Good Game (The System, #1) (15)
I scan the rest of his messages, eyes narrowing.
Stephanie, you can’t just ignore me. Come on, Steffy. Pls. I need you. You need me. U can’t do better than me. You’re being a child. I love you.
It’s a mixture of desperation and asshole. I’ve never ignored him for this long before. Even the last time we broke up, when it had taken me a week before I got back with him, I’d still messaged him. My radio silence these last three days is something he isn’t used to.
I click my phone off before throwing my plate into the dishwasher.
Whatever.
He’ll cool off eventually.
EIGHT
* * *
ALEKS
I’m front-page news.
I’m front-page news, and Sydney might just murder me.
Although, to be fair, it’s not the news I was afraid of. According to all the gossip sites, Decker and I got into an argument over Allison Lee at the VSAs, and I was reportedly seen embracing her longingly before we left that night. No mention of Stevie at all. Thank god.
The elevator doors ding open, and the boys and I look up from the couch to watch Sydney power walk into the apartment. “Please confirm for me that you didn’t punch Daniel Decker.” Her blonde hair is pulled into a messy bun, eyes frantic under her bangs. She sits on top of the coffee table, sipping on a red juice as she swipes across her tablet. She flips it over to show me the article in question.
BLADE DECKS DECKER AT VAZER STREAM AWARDS
“That’s a good one,” Parker mumbles through the tea he is sipping on.
“I didn’t lay a hand on him, Syd. I swear.”
She nods.
“I’m also not sleeping with Allison.”
She nods again, her fingers flying across her tablet and phone simultaneously.
“I might have threatened him though. Unrelated to Allison.”
She freezes, sighs, and continues typing.
“Well, this doesn’t seem like a me issue.” Jackson goes to stand up, but Sydney shoots out her left leg to stop him.
“This is an everyone issue because the second any of you go live today, your comments will be littered with people asking about the situation. So, you’re all on pause until I get this sorted. Which should only take me another five or ten minutes, depending.” Her phone rings, and she moves up and into my streaming room to answer it.
I pull out my own phone and shoot a quick message to Allison to see how she’s doing. While I’m not worried about the rumors on my behalf and the comments in my streams, I know the ones she’s getting are a million times worse. The last time there was a rumor about the two of us, she had death threats sent to her apartment. The damage control was a nightmare.
This is why I hate events. Because of the mask, everyone pays attention to every little thing I do in the hopes that I will somehow slip up and give something away. Like I might breathe wrong and accidentally exhale my real name. It’s stressful.
In the beginning, though, it was fun. A year after I started streaming and making content, my channel took off. The fame was shiny and new. I was barely eighteen, and while there were a bunch of popular content creators in the gaming space, there weren’t a lot of major streamers. Even fewer of us were what people referred to as “faceless gamers.” It was sick to be the center of attention, to feel like people cared about who I was, that they thought I was cool, that they wanted to be me. I got invited to events, conventions, and clubs, left, right, and center. I drank it all in, fucking different stream bunnies wherever I went, filling my body with whatever liquor I could get my hands on. It felt like the life.
Then I started getting dubbed the bad boy of streaming, and people were wanting to know exactly who was behind the mask. They got restless. Then they got invasive. People began trying to follow me home. They would stake out where I lived. I was afraid to leave my home, didn’t know who I could trust. But then I started getting swatted, and it freaked me the fuck out. I finally told my manager it was enough. At that point, Parker, Jackson, and I had been running The System for a year, and it was going well. I moved in with them and hired a new driver who would switch cars for every event and take different routes back to our apartment. I also found out that the key is to live in an enormous apartment complex. When over four hundred people live in a building, it’s hard to track who might be whom.
“It’s all done!” Sydney returns with a triumphant smile. “You’re all streaming with Allison this afternoon. I don’t care what your previous plans were, adapt them. We’ve got a blanket statement going out on her account and yours, Aleks. Your moderators are also being briefed as we speak. You will address the rumors at the start of the stream, and that’s it. The hug picture is unavoidable since there is video as well, so we will be sticking with the ‘she’s like a kid sister’ storyline that we’ve used in the past. Everyone good?”
The three of us nod like trained dogs.
“Perfect. Now someone better turn on that TV and get a trashy, reality dating show on the screen so I can relax.” She plops down on the sofa and props her legs across Parker’s lap, sipping on the remains of her juice.
“I’m heading to the gym.” I announce. There’s too much energy buzzing around me right now to focus on anything else, and I need some way to distract myself before the stream later.