frankie asked, rinsing out two blenders again.
“I don’t think we have time for that kind of list,” Hudson replied.
Frankie rolled their eyes. “That you can get away with being the tall sexy brooding guy and somehow still get hit on by everyone in this store and I have to look and sound like I’ve permanently inhaled helium so nobody complains about me being rude and unfriendly, because it’s the ass crack of dawn and I haven’t had enough sleep to be the right level of happy corporate clown.” They sighed. “Misogyny or racism?”
“Probably both,” Hudson responded. “And, not that it makes you feel better, but management loves to tell me that I have to be more friendly to customers. All the time.”
“Weirdly, it does.” They lowered their voice. “Dev said we’re almost out of the blueberry powder.”
“Good.”
Hudson glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to nine. He’d been at the cafe since four thirty and had been ready to go back home since he got out of bed this morning.
For someone who made his best art in the late hours of the night and very earliest hours of the morning, and even better when he didn’t have to interact with people, Hudson was surprised that he had been able to get any work done at all ever.
He spent every day off he had in either his bedroom/studio or finding little cabins to rent in as remote of a place as one could easily reach by the Long Island Railroad or Metro North.
But the ramping stress of being an artist on the rise, keeping up with all the social media posting so he could grow his Patreon subscribers, while still having to pretend to be even vaguely proficient at customer service had been wearing him down.
The problem was, Hudson loved making coffee. He loved the ritual of it, from grinding the beans to silly latte art. What he didn’t love was the people aspect, and the fact that he was more of a cog in a large coffee conglomerate than a person making a cup of coffee in the morning for another person.
But Cafe Kaffe did not give a shit about his customer service related feelings and American healthcare gave even less of a shit about his inability to afford to keep himself alive without his current job.
And so here he was, coffee slinger by day and Rising Star In The Art World at night, and Social Media Art Person somewhere in the middle, and just so exhausted all the time.
“Are you doing anything to celebrate the article?” Frankie asked.
“We’re going out to Nest tonight,” he said. “Wanna crash?”
“Your bougie friends? No thanks.”
“Why the hell would you think my friends are bougie?”
“I met your roommate.”
Frankie and JP had met, and it had not gone well.
Much like him and Alana.
Except for Frankie and JP, as far as he knew, had never had the world’s greatest sex one time, and then pretended it never happened.
“JP is JP,” Hudson replied. “And it’s not crashing if I invite you.”
Frankie pursed their lips.
“The food’s really good,” Hudson said. “And you’ll have fun wildly speculating with the girls.”
Frankie’s eyes lit up. “What are they wildly speculating?”
“Who owns the restaurant,” Hudson said. Add grounds, tamp down, insert into machine, flip the lever, rinse, repeat. “They won’t admit to that being the reason they want to go to Nest for dinner but…” he shrugged. “Get two drinks in any of them and immediately it’s some A03 shit about Mysterious Restaurant Owner Guy.”
Frankie shrieked with laughter. “Hudson Miller, why the hell do you know what A03 is?”
Hudson blinked innocently. “Why do you?” he retorted.
“It was my sex ed.”
“Oh, God, no.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve since learned.” Frankie turned the blenders back on again. “Wait. Is Alana going to be there tonight?”
Hudson shrugged. “Possibly.”
“She’s the one with the nails, right?”
Hudson nodded.
“Then maybe I’ll show up just so I can ask her where she gets her nails done.”
“She tags Ophelia every time she posts a picture,” Hudson replied.
Frankie eyed him suspiciously. “I do not understand you.”
Hudson shrugged. “Feeling’s mutual.”
“We’re out of blueberry,” Dev called.
Hudson heaved a sigh of relief.
There was a thick envelope from the management company in the mailbox when Hudson got home, which meant the new lease. Should the management company have sent the lease like, three months before? Yes. Did it sometimes seem that they were coasting on just vibes? Also yes, which, unsurprisingly, led to their apartment falling apart slowly. But the rent was low enough that neither Hudson nor JP, his roommate, could rationalize moving.
JP was hunched over his desk when Hudson knocked on the door. “New lease,” Hudson said, waving the envelope. “And a caramel latte with an extra shot.”
“I know you hate that fucking job,” JP said, pulling off his headphones, “but this is the one perk of it.”
“I can make espresso at home, too,” Hudson pointed out.
“Yeah, but you don’t.” JP took a sip of coffee and sighed happily. “Want to do the honors or should I?”
“Go for it.” Hudson dropped onto the floor, and stretched out.
“There’s a whole ass chair, Hudson.”
“I know, but sometimes I need to lie on the floor.”
JP ripped open the envelope, and scanned it. “Well, shit,” he finally said.
“Did they raise it more than usual?”
“They sold the building, and so now some other management company is sending a lease,” JP said.
“Maybe they won’t suck as much as these people do.”
“Considering how much they want to charge for this apartment, they better be.”
Hudson braced. “How bad?”
JP said a number, and Hudson blinked repeatedly. “Jay, did you maybe read the decimal point in the wrong place?”
“I wish I fucking did.” JP leaned down to Hudson, and passed him the sheaf of papers.
Hudson looked at the number, looked at it again, then closed his eyes, shook his head, and looked at it a third time.
Still the same horrifying number.
“Who the fuck would pay that much money for this dump?” Hudson demanded.
“They opened a juice bar down the block,” JP pointed out. “It was only a matter of time.”
“Well, shit.”
“Yup.” JP pulled off his headphones. “I think I also need the floor for a little bit.”
Hudson shifted, so JP had room to stretch out next to him.
The two of them were silent for a few minutes, just trying to process what had just happened, and what they were going to have to do now.
Finally, JP turned to Hudson.
“Is it just me, or does it kinda smell like mold down here?”
Hudson sniffed.
“Not just you.” He sat up with a groan. “Ugh. Now the floor is ruined for me.”
“Good thing it won’t be ours for that much longer,” JP said with a sigh.
“What if I just didn’t go,” Hudson contemplated later that afternoon.
“To a dinner we’re going to specifically for you?” JP asked.
“Yup.” Hudson stared at his iPad and wondered why he couldn’t figure out how to make this project work.
“That’s only acceptable if you’re dead.”
“Isn’t dead inside close enough?”
“Hudson. Come on. Don’t be an ass.”
“But I’m tired.” Hudson could hear his tone of voice shifting slowly into whining territory. “And I’ve had to deal with people all day.”
“People you like aren’t the same thing.” JP closed his laptop. “And anyway, you’re off the next three days and Jaz has already agreed to let you use her cabin to go be by yourself doing alone artist shit while she’s here working on a new song. Spend some time with people who are proud of you for real before going to hibernate.”
Hudson sighed. “I fucking hate my job, JP. And the artist visa process for the UK is a nightmare.”
“What about Canada?”
“Still waiting to hear back from them, too.”
“Too bad you don’t know Canadians who want a platonic husband,” JP said.
“Or British or Scottish or Irish or Welsh or French or Spanish…” Hudson trailed off. “Why can’t I be a mail order husband for someone?”
JP laughed, and then paused. “Wait, that’s brilliant.”
“Uh. What.”
But JP had already pulled out his phone and was typing furiously. “Jaz was saying she wanted to work on a song with an old Americana feel to it. There’s potential in Mail Order Husband. Give me five minutes and I’ll be ready to leave.” He glanced up. “Go put on some shoes.”
Hudson took one last glance at the blank screen taunting him and went to put on his shoes. If only creativity could flow like it did for JP in moments like this.
But no, he had to be a delicate flower who could only work when his mind wasn’t whirling at forty thousand miles an hour.
Whoever claimed that you had to suffer to make good art was a goddamn liar and Hudson wished one hundred and twenty-seven orders of Unicorn Vomit Coffee for them to make in a two-hour period.
All of the usual suspects were at dinner that night, and much to their collective delight, so was Frankie.
Well, collective except for JP.
Alana, Frankie, and Ophelia were sitting clustered together, in deep discussion about possibly nail art or world domination–either was a distinct possibility for them.
And JP was maybe a little bit right. It was nice to hang out with people who he actively enjoyed spending time with, even if it was just in small doses.
A change of scenery was always good.
And so was the French onion soup pasta.
It was Wednesday, which was Buy One Cocktail, Get One Free night at Nest, which meant that not only was the restaurant crowded, but all his friends were pretending that they were twenty-one again instead of barreling toward thirty.
Hudson sipped on a mocktail that DeShawn, one of the two bartenders, had promised he’d love, and let himself sink back into the cushions of the booth.
Sure, they were celebrating him (which he didn’t think too deeply about), but mostly he was just an excuse for them to hang out. With everyone’s schedules increasingly more and more demanding, big meetups were getting fewer and further in between.
Hudson sighed wistfully. Sure, Revenge Magazine had written a super flattering article about him and his art, but the whole piece had just felt like they were talking about some other guy whose name was coincidentally also Hudson Miller. Not him.
Not the guy who had been teetering closer and closer to panic attacks before going to work every day and then coming home and staring at his mocking, empty canvases.
Whoever Article Hudson was, he had his shit together.
Real Hudson’s shit was floating down the river on a high-speed barge, leaving him languishing on a dock that smelled like sewage and disappointment.
“Hudsonnnn,” Alana Bruckner sang as she settled down on the cushions next to him. “It’s my favorite local arteeeest.”
“Lana, are you drunk?”
Alana sighed. “Only the smallest bit. Just enough for courage but not enough to hangover too much tomorrow. I hope.”
“Courage for what?” Hudson tried not to remember the last time they were this close to each other and failed miserably.
They had both been sober then, and achingly aware of the other’s presence, crammed in the back of Jamie’s car as they drove home from Connecticut, pretending that they hadn’t fucked each other wild and that they were just the same casual friendly acquaintances they had been when the trip started.
“A little birdy told me you hate your job,” Alana said.
Her nails were oxblood with delicate blue and white lines twining through them. According to her Instagram post of the nails, she and Ophelia had decided the next few months were going to be Fun with Human Anatomy. He could spend all day staring at her.
Her nails.
“Which birdy?” Hudson asked.
Alana shrugged. “A little one. Obviously.”
“Oh. Right. Of course.” She was tipsy, and it was the most adorable thing Hudson had ever seen.
How he could manage to want her so much and know that it was never ever actually going to happen was the universe being a bastard, truly it was.
“I had a proposition for you.” Alana leaned forward. “But it’s a secret.”
“I don’t like secrets.”
Her eyes flashed. “Don’t be a liar, Hudson. We both know you do.”
“Don’t accuse me of lying,” Hudson practically hissed. “I’m not the one who likes secrets here.”
“First of all, yes you do. Second of all, this is not supposed to go like this.” Alana took a deep breath in and let it out slowly. “You smell nice.”
Hudson eyed her wearily. “What do you want, Alana?”
“What would you say if I told you that I could help you quit your job and you wouldn’t have to worry about health insurance.”
“Why are we asking hypothetical questions?”
“Just answer, would you?”
Hudson sighed. “Fine. I’d want to know how.”
“What if you’d have to say yes to whatever it was before I told you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Too many variables.”
“For someone who is an arteest, you use a hell of a lot more math terms than I do and I’m a professional…well, not math. Never mind. It made more sense in my head.”
“I have no idea where this is going,” Hudson said with as much patience as he could find.
Her eyelids glittered.
So did her cheekbones.
She was a human disco ball and glitter bomb all in one.
Beautiful, potentially dangerous, would haunt you for eternity.
“Want to get married?”
Hudson stared at Alana for a full minute.
“I beg your pardon?” he finally said, wincing as he heard strains of his grandmother in his tone.
“I dunno, it seemed fairly simple to understand. Me. You. Sign some paperwork at the courthouse and then we’re married.”
“To each other.”
“Yup.”
“What would possess either of us to do something like that?” Hudson asked. “You don’t even like me.”
“First of all, you don’t even like me. Second of all, because health insurance.”
This conversation was making less and less sense. Following a tipsy Alana’s train of thought was like going through a corn maze that someone had designed on an acid trip, and chances were you were blindfolded.
“Don’t you have health insurance from your job?”
“Yeah. And if we get married, you can have it, too. And then you can leave your shitty coffee job and just make art.”
“Why would you do that? And don’t tell me it’s out of the goodness of your heart.”
“Because I need a husband,” Alana said, as if that was a sentence that made any logical sense.
“A husband.”
“Well, not a real one. A paper one. Except for when he has to be real.”
Hudson rubbed his temples. Maybe all of this did actually make sense and all the Unicorn Coffee orders had gone to his head. “Alana, what are you talking about?”
“Well, I maybe on purpose told my doctor about my husband and now he wants to meet him and I can’t get my total hysterectomy until my husband tells my doctor he doesn’t want any babies ever.”
“How much did you have to drink?”
“Not a lot. But I maybe forgot to eat today.”
Hudson refilled his glass of water and handed it to her. “Drink this.”
“Water is boring.”
“Alana.” Hudson’s voice dropped an octave. “Drink the water.”
Alana froze. “Okay,” she said quietly, the faintest blush staining her cheeks.
Hudson was fucked.
“Did you eat dinner yet?” he asked as she sipped the water, peering over the top of the glass at him.
“Not really. I was stressed. I’ve never proposed to anyone before.”
Hudson waited until she finished the glass of water and pushed over his half-eaten plate of pasta. “Eat.”
“Oooh. Pasta.” Alana looked up at him. “You didn’t answer the proposal question, though. I was gonna buy you a ring, but I figured that would be too uncomfy. Especially since it’s just a paper marriage and stuff.” She snickered. “Do you know that that’s the traditional thing you’re supposed to get for a first anniversary?”
“Eat some pasta first, we can talk about your sudden urge to get married after.”
“It’s not sudden,” Alana said, forking up a bite of pasta, “and it’s not a real person marriage. It’s just I need someone to be my husband on paper so I can have surgery and they can be my ‘mergency contact.” She looked up at him. “You can have sex with whoever you want when we’re married. It’s not real. It’s just for fake. We can be married for however long you need until you don’t need my insurance anymore, and we don’t have to tell anyone.”
“And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Are you also going to have sex with whoever you want?”
Why was he indulging her in this conversation?
Alana snickered. “Maybe after they take out all of my insides. Sex is complicated.”
Sex did not at all seem complicated when they had had it. If anything, it seemed like there was nothing as simple.
“Anyway. I’m gonna stop eating your pasta and go back to my seat because Matilda and Shannon and Frankie are writing a romance novel about Mystery Restaurant Man and I wanna know how it ends.”
“Won’t it just end with him falling in love and living happily ever after?”
Alana smiled, a small dimple showing. “But I wanna know how he gets there, Hudson. The getting there is the best part.” She reached over and patted his beard. “Think about it, okay?”
“Uh-huh.”
Alana sashayed away and Hudson did his best not to moon after her when she left.
They’d been in the same extended friend group for years, and he didn’t think he’d ever seen her like that. Sure, she was affectionate and friendly with their other friends, but never with him.
He glanced toward her again, and instead caught Shannon’s eye. She smiled at him.
He pointed to his glass of water and plate of food, then at Alana.
Shannon winked and saluted, and turned back to the conversation she was having with Deacon.
“What was that about?” JP asked, sliding back into the booth.
Hudson shrugged. “I think Alana’s a little drunk.”
JP looked over. “She looks sober to me.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” Hudson replied.
He reached to his glass to take a drink and hoped that JP didn’t notice when he put his lips to the faint lipstick mark that Alana had left on his glass.
The next morning, he had a text from Alana.
She’d never texted just him before.
‘I meant it,’ was all the text said.
Hudson spent the next three days trying and failing to make art and instead thinking about what it would be like to be actually married to Alana Bruckner.