Page 35 of A Lot Like Adiós
He nodded, pleased that she got it.
But then she shrugged and added, “It’s a little heavy-handed but I guess your clientele doesn’t care, or doesn’t notice.”
Before he could comment, she shoved a sheet of paper at him.
“Fill this out and let me know when you’re done.” She took her laptop back and popped on a pair of noise-canceling headphones.
Gabe stared at her for a moment, then shook his head and looked at the paper. Michelle had always been this way. Her brain moved a mile a minute, especially when she was working out a problem.
When he reached for one of her pens, she swatted his hand away. After digging in a black zippered pouch that literally saidDon’t Touch My Penson it, she passed him a regular ballpoint pen with a bank logo on it.
He accepted it with a sigh and got to work. But after skimming the questions on the paper, he scowled. Shit like “What are your brand’s core values?” and “How would you identify your ideal customer avatar?” made him sweat. How did you even put such abstract concepts into words? He flipped the paper over to make some notes and saw—god help him—that there were questions on both sides.
He was almost at the end—having skipped at least half of the questions—when Michelle shifted the headphones down to rest around her neck.
“Here’s a question for you,” she said. “Fabian is Haitian, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re Mexi-Rican. Except none of that Latinx flavor is present in your brand. Why is your website full of photos of white people?” It was clearly a rhetorical question, because she kept going. “Have you done any TV commercials?”
Gabe shook his head. “Not yet.”
Michelle tapped a pen against her lower lip as she skewered her laptop screen with a look of fierce concentration. “Maybe we could do something fun with music...”
Gabe tried to imagine playing merengue music in the gym. It was nearly impossible to picture. “I don’t think that fits the brand,” he said.
“Don’t you get it?Youare the brand. You and Fabian. And there’s nothing of you guys in the messaging aside from this eighties porno picture.”
“It’s not—” He bit back his retort. She was trying to get under his skin. And of course, now that she’d said it, he couldn’t see the photo any other way. Fuck. “The brand reflects the clientele.”
She just raised her eyebrows in a way that saidWhatever you say, assholeand went back to clicking with her mouse.
A few minutes later, Michelle’s phone chirped with an incoming call. When she glanced at the screen, her lips compressed into a thin line. She pressed the side button and it stopped ringing. Then she turned the volume off and placed the phone back on the table screen-down.
“Telemarketer?” Gabe asked.
“Ah, no.” Michelle made a show of looking at her laptop. “It was Ava.”
Gabe narrowed his eyes. “Since when do you ignore Ava?”
When they’d been kids, he’d been Michelle’s best school and neighborhood friend, but Ava and Jasmine had been her best cousins. He couldn’t imagine that had changed.
Michelle’s shoulders hunched. “Um... she still doesn’t know you’re here.”
“Really?” That surprised him. “Did you ever tell your cousins about...”
“About the day we got high and ripped each other’s clothesoff?” Michelle capped her pen with a sharp snap. “Oh yeah. They know about that.”
Gabe shut his eyes. And prayed he didn’t run into Jasmine or Ava while he was here.
Next to him, his own phone buzzed with a text.
Fabian:How’s it going over there?
Fabian added an emoji of peeking eyeballs that managed to be nosy as hell for just a few pixels.
Michelle had popped her headphones back on and wasn’t paying attention to him, so Gabe lifted the phone and snapped a photo of her and her laptop, to prove they were working. But when he looked at the picture, all he could see was how beautifully Michelle’s cleavage was framed by the low V-neck of herNot Today, Satantank top. If he sent that, Fabian would immediately suspect the truth. Instead, Gabe sent a photo of the half-filled branding worksheet Michelle had given him, and a short reply.
