Aisha and I walk through the gallery toward the dining room, and she takes the poster from the table and holds it up. “What do you think?” she asks.
“I think…” I start, and then stop. I don’t know what I think. It’s painful to see how happy we were at one time, but that’s nothing compared to the pain I’m going to feel when Hayes finds out I haven’t been entirely honest about the premise of this trip. “Yes,” I say. “Love it so, so much.”
“Of course this is just a proof. We won’t have these ready until the official launch at the end of the week, but I wanted to show you how much we’ve put into this project. It’s quite a big branding effort.”
End of the week. That buys me some time. Maybe.
“I have to admit. You two are as adorable as you look on your socials.”
I try not to react. She only knows us from the smiling, happy photos on my account. She doesn’t know that we haven’t been together in over a year and that Hayes thinks he’s here as a behind-the-scenes assistant. The best way to handle a problem is to ignore it and hope it will go away. Everyone knows that. As long as you’re able to conjure a permanent sense of delusion it works like a charm. How hard is this going to be anyway? I need to get him in a few shots. Maybe force his arm around me from time to time. Who am I kidding? I’m going to have to choke on a crumpet so he performs the Heimlich for us to get that close again.
Once I’m over the initial shock I’m able to take in the detail of the cafe. The room must have been the school cafeteria since they turned the metal tray rail into a bar and there’s a long communal table down the center that looks like it was once filled with groups of kids on a break from class.
I think about my niece and how much I miss her. I wonder if Gemma is excited about the wedding in Capri at the end of the summer, or her first day of kindergarten this fall. She’s been nervous about going to “real school” for the first time but I’ve been hyping it up to get her ready. Kindergarten is a blast. I’d much rather be going there than to law school.
A server dressed in a modern variation of a school uniform with tight plaid pants and a crisp white shirt places an elaborate tea service on the table. Scones, little sandwiches with the crusts cuts off and tiny dishes of jam, butter and clotted cream.
I swallow hard and try to move the conversation forward. “I want to make sure I’m doing everything I can to get your engagement up,” I say. “I’m so grateful that you found me on social media. I’ve been curious how did such a big brand found my account?” I’m grateful they found us, but we aren’t exactly the most obvious choice.
Aisha pours a cup of tea for me from the white porcelain teapot. “This is a special blend made just for St. Sebastian. All of the hotels in the For Us collection have artisanal menu items crafted specifically for that place. A signature scent too.” She gracefully wafts her hand in front of her face. “This one has notes of fresh pencil shavings.”
I close my eyes and can identify the light cedar scent. When I open them, I assume Aisha will answer my question, but she doesn’t. I take a sip of the tea to cover the silence. It’s bitter, with edges of bergamot and cinnamon. Literally not my cup of tea, but I tell her the blend is unusual and flavorful.
“I’m mostly located in London, and you’ll be on your own in Barcelona and Berlin, but I’ll be at the Capri location at the end of the trip, since it will be a big week on the island.” I assume she means the dumb Beckenberg wedding. She opens up her laptop, which is the cue for me to open mine. Aisha starts talking about documents in the shared drive that I should have reviewed thoroughly before I left which I totally did not because I was too busy worrying about Hayes and seeing him again and lying to him, again. But of course, I say I reviewed everything and how wonderful it all is because that’s what I always do.
“I think the scheduling and content goals are self-explanatory, but the engagement goals and some of the algorithms we need to hit have a bit more nuance because we’re an international company and we want to tweak some of this for multi-directional engagement and algorithmic application that will result in greater attention economies. Mostly for visual impact.”
She’s lost me. We talked about some of this pre-departure, but I was mostly focused on the idea that I would get out of the house for the summer and show my parents I could get a job on my own. Now that I’m here I wish I was still at the beach house hanging out with Gemma and coming up with new ideas for playtime activities instead of trying to unravel all this marketing stuff that I don’t really understand.
“Brady? Are you still with me?” Aisha asks.
“Yes, of course.” I snap back to attention. Why does everything have to be so complicated?
“We are expecting high friction content tunnels that align with our brand’s storytelling.”
I’m looking right at Aisha pretending I know what she’s saying but the only definition of a high friction content tunnel I know is sitting between my ass cheeks. What have I gotten myself into? I thought I would just be visiting places and taking pictures of me looking cute, not creating some vast social media universe of clicks and engagement. I have no idea how to do any of this. I should have done my homework before agreeing. She’s going to fire me before I even get started, and I can’t let that happen to Hayes. I asked him to do this and made him give up whatever job he had going on at home. If I come home from the summer early, not only will I feel like a complete disaster but my parents will force me to go to law school so I can have some direction. Maybe I am just kicking the can down the road, but I’d rather do that than sit in a class on contracts and intellectual property or some other boring legal B.S.
Aisha’s phone buzzes and she looks at it, then frowns. “Sorry. I have to take care of this. Just get plenty of images of you and your handsome boyfriend in some of Europe’s most romantic settings, send them off to our media team and they’ll take care of posting to our channels and make sure the media hits all of the engagement transactions outlined on the second spreadsheet on tab 22, 37 and 46a. What could be easier than that?”
“Nothing,” I say, and a small nervous giggle escapes from my mouth.
Chapter 12
London
Hayes
I walk into our suite and set my backpack with the broken zipper down next to the stack of Brady’s matching leather luggage which has been neatly arranged by a porter. The room is bigger than the entire house where I grew up in Alabama. It’s easy to imagine this space as a headmaster’s office. Polished walnut crown molding, windows so tall you could threaten to throw an unruly student through them and heavy velvet curtains to muffle the sound of a tongue-lashing. I think that’s what they call it here. The furniture, however, is modern and gentle. A large bed with plush padded headboard, a wet bar made of a matte black stone and, thank God, a couch that looks big enough to sleep on.
I should have asked about sleeping arrangements before we left but I thought it would be rude to request separate rooms since I’m here to work. But there’s plenty of room so we don’t get in each other’s way. Although it’s going to be weird showering, sleeping and living in the same space again.
I lie down on the couch to see how far my feet dangle off. Not exactly comfortable, but better than trying to sleep on the plane, which was impossible. Although Brady did his best to make me not so nervous. When we hit turbulence over Greenland, I thought I felt his pinky inch closer to me, offering support if I needed it. I grabbed the armrest instead of him so that I’d have something to hold on to if the plane dropped out of the sky but the gesture was kind.
I set up the couch with a blanket and a pillow from the closet. I want to make it clear when Brady walks in that he can have the bed. I’m here as a production assistant. I shove my hand in between the cushions so the blanket is tight, but I’m not sure if I’m making things clear for him or me.
I could take a quick nap but I think I’d manage better with a shower so I walk into the ginormous bathroom to find polished white marble sinks and a showerhead the size of a transmission’s flywheel. I get in and the water pressure tries to push me through the wall to the room next door. I turn and let the canon of water massage my back. I step out, grab a robe and a catch a glimpse of myself in the plush white terrycloth that feels like soft kitten fur against my body.
At Clarkson, I’d learned to hide my crappy laptop and never mention the overnight shifts at the diner in the next town that paid for my meals and books. The last thing I needed was Brady’s crowd looking at me like some charity case they could fix with daddy’s credit card. Pretty self-righteous attitude for someone who was flown across the Atlantic and is now standing in a posh bathroom in a fluffy robe. I swore I would never need Brady’s money, his family’s connections or anything from that world but the reality is, he saved my ass with this job offer.
