“Fuck.”
“How are your bookings right now?”
“Horrible.” Miles groans and buries his face in his hands.
Gabby approaches them. “You two hang out now?”
As soon as she asks that, Calvin inches away from Miles.
“He’s helping me with our financial projections,” Miles says. “We need at least a seventy percent booking rate for the rest of the year to at least break even.”
She makes a face. “Well, shit.”
Calvin looks between them. “It’ll work out,” he says, before getting up. “I’m going to go hit the gym. See you both later.”
Miles pouts and only fixes his expression when he spots Gabby watching him. He pulls up the notes app to the checklist that Calvin had started for him a week ago, and the next item is to create social media accounts.
That proves to be another challenge.
Miles has a headache after about an hour of trying to figure it out, and he moves to the reception area with Gabby so she can suffer through his bemoaning. All the clicking, the typing, the uploading of photos—it’s soboring.
Gabby asks, “How many followers does Calvin have on Instagram?”
“Five hundred thousand.” The fact that he knows that at the top of his head isn’t suspicious at all.
“You should ask him to post about the inn,” Gabby says—which, to be fair, would not be an awful idea. He’s got half a million followers, but it’d probably break his “I don’t like social media” spiel. “Or you could always hire a digital marketer. Did you know that’s what Megan’s doing now?”
Megan, Matthew’s little sister. A few years younger than them, with a strong personality, Megan had always seemed to be fond of him. Maybe he can connect with her, ask for some tips?
“I don’t know if we have the budget for that, since Mom won’t let me pay for things out of my pocket.” He chews on his thumb. Wow, they don’t have a lot of good photos of the inn. He only now realizesthat they’ve never actually had professional photographs taken, so he doesn’t have much to post anywhere. That’s another item added to the list—more photos.
The main door opens, and Matthew walks in carrying several boxes. They come up to his nose, and Miles shuts his laptop to help him out.
“Thanks,” Matthew says as Miles takes half the boxes from him. They bring it over to the cafe and place them on the counters behind the display. Miles opens a box—it’s an assortment of tarts. Matthew starts rearranging them into the glass displays, and Miles helps him.
“Gabby told me Megan’s doing digital marketing now,” Miles says, as he’s opening up another box—mini cakes, this time. He had peeked at the Instagram account of Matthew’s cafe—call it research—and saw that they regularly posted, with a few viral reels.
“She does, and she’s pretty good at it… She handles a few businesses downtown. Are you looking for someone to manage your accounts?”
“Well… no, not exactly. Maybe? I’m not sure if we have the budget for it. I… maybe?” He should really talk to Mom and discuss their cash projections—if he’s ever able to convince her to actually talk about it. “You think Megan would be interested?”
Matthew shrugs. “Who knows? You’d probably have to win her over first.”
“What are you talking about? Megan adores me.”
The look Matthew gives him says that no, she definitely does not adore him… At least not anymore. Not since they broke up.
Matthew shrugs. “Megan’s easy, though. She’ll pretend to beagainst helping you, then she’ll warm up easily. My sister’s too nice a person to hold any grudges.”
“I don’t know. She was pissed at me for an entire month that one time I ate her yogurt.”
“She was nine. Wait, I’ll give her a call right now.” Matthew takes out his phone, and before Miles is able to tell him that he needs to talk about it with Mom first, Matthew is already pulling up her contact. He presses his phone to his ear and turns away from Miles. “Hey, Megan.”
Miles strains his ears trying to listen to Matthew’s conversation with his sister. It’s over almost immediately.
“She said she’ll come over today and see how she can help you,” Matthew says.
“Oh, thank god.” Miles exhales, dramatically clutching at the front of his chest. “Thanks. This… social media thing is really not my specialty.”
