“I’ll do it,” I offer quickly, stopping him. Usually I let all calls go to voicemail, but I’m waiting on one in particular.
Using the key on the ring in my pocket, I let myself into the keg room and pull out my phone.
“Dom,” I say my cousin’s name in lieu of a greeting.
“Where are you at?”
“Don’t end your sentence in a preposition.”
I can almost hear him rolling his eyes at me through the phone. “Where are you at, asshole?”
I don’t have time for chit chat. “Work. I only have a minute.”
I’ve been anxious all week. Dom’s not only my closest cousin, he’s also my literary agent. Recently he sent my book proposal to editors at all the major publishing houses.
“Good,” he replies, “because it’s not going to take more than ten seconds.”
I deflate. Good news isn’t delivered that swiftly. But bad news is.
“Nobody wants the manuscript?” I knew better than to hope, but I’ve been doing it quietly anyway. I press my phone to my ear with my shoulder and check to make sure the keg is empty.
“It’s not your manuscript that’s the problem. You’re a debut author and you don’t have any social media.Publishers need you to at least have an online presence. They don’t want to be solely responsible for your marketing.” Dom clears his throat. “Also, everybody is online, so the fact you’re not looks weird.”
I hold my tongue as I turn off the CO2 supply line. I’m weird for not sharing pictures of my dinner with strangers?
“I told you this might happen,” Dom reminds me.
Right now, I want to take him by the neck and wrestle him to the ground like I used to when we were kids, before he moved to New York City for college and never left.
“Yeah, I know.” I lift the coupler handle at the base of the tap where it joins the keg and rotate it counter-clockwise.
I can’t believe it. I’ve worked on that manuscript for four years. My soul is on those pages. And now it won’t get the opportunity to be considered, because the price of admission is an online presence.
FML.
Take that, Lexi. I know an acronym.
“I gotta go,” I say, reconnecting the coupler on the new keg.
“Consider social media,” Dom says, not-at-all gently. “You can’t win if you don’t play.”
“That’s what people who buy lottery tickets say.”
“And twenty-six year old writers who are one disappointment away from watching their dreams go up in flames.”
“Dickhead,” I mutter, stepping from the keg room and locking the door behind me.
“Go mix some drinks, cry baby. Call me when you’re ready to put yourself out there.”
He hangs up, and I slip my phone in my pocket. Dom gives me a fair amount of shit, but nobody has ever believed in me the way he has. He spent years letting me read my stories out loud to him. I am part of the reason he became a literary agent. He is part of the reason I continued writing.
Go mix some drinks, cry baby.
His harsh words accompany me back out to the music, the hordes of people swaying in place and laughing. It’ll calm down soon, once everybody moves on to the row of bars and clubs a few streets over.
Crestfallen, I resume my job on autopilot.
Tending bar in a trendy restaurant isn’t the worst, but I don’t want to do this forever.
