“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“What areyoudoing? You haven’t streamed in days and haven’t answered any of my messages. I thought you’d died!” She shot me a confused look as she breezed into my apartment, dark hair falling in carefully styled waves around her as she moved.
Like me, Tara was a streamer. Though my best friend put more of her time into SLCK’d these days—an adults-only streaming website for omegas—than Streamverse, which I preferred.
Not that there was anything wrong with being a spicy streamer, especially not when you looked like Tara did, all curves and big, perfect tits that even I wanted to faceplant into half the time.
“Oh.” I said, a little dumbly.
That was fair. I did sort of just fall off the face of the Earth when usually I was one of the most chronically online people tolive. Though, really, that was a skill. No one, and I meanno one,had meme game like I did.
Before Tara had gotten all packed up, she would’ve come close to rivalling my screentime. But with a successful streamer for a boyfriend and an alpha sugardaddy at her beck and call, she’d diverted her attention a little. As far as I could tell, she kept a regular three times a week schedule, but for the most part, that was only to keep her rank, or if the three of them were feeling like being watched.
“Oh?” Tara repeated back to me. “Eva, what’s going on?”
If the sight of my depression cave—formerly my living room—offended her, she didn’t show it. What was usually a fairly clean, if not slightly cluttered, pink and white cozy space was now covered in snack wrappers, half-drunk plastic takeout cups, and my mountain of blankets. I hadn’t even bothered to turn on any of the damn near dozen vintage lamps smattering the room, and I was someone wholovedmood lighting.
“Stephen and I broke up,” I said, flopping back onto my couch with my arms crossed petulantly. The effect was meant to give off the vibe that I was annoyed, if not a little angry, but it was, admittedly, a little ruined by the visual of my fluffy pink body disappearing into the overly plush couch cushions.
Usually, I was a pretty frugal person. Even though I was a Streamverse partner and one of the highest-grossing horror game streamers, I’d always kept up with the habits I’d created for myself when I was a broke student struggling to scrape together my rent. But all those carefully curated skills went out the window when it came to furniture. Ialwaysdemanded the coziest thing I could find, and spared no expense to make sure I got exactly that.
My viewers usually joked that it was just my omega side coming out in full force.
Tara called it my birdhouse. All nest. And,fine, she wasn’t wrong.
The omega in question’s nose wrinkled slightly at my admission, and I could practically see Tara fighting a smile as she tried to be supportive in my wallowing. To her credit, she did manage a half convincing, “That really sucks,” as she patted my knee, barely poking out where the hem of my blanket hoodie had rucked up in my descent.
ShehatedStephen.
I didn’t get it before, but now? Maybe she had a point. Tara did always have better instincts about people than I did. I was too trusting, too eager to please.
She was harder, and it served her well.
Sometimes… I sort of wished I could be like that.
I let out a frustrated breath of air. “You don’t actually feel that way.”
She flopped down on the couch next to me, ignoring the crinkle of discarded snack wrappers as she pulled me into a hug that smelled of sharp, sour lime and sweet cherries. “It does suck… Idofeel bad that you’re hurting, but I’ll never understand what you saw in him. Her dark eyes widened with excitement as they caught on a bag of open rainbow liquorice, pulling a blue one free to dangle into her mouth. “Steve was a stick in the mud, Evie. And like… a six at best? You could absolutely bag a ten, easy.”
“He wasn’t all bad,” I tried to defend, though it came off a little hollow, even to my ears.
Her brow rose as she grabbed another to pass to me. “Babes, he was the worst. Like the literalworst.I thought Charlie was going to knock him out the only time they met, and Charlie’s thrown less punches in real life than Inky.”
I winced, the memory a sore spot even now. Stephen had made a comment about how feminine streamers only gainedviewership by exploiting themselves sexually, while Tara was out of earshot, and Charlie was absolutely havingnoneof that.
It wasn’t just degrading to Tara, it was dismissive of my career too… That really should’ve been the end, but I’d been loveblind enough that the red flags looked like roses and casual misogyny was a quirky joke that for some absolutely delusional reason, I was willing to explain away.
Yikes.
“You’re not wrong…” I sighed as she pulled another candy free, accepting it as she handed it over to me with a vicious bite to the lemon-flavoured candy that had its flavour exploding over my tongue.
“And don’t get me started on the time he ‘accidentally’ grabbed your credit card before going out with his friends, broke ass fucking loser. Jesse would rather drop dead, actually.”
“That too.” I cringed.
That man was more than a walking red flag, he was a walking red flashing light. A bat signal that basically flashed “I’m a douche” in the sky every time he opened his mouth.
Loneliness was a powerful drug, though, and even though I’d done my fair share of making excuses, I understood things for what they were now. A shitty man with a big ego taking advantage of someone when they needed somebody.
