11
Andrew
One month later
Of course.
When would this end?
“Fucking unbelievable,” I murmured as I glanced at the cell phone. I put it in my pocket and went on with the rest of my day.
It was one week before the insanity trial, and Elise had changed her fucking pleaagain. I rolled my eyes at the text from my attorney stating that she was back to the dual plea of not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. Even my attorney was starting to find humor in this.
I was just about to leave the new downtown location when a delivery I had been waiting for showed up. I opened the box and pulled out the first set of a mug design series that Brandon and Salem wanted to do. Salem had artistic talent and could freehand sketch just about anything. During one of the first few days of the store opening, Brandon had made a comment about socks and coffee. I told him he should market that because it was a catchy phrase.
The next day, Salem had drawn a man sitting in a chair, wearing colorful socks, and balancing a coffee mug with the Three Brothers Coffee logo on it on the arm of the chair. Following this design were three others. All images were of a man from the chest or waist down in various settings. They never showed the face, but there was always a Three Brothers Coffee mug, and the man was always wearing socks. Each picture was black and white, and the only part of the sketch that was in color were the socks.
I hung on to the sketches, and after she’d given me four designs, I sent them to the company I used that made the mugs and tumblers for our shops. I pulled the first set of mugs from their boxes and checked them out. I smiled from ear to ear when I saw the coffee shop logo on the mug and the wild socks. The bottom of each mug had a stamp that read Design by Salem & Brandon for Three Brothers Coffee. These were great, and I knew Salem and Brandon were going to be excited. I hoped they would at least… I’d ordered the mugs to surprise them and see if they liked the idea of creating a design series every quarter.
I put the mugs back in the box and headed out to meet Josh and Brandon for our weekly pizza and beer night. I proudly carried the box with the four mugs into the restaurant for Brandon. I wanted to show him first. If he said yes to it, I’d call Salem when I got home and send her pictures of the mugs. Neither of them needed to work, but they might enjoy the joint venture of the mug designs.
“Hey, guys,” I said as I set the box on the table and pulled my chair out.
In unison, Josh and Brandon blew straw wrappers at me, hitting me in the chest.
“Dude, how is it that you work downtown now with the new shop and you’re still late for dinner? When you lived all the way down in Riverside, the commute in the traffic made sense for your tardiness. You work a few blocks over,” Josh teased.
“Well, let me remind you that it’s actual work and not floating around in the ocean,” I poked back.
Brandon laughed as I reached over and playfully hit Josh’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry I’m late, but these arrived right before I left, and I was eager to look at them.” I slid the box in front of Brandon.
“What is it?” Brandon asked.
“Dude, open it,” Josh told him.
Brandon pulled the lid off, and his forehead wrinkled when he saw the mugs. He pulled one out and turned it around, and his eyebrows shot up. Brandon’s cheeks were red and his smile was one that James would have killed to see.
“My socks,” he said and turned the mug around to show Josh. As Brandon pulled out the mugs, I told Josh the story behind the idea.
“That’s cool, Bran.” Josh picked up one of the mugs. “Look at you being all grown up and all entrepreneurial on us.”
“Check out the bottom, Bran,” I encouraged.
“Oh, damn. That’s cool!”
“So, I was going to see if you and Salem would like to design new mugs each quarter for the coffee shops.”
“Yeah? For real?”
“For real, Bran.”
“Yeah! I’m down with that.”
“Great. I’ll call Salem tonight and talk to her about it too. I have another set of the mugs for her, so you can keep this set,” I told him.
“How was work?” Josh asked me as our server arrived with the pizza.
