Chapter 18 #2
“Thank you. Our barista will be making your order. It’ll be ready at the end there shortly.”
Alexander stands primed and in position. He starts up the coffee machine and presses some buttons.
“Look how he makes the Hot Messpresso. Very mindful. Very demure.” Jools turns to the camera phones behind them. “He even takes the time to let the coffee sit. Very mindful. Not like those baristas at the other stores.”
The right corner of Alexander’s lip lifts as he tries not to break character. He grabs the chocolate to add the mess to the espresso, but pauses.
“Would you like the chocolate mess for the Messpresso or the cream?”
Alexander’s blue eyes sparkle like diamonds as he looks at Jools.
“The chocolate please.” Jools winks at him and turns back to the phones.
“Look at how he asks me what kind of mess I’d like. Very considerate. Very cutesy.”
“Here you go.” Alexander hands over the drink as Jools slides a five-dollar bill into the tip jar.
“See how I leave a tip. Very mindful. Very considerate.” Jools turns on her kitten heels and walks off to the door.
“That. Was. Everything,” Chloe says to me when they stop, her hands clasped together. “I still can’t believe we got Jools to do this.”
“I guess it helps when Alexander’s the one serving,” I say as Alexander walks around from the counter, taking off his apron and grabbing his phone from his back pocket.
“Could we get a picture?” Alexander asks Jools as she walks back.
“You want a picture with me?” She holds her hand clutched to her chest. “Of course. I need to show the world how mindful, how demure I am.”
Paul, standing hear the two of them, widens his eyes at the camp inflection in Alexander’s tone. The look on his face, the same expression every gay man sees when met with judgment, sparks a flicker of frustration in my chest that takes three deep breaths to extinguish.
You’re better than that. You’re better than him.
I step away, fire off a couple of emails, and thank God that Pietro, as ignorant as he may be around the issues gay men face, has never greeted me with one of the looks Paul just gave Alexander. It’s the exact same look my dad gave me when I came out, just before he died.
“He finally messaged back.” Alexander excitedly runs from his suite through the adjoining door into my hotel room, waving his phone at me.
Rob had kindly agreed to swap rooms with me, creating one less obstacle to navigate with the prying eyes of the Brewed team. Caryn was already growing slightly suspicious after Alexander had insisted that I sit next to him on the flight here to Oklahoma City.
I read through Bruce’s text, acknowledging that he saw Alexander’s interview on The View and he’ll see him for Thanksgiving next week.
Alexander had taken a moment during the interview to correct the record about his father knowing anything about his friend being an abuser, and had mentioned how much he is looking forward to hosting his parents and brother next week for the holiday.
“That’s great,” I say, passing the phone back and pulling my laptop out from my bag. I place it on the round desk next to the light-blue bean-shaped couch, a contrast to the dark navy-blue walls. The howling winds strengthen outside.
A severe storm in Oklahoma City held up our flight for over ninety minutes, delaying our arrival at the downtown hotel until past midnight.
My already crowded inbox, which I couldn’t access on the flight, is now flooded with work that needs to be dealt with before tomorrow.
Damn commercial flights and their unreliable Wi-Fi connection.
Alexander, thankfully, seems more tolerant for my need to work at this hour than my ex, Ryan, ever was. Ryan had always tried to convince me to put my phone down when we first started going out, unaware of the demands of my job or the need to impress my boss.
Your inbox is someone else’s to-do list, Ryan would say.
I’d thought he just didn’t get it. But scrolling through my inbox now, I can see that pretty much every email is asking for updates on the various campaigns I work on, wanting the advertising spends, click-through rates, projections, and forecasts for future campaigns.
“It’s really coming down out there.”
Alexander peers out the window behind the couch and I turn to take a brief look, noticing that the rain is coming down sideways. The light from the freestanding lamp highlights the scratch on his cheek, no longer hidden by the makeup Erica applied this morning to conceal it.
“Do you need anything?” Alexander puts his hands on my shoulders, gently massaging them while I look through the various real-time reports of the Jools video on socials.
“I’m good, thanks.”
The engagement rates on the video are some of the craziest I’ve seen. It has already racked up a million likes and over fifty thousand shares in the last nine hours. And that’s before any advertising spend has been put behind it.
The hashtag #TheBrewedChallenge seems to have gone viral too.
Users are posting videos, trying to recreate how Alexander pours the drink, often with some great one-liners.
One video response in particular almost has the same level of engagement as the Jools video.
The subject is a midwestern mum, looking worn out, hiding from her children in her car.
“You see how I’m drinking this coffee,” she says, pouring a miniature bottle of whiskey into her iced coffee. “Very brazen, very toxic.”
Alexander is in pieces behind me, watching the clip, which also has me laughing.
This mother is an absolute genius.
No wonder it’s going viral.
Alexander jumps over the back of the couch and joins me.
“We should get her to one of the activation events and do a video with her.”
“Great minds,” I say as I scroll through more videos. “I was just thinking we could create a new #LeaveItToBrewed hashtag.”
Some videos have people spilling their coffees all over themselves. Others forget to put the lid on their blenders for the ice-blended coffees, leaving a mess all over their ceilings.
I fire off a quick email to Chloe and Caryn with links to the viral videos, while Alexander DMs the mum to find out where she’s located and if she’d be open to doing a video collaboration.
I’m so used to doing everything on my own, with Sara always too caught up in Tony to ever help and Olly still coming to grips with everything, that it’s weird having Alexander sitting beside me and helping bring this idea to life. But it’s a strangely comforting feeling that I could get used to.
“She’s already messaged back!” Alexander’s excitement level is almost as high as the ceiling. “Apparently her daughters love me, and she’d be down to do the video. She lives not too far from here, in Amarillo, Texas.”
A quick look on Google maps highlights that she’s roughly two hundred sixty miles away, but that’s not exactly close either. God bless Americans and their idea of a distance that far being relatively close.
“What time and where is the store?” He’s already typing away into his phone.
“It’s midday, just down by the riverway. Let me send you the address.”
I pick up my phone and ping him with the details.
“Got it. I’m just going to get changed for bed.” Alexander gets up, kisses me on the head, and leaves me to continue working my way through emails. My attention is briefly drawn by his quiet confidence as he walks back through the adjoining door to his suite.
I had been concerned about how today would go, but things went smoothly.
Alexander’s been in good form, both kind and caring all day.
The way he spoke with Marcelo at Brewed in Manhattan.
How he politely took pictures with all the stewardesses on the flight.
The way he held open the door for everyone to enter the hotel tonight, brushing Rob away.
The selfish, careless, and reckless character I’d portrayed him as after he left me back in June is being erased, one small action at a time.
He’s offering me a snapshot of how things could be between us in the future, and correcting the rocky foundations our relationship was previously built upon, leaving me cautiously optimistic.
It’s almost 2 a.m. by the time I finish getting through my emails. Alexander is asleep in his suite. The sound of him softly snoring drifts through the adjoining door, barely audible over the raging wind outside.
I deliberate whether to join him, but I’m desperate for some rest, so I settle instead for crawling into my own bed.
I pull off my jeans and top, drawing back the duvet and sliding into the comfort of the crisp Egyptian cotton sheets.
The floral scent helps ease me into a sleepless state, so I grab my phone and flick through Instagram.
The latest pictures Andrew has posted of his birthday celebrations show him smiling and laughing in each one. They’re reassuringly comforting, even if he’s still pissed off at me.
Just as I put my phone down to the side and plug it into the charger, a piercing sound emanates all around me.
My phone and Alexander’s iPad, left on the table by the couch, both light up.
A loud groan from next door tells me Alexander has awakened.
The darkness from his suite is replaced by a soft light along the carpet.
I reach for my phone and my shoulders tense as I see the message.
Emergency Alert
National Weather Service: TORNADO WARNING in this area until 5:45 AM CDT.
Take shelter now in a basement or an interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building.
If you are outdoors, in a mobile home, or in a vehicle, move to the closest substantial shelter and protect yourself from flying debris. Check media.