Chapter 11
London
Brady
Fresh air rushes into the back seat as the car door opens.
It takes me a second to remember where I am but as my eyes open, I realize I fell asleep with my head on Hayes’ shoulder.
But the safe and comfortable feeling from my nap disappears when I remember I still haven’t told Hayes that we’re supposed to be a couple.
I look up and see three stories of imposing brick with ornate stone carvings around the door and pale, cream trim highlighting the arched windows.
Mayfair is the first stop on our summer tour.
It’s all about to get very real, or at least real behind the scenes.
In front of the camera will be a carefully constructed fantasy with almost no relationship to reality.
I may not be the biggest influencer out there, but I know that what counts is how things look, not how they are.
I turn my neck from side to side to stretch and notice a mysterious stain on the front of Hayes’ shirt.
He thinks he’s only behind the scenes, but the For Us people expect to see us both looking camera-ready.
I don’t want his first impression to include a remnant of the chicken teriyaki from the flight, so I rummage through my bag.
“Here,” I say before moving toward the open door. I hand him a paisley sapphire and persimmon gauzy scarf. “Put this around your neck and let it hang to cover…” I move my hand around the entire front of his body where the stain is. “This.”
“I’m behind the camera. What does it matter?” he asks, not taking the scarf.
“Hayes, just put it on. I want to make a good first impression. How would it seem if my production assistant looked like the service cart from the flight ran him over?” I wrap the scarf around his neck to cover the mess to the best of my ability.
We get out of the car and I tip the driver double, telling him it’s to pay for his daughter’s birthday party next week, which he told me about at the airport.
A shimmering figure with a short, sleek cut showcasing the tightly coiled texture of her hair and wearing wide-black pants and a glittering jacket walks toward us.
I recognize Aisha from our video chats. “Hello to you both. I hope you had a pleasant journey. Traffic is awful coming in from Heathrow, so we have your room ready for you.” She glides down the steps.
“Brady, so nice to finally meet you in person.” She shakes my hand formally. Aisha has been pleasant but formal in our meetings. Her words are crisp and efficient, but this is work, not an actual vacation.
She then turns to Hayes. “And this must be your boy…” She’s going to say boyfriend. I know it. I don’t want my cover blown so quickly, so I jump in.
“This is Hayes,” I say, delaying the inevitable. “Hayes, I’d like you to meet Aisha. She has been so fabulous to work with.” I squeeze out as much enthusiasm as I can, hoping it will soften her, but it doesn’t seem to have any impact.
“This place is amazing,” Hayes says.
“St. Sebastian’s is certainly one of my favorites,” Aisha says, looking around.
“All of our hotels are repurposed buildings. This was a Victorian grammar school built in 1888.” She points to a block of carved stone near the entrance with the date.
“The schoolyards there and there…” she gestures to the sides of the building, “…have been turned into an outdoor cafe and gardens.” Stone paths meander through casually placed tables separated by leafy green topiary.
“But a little of that can go a long way. Our clientele likes things smart but understated.” Her words are more of a warning than an explanation.
Aisha walks us up the stairs and invites us to look around while she retrieves our keycards.
We enter what must have been the assembly hall of the school.
It’s been transformed into the lobby but retained some of the original details like the polished wood floors scuffed from years of students running late to class.
On the wall they’ve hung vintage chalkboards with abstract drawings that remind me of Keith Haring.
There’s a gift shop called “The Canteen” selling school-related souvenirs like pennants and up-cycled school uniforms.
I look over at Hayes to see his reaction. When we were dating and I tried to splurge on anything he scoffed and told me he didn’t need anything fancy, but I can tell he’s impressed by the clever details in the hotel.
“I have you in the Headmaster’s Suite, which is really the nicest accommodation in the entire place,” Aisha says, returning with our keycards.
“I thought we would have a nibble and go over some details. I have a surprise for you in the dining room.” Hayes is on the other side of the room in front of a vintage poster of the periodic table, so I take a few steps and peek into the dining room.
I love surprises.
But not this one.
I can see a small poster of one of the images from our old account on a table.
It’s from the night we camped in the mountains during our road trip.
Hayes has his arm stretched in front of us and he’s wearing a Clarkson cap with a big toothy grin, an ombre of spring colors in the background.
I thought I’d detest camping, but I loved feeling the cool night air on my nose as we snuggled in our sleeping bags.
Hayes was more shocked than I was. His other arm is around me in the image and I’m smiling in a way that is more for myself than the camera.
The memory is warm and fuzzy, but the feeling doesn’t last long because above the image are the words: “Brady and Hayes: The For Us Couple of the Summer! Follow our adventure. #CouplesGoals #SummerVibes. @ForUsResorts.” It’s cringe on so many levels.
I cannot let him see this before I’ve explained that we have to pretend to be a couple. Right now, he thinks he’s here to hold the camera, a human tripod, and not sexually – although he qualifies in that way certainly.
I panic and move quickly away from the dining room to make sure Hayes doesn’t go anywhere near it. My sudden motion alerts Aisha. “Is everything okay?”
I’m standing halfway between Aisha and Hayes with enough distance to leap in front of Hayes and block his entrance to the dining room if need be.
“Aisha, would you mind if I sent Hayes up to take a nap and refresh? He’s been traveling for a few days. I started off in New York, but he has come a much longer way. I can share any of the details with him later.” Hayes stifles a yawn as he walks over to us.
“That’s fine,” Aisha says with a forced smile. I don’t believe she thinks it’s fine at all, but still it allows Hayes to make a much-needed exit.
“Are you sure?” Hayes asks, but the thought of a nap must have done something to his brain because the yawn now escapes.
“I’ve got this. Why don’t you go up and maybe take a nap and a shower?
We can head out and grab some content once I come up.
” Hayes’ best manners are on display. He thanks me and tells Aisha how nice it was to meet her and that he’s looking forward to working on the project. Then he walks toward the elevator.
Aisha and I walk through the gallery toward the dining room, and she takes the poster from the table and holds it up. “What do you think?” she asks.
“I think…” I start, and then stop. I don’t know what I think. It’s painful to see how happy we were at one time, but that’s nothing compared to the pain I’m going to feel when Hayes finds out I haven’t been entirely honest about the premise of this trip. “Yes,” I say. “Love it so, so much.”
“Of course this is just a proof. We won’t have these ready until the official launch at the end of the week, but I wanted to show you how much we’ve put into this project. It’s quite a big branding effort.”
End of the week. That buys me some time. Maybe.
“I have to admit. You two are as adorable as you look on your socials.”
I try not to react. She only knows us from the smiling, happy photos on my account.
She doesn’t know that we haven’t been together in over a year and that Hayes thinks he’s here as a behind-the-scenes assistant.
The best way to handle a problem is to ignore it and hope it will go away.
Everyone knows that. As long as you’re able to conjure a permanent sense of delusion it works like a charm.
How hard is this going to be anyway? I need to get him in a few shots.
Maybe force his arm around me from time to time.
Who am I kidding? I’m going to have to choke on a crumpet so he performs the Heimlich for us to get that close again.
Once I’m over the initial shock I’m able to take in the detail of the cafe. The room must have been the school cafeteria since they turned the metal tray rail into a bar and there’s a long communal table down the center that looks like it was once filled with groups of kids on a break from class.
I think about my niece and how much I miss her.
I wonder if Gemma is excited about the wedding in Capri at the end of the summer, or her first day of kindergarten this fall.
She’s been nervous about going to “real school” for the first time but I’ve been hyping it up to get her ready.
Kindergarten is a blast. I’d much rather be going there than to law school.
A server dressed in a modern variation of a school uniform with tight plaid pants and a crisp white shirt places an elaborate tea service on the table. Scones, little sandwiches with the crusts cuts off and tiny dishes of jam, butter and clotted cream.
I swallow hard and try to move the conversation forward.
“I want to make sure I’m doing everything I can to get your engagement up,” I say.
“I’m so grateful that you found me on social media.
I’ve been curious how did such a big brand found my account?
” I’m grateful they found us, but we aren’t exactly the most obvious choice.
Aisha pours a cup of tea for me from the white porcelain teapot.
“This is a special blend made just for St. Sebastian. All of the hotels in the For Us collection have artisanal menu items crafted specifically for that place. A signature scent too.” She gracefully wafts her hand in front of her face.
“This one has notes of fresh pencil shavings.”
I close my eyes and can identify the light cedar scent.
When I open them, I assume Aisha will answer my question, but she doesn’t.
I take a sip of the tea to cover the silence.
It’s bitter, with edges of bergamot and cinnamon.
Literally not my cup of tea, but I tell her the blend is unusual and flavorful.
“I’m mostly located in London, and you’ll be on your own in Barcelona and Berlin, but I’ll be at the Capri location at the end of the trip, since it will be a big week on the island.
” I assume she means the dumb Beckenberg wedding.
She opens up her laptop, which is the cue for me to open mine.
Aisha starts talking about documents in the shared drive that I should have reviewed thoroughly before I left which I totally did not because I was too busy worrying about Hayes and seeing him again and lying to him, again.
But of course, I say I reviewed everything and how wonderful it all is because that’s what I always do.
“I think the scheduling and content goals are self-explanatory, but the engagement goals and some of the algorithms we need to hit have a bit more nuance because we’re an international company and we want to tweak some of this for multi-directional engagement and algorithmic application that will result in greater attention economies. Mostly for visual impact.”
She’s lost me. We talked about some of this pre-departure, but I was mostly focused on the idea that I would get out of the house for the summer and show my parents I could get a job on my own.
Now that I’m here I wish I was still at the beach house hanging out with Gemma and coming up with new ideas for playtime activities instead of trying to unravel all this marketing stuff that I don’t really understand.
“Brady? Are you still with me?” Aisha asks.
“Yes, of course.” I snap back to attention. Why does everything have to be so complicated?
“We are expecting high friction content tunnels that align with our brand’s storytelling.”
I’m looking right at Aisha pretending I know what she’s saying but the only definition of a high friction content tunnel I know is sitting between my ass cheeks.
What have I gotten myself into? I thought I would just be visiting places and taking pictures of me looking cute, not creating some vast social media universe of clicks and engagement.
I have no idea how to do any of this. I should have done my homework before agreeing.
She’s going to fire me before I even get started, and I can’t let that happen to Hayes.
I asked him to do this and made him give up whatever job he had going on at home.
If I come home from the summer early, not only will I feel like a complete disaster but my parents will force me to go to law school so I can have some direction.
Maybe I am just kicking the can down the road, but I’d rather do that than sit in a class on contracts and intellectual property or some other boring legal B.S.
Aisha’s phone buzzes and she looks at it, then frowns.
“Sorry. I have to take care of this. Just get plenty of images of you and your handsome boyfriend in some of Europe’s most romantic settings, send them off to our media team and they’ll take care of posting to our channels and make sure the media hits all of the engagement transactions outlined on the second spreadsheet on tab 22, 37 and 46a. What could be easier than that?”
“Nothing,” I say, and a small nervous giggle escapes from my mouth.