HOURS LATER
Alex wakes up with a headache that feels less like sleep deprivation and more like life walked up to her bedside and chose violence for fun. Her alarm is still buzzing, her pillow is on the floor, and she can already tell her day is about to be stupid.
Yesterday's mess tries to creep into her head for a second, cops, chaos, a tiny kid with big eyes, but she shuts it down so fast she might've given herself whiplash. She's not doing unnecessary emotions she has things to do, Money to make, Content to film and Sanity to maintain. Barely.
Her phone screen lights up with back-to-back notifications, and not a single one from Hala or Kendall or even Linda who texts her when the wind blows wrong. Instead, it's all her manager, who has the energy of someone who sleeps, breathes, and eats aesthetic frequency. Why wouldn't that be the case, the universe doesn't believe in easing her into a new day.
Big Bad Wolf
Call in 20.
Drafts are late.
Brand wants confirmation.
PR needs new photos. Don't improvise today. Please.
Im not that bad.
😶🙂
What does that even mean?
Clearly girly has a brain-to-mouth issue sometimes. Alex stares at the messages like she's being lectured by the universe, Then swings her legs off the bed heads to the bathroom, props her phone up and starts recording before she even brushes her teeth.
"Good morning, lovelies," she says, sounding like a gremlin with her raspy voice. "Excuse the fact that I look like I got hit by a mildly inconvenienced truck I just woke up but we move." She starts her morning routine the same way she does every time she's trying not to let her brain get too loud.
Blasting music, dancing crazy, doing her makeup like she's in a tutorial which she technically is but isnt and narrating her life out loud because brain silence freaks her out.
Alex loves her job as a content creator/influencer, It's the one space where she doesn't need to hold anything in, where she doesn't need to be calm or perfect or emotionally neat. She gets to be loud, messy, sarcastic, sassy, and real and her followers love her and it too, especially, the fact that she refuses to bullshit anyone.
She sneezes mid-sentence? It stays in the video. If she loses her train of thought? Congrats, the viewers get to witness her brain buffering. She stutters, slips, chokes, bumps her head, theyre gonna see it. Also stays because Alex hates editing or rewatching herself. You only see an edited video when her manager finds out and sends a nice little message.
She once filmed a GRWM while the fire alarm was going off and didn't cut it out. Her manager almost had a stroke.
Her manager calls mid-filming. Alex answers with one lash glued on and the other dangling like it's fighting for its life.
"I'm not late," she says before he even breathes. "I'm just... unpredictably punctual."
"Alexandria, please," she mutters, because she knows she's a PR nightmare and a PR blessing at the same time. "And cut this out, ik youre filming" Alex groans even though she's gonna do it and flips her off, lovingly, then hangs up. She smirks thinking she got away with it till her manager sends two middle finger emojis back a second later. Respectfully.
She hops onto the brand meeting still holding a makeup brush, muttering,
"Please no one says 'synergy' else imma bite through my laptop." Everyone on the call laughs, because she makes them laugh even when they're supposed to be serious. One intern snorts. Alex points at the camera like she just caught Bigfoot.
