“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 onThe Viewand 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 videoresponse 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.
