Caroline interrupted before her brother could say more about his adult content subscriptions. The topic turned to Chase’s new job. I’d heard all of this when I was at their apartment two days ago, so I tuned out.
Holding my phone low in my lap, so others on the call couldn’t see it, I took my phone off Airplane Mode, hoping it wouldn’t be as bad as I first thought.
Alerts rolled down my screen quicker than slots at a casino. I made the mistake of looking at the comments.
twos acting like tens
sad what some girls will do for attention
I’ve been a fan of hers for years but this is too far
The internet had taken Paul’s side. Quickly, I shut everything back off.
“Hello? Earth to Lyssa Luxe?”
My head snapped up. Mike was waving a hand back and forth in front of his camera.
Caroline and Chase were frozen in their square, his hand on her face, their expressions nauseatingly besotted. Not that I wasn’t happy for my best friend. I was. But it sucked that Caroline had moved out of my (well, my mom’s) West Village apartment. Now I went whole days or weeks without seeing the one person in the world who might understand why I’d done what I had today. Now wasn’t the time to confess everything, though. Caroline would understand once she watched the livestream. That awful, career-ending, life-ruining livestream.
I could delete it now, but screen recordings were already doing the rounds in fashion circles—viral videos were like glitter. And if people were going to be talking about me, the business part of my brain—the part that had leveraged the unique outfits I wore to school into a large social media following, a spot at the country’s finest fashion institute, then a prestigious internship—wanted my content to at least benefit from the traffic. If I had to endure a pile on, I should at least get views out of it.
“Give Lyssa a break, Mike,” Kevin scolded his son.
“Yeah, give me a break. I have a lot of work to do.”
“Come on, princess, what’s up? You look more rooted than a possum in breeding season.”
I didn’t know what that meant. I never knew what Mike meant. His accent was thick and most of his sayings were incomprehensible.
“What?”
Kevin tried to shush him, but Mike leaned forward, a teasing grin on his face.
“Don’t play, Lyssa Luxe. We both know that you wouldn’t know hard work if it bit you in the ass.”
A laugh tinged with hysteria burst out of me. I was the youngest intern Bossi had ever hired. I hadn’t gone a single day without posting content in over five years, and my fan base was international, so I replied to comments at all hours. I never stopped working. I was shattered from it, and from putting my whole heart into my work.
But people like Mike never understood that.
Neither had Paul.
Chase’s mother jumped in to change the subject—very Canadian of her—and suddenly we were all speaking at once.
“Remind me to send you the recipe I’ve been perfecting. It’s a mushroom risotto?—”
“For your information, Mike,” I said, as cuttingly as a girl with mascara on her sleeve could, “I lost ten thousand followers this afternoon?—”
“Why would anyone care what you had for breakfast?—?”
Caroline and Chase got their internet working again then, and their frame unfroze as they burst back into life. Chase ended our squabbling by shoving his and Caroline’s pet rabbit up to the camera.
Mike, who loved all animals, stopped haranguing me to coo at Pickles.
The conversation turned to grandchildren then, as I’d noticed lots of my friends’ conversations with their parents did once they were coupled. Evelyn, Chase’s mom, really wanted grandkids. I couldn’t fathom what it would be like to have a parent so enamored of your existence they were eager for you to duplicate it.
Caroline and Chase signed off not long after that, and Evelyn disappeared to deal with her burning risotto.
Kev threw me a wave before walking out of frame—it was unclear if he knew leaving the room didn’t hang up the call, but it didn’t matter as Mike usually disconnected for them.
