Page 52 of Talk About… History

Avery: I haven’t checked since last night. I scheduled the videos to post a few times a day. Checking now.

My heart slammed in my chest as I tried to clear the grogginess from my eyes. Cohen and I had spent the entire evening chatting and learning about each other. It was a perfect evening—no pressure, just existing—exactly what I needed.

However, that also meant I didn’t drive home until late.

My hands shook as I pulled up the account, terrified to be too excited, too soon. Social media was forever changing and following algorithms was like trying to translate ancient texts, impossible and everyone had their own interpretation on how to succeed.

There was so much pressure riding on these accounts. Not only was this going to show the Town Council that they made the right choice investing in me, but it would also prove to my brothers that they put their faith in me for a reason—that I was really going to help the business thrive.

Knowing that my brothers really wanted to bring back the Artisan Fair, or at least I thought Maverick did to some degree, made me want to succeed even more.

They deserved a break after years of putting in intense hours at Whitaker Brews. If we could bring in enough customers that they’d need to hire some help, they’d finally have some breathing room.

When I finally found the courage to open the dashboard, my jaw dropped at the sheer amount of views and comments I had.

Avery: Holy hell. Does this mean we went viral?!

Sidney: Hell yeah, you did. It’s those thirst traps that really did it. I can’t believe you got them to do that!

Avery: Ew, Sid, those are my brothers.

Sidney: Not miiiine.

On that lovely thought, I didn’t bother to text her back. Instead, I pulled open our profile to read through all of the reactions and comments we were getting.

I really needed to get my brothers the login so they could reply to everyone if they wanted.

I’d handle most of it, but I was trying to find a good balance between doing most of the work and wanting them to do some here and there, so their personalities shined through. That would only help engagement.

Glancing at the clock, I realized it was just after ten. That was enough to get me ready as quickly as possible and head downstairs in search of my brothers. I found them and our mama eating at the table.

The moment they saw me slide to a stop on my socked feet, a wide grin on my face, the conversation stopped completely.

“Why do you look like that?” Maverick demanded. Why was he suspicious? “What have you done?”

“Not what I have done, dear brother, but what we have done,” I corrected. I pulled up the profile and turned it around. They didn’t really know what they were looking at, so I explained. “This right here means that we’ve already gone viral. I’m going to give you guys the logins today. Anytime you have a free second, log in and comment back to people. The more interaction, the better. In fact, making your own personal profiles and reposting our videos would honestly be a good choice, too.”

“Holy shit, how did we go viral?” Cameron asked, pulling out his own phone to investigate. “This is insane. Millions of views that fast?”

“I don’t know, but we need to keep up the momentum. Keep making these videos I send you and hitting trends. I’ll keep helping record some about the bar itself and mix them in.”

“You talked about going live,” Cameron said. “Let’s do it.”

Seeing them get excited with me and more willing to keep pushing only hyped my own.

“We should do a drink special tonight,” Nash added in. “Call it the Whitaker Special or something cheesy like that. See if we can get the college crowd to come down. Price it lower than usual, but enough to make a profit.”

“That’s actually really smart,” Maverick said, sounding genuinely impressed. We probably should have been offended by that, but we were all too happy to give a fuck.

Mama had been silent the whole time, but when I glanced over, she was beaming. She looked so exhausted that some of my own excitement drained away.

“Are you all right, Mama?”

The guys all turned to her. It was as if they hadn’t really seen her until then.

“You do look really tired, Mama. Are you sleeping okay?” Cameron asked gently.

She started to wave us off like she’d done to me every single time even though there was clearly something going on. I gave my brothers a pointed look—this was exactly what I had talked to them about before.

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