She won't tell me tonight. She'll wait until it feels manageable. Something that happened. No big deal. She handled it.
I text her.
Good stream tonight. Kill count's up.
Normal. Exactly what I'd say. I watch the second monitor. Twelve seconds. She glances at her phone, the micro-pause chat won't catch, reads it. The corner of her mouth moves. She types back without looking away from the game.
Obviously. I'm very talented.
I send:Call me when you're done.
I go back to the file. Keep working. Keep watching. Wait.
***
Billie, always the good girl, calls me right after her stream ends.
"Good stream," I say.
"You texted me mid-game." I hear her chug some energy drink.
"Kill count was up. I noticed."
"Right." I can hear her moving. The ring light clicking off. "I had a weird comment. Someone using my name. I deleted it. It's fine."
I let a beat pass.
"I know," I say.
The moving stops.
"You know," she says.
"Yes."
A pause. "You were watching my comment section."
"Yes."
"While you were watching the stream."
"Yes."
She makes a sound that isn't quite anything. Not angry. Not soft. Somewhere in the middle of deciding. "And you texted me and didn't say anything."
"You were live. I needed to know what I was looking at first."
"You've had, what, forty minutes with it?"
"Enough to know it's not nothing." I look at the file. Single page. A beginning. "Someone who knows your name has been watching long enough to know what you're wearing tonight. That's not the first time they've watched."
The silence is different this time.
"How bad," she says.
"I don't know yet. I'm going to find out." I close the laptop. "Come over tomorrow. I'll show you what I have."
A long beat.
