I open my door and a barrage of shouting flows from the living room.
They’re arguing. Again.
I step into the hallway, trying to discern what they could be bickering about now.
“You cheated,” Jackson accuses.
“You can’t even cheat at this game,” Stevie throws back.
“You can cheat at any game if you try hard enough,” Parker chimes in.
The three of them are sitting at the table we never use; it sits opposite the kitchen island, by the balcony door. Jackson is at the head, Stevie and Parker on either side of him. They’re holding cards, all looking at each other with pure venom.
“You’re just mad because you lost.” Stevie sticks her tongue out. She’s wearing another of my T-shirts, her hair in a messy bun, loose tendrils framing her face. She’s always effortlessly gorgeous.
“No, I’m mad that I didn’t win. Again.” Jackson tosses his cards on the table and looks up, spotting me heading over. He gives me a grunt. “Your girlfriend’s a cheater.”
I laugh at the fact that she has managed to ruffle his feathers. Jackson likes to keep his walls up, letting only a select few in. His default is protective and grumpy. The fact that he is volleying with her means the world to me. I already knew she got along with Parker, but to see her with Jackson releases tension I didn’t know I was carrying.
“Don’t listen to him. Your bird’s an absolute shark at cards.”
“Thanks, Parker.” She blows him a kiss before standing up to meet me in a hug.
“Want to join us? We’re playing Bluff.”
“Nah, you guys keep playing. I’m going to heat up some food and I’ll watch.” I give her a kiss on the top of her head before she sits back down.
I pull out some leftovers, reheating them before sitting next to Stevie.
I watch as she plays. Anyone can play Bluff so long as they can keep track of which cards they have, which they’ve bluffed, and what’s been played. Pro card players can impart odds and statistics onto it, but you don’t need that to be good. The real talent comes from how well you can lie, and Stevie has that in spades.
Jackson and Parker might be her friends now, but they can’t read her like I can; they haven’t been around her long enough. She gives nothing away, her tells are so small, even I take a while to recognize them. It’s clear how she keeps winning. Parker and Jackson give her a run for her money though. As shit as Parker was at conning Stevie at the party, he has one hell of a poker face when he’s prepared.
I watch as Stevie wins three rounds and Parker wins one. Jackson is livid at this point, but he’s never had much luck with card games.
“Alright, that’s it, I’m done.” Jackson pushes back from the table. “I’m going to bed. Night, cheaters.”
“We should play for money next time, Stevie.” Parker begins collecting the cards, putting the deck back together.
“I don’t know, Parker. I might just bet you for that Aprilia Aleks has been eying.”
“I think the Aprilia is cursed,” I mutter. “The second you bring it into a bet, everything turns to shit.”
“Well, I think it sounds like a fun idea.” Parker winks. “Next time.”
“Alright.” Stevie stretches her arms and nods her head at me. “Let’s head to bed.”
She takes my hand, and I let her lead me back to our room, leaving Parker to his own. I wash up and snuggle into bed next to her. Even though it’s a king, Stevie curls up against me. I run hot, but her body is cold enough that we cancel each other out. Exhaustion looms over me after the long week, the edges of sleep crawling in.
“Can I ask you a question?” Stevie’s voice breaks through.
“Sure.”
“How did you get into streaming?”
Ah. My origin story.
I let my mind clear as the memories begin rolling through, a flurry of emotions linked to them.
“Well, I’ve been playing PC games since I was a kid. My grandmother had this big, clunky desktop, and she bought me some games in the hopes that it would keep me out of trouble. I had a knack for getting sent to detention ever since I was in elementary school. I just didn’t get along with other kids.”
It was never really my fault, I just had trouble concentrating in class. I was a loose cannon, never finishing tasks and causing disruptions. Other kids thought it was funny at first, but as I got older, they just found it annoying. It just seemed easier to keep to myself than to try to make friends and get made fun of instead.
“I started getting pretty serious into playing around middle school. I would look up different mods and try to create my own. The deeper I got into the community, the more I would watch gamers online. I admired the hell out of them, but I was jealous, too. They were all friends and would play with each other. They had all these subscribers in the comments supporting them. I had no one, and I wanted that. Eventually, I thought, fuck it, why not give it a shot myself? Everyone thinks I started streaming when I was seventeen, but I was actually sixteen.”
“Really? That’s so young.”
“Yeah, looking back, I knew nothing. I spent the first year filming on and off, trying to figure out how it all worked. It was a mess, really. I met Jackson during that time. He was a grade ahead of me, but we were in the same physics class and got paired up a few times. I used to play this mobile game. Jackson saw it one day and let me know he played it, too. He made it his mission to befriend me after that even though he was older and already had a bunch of friends from the swim team. He started inviting me over, and we’d play PC games together. We didn’t have anyone else, just us two. I eventually mentioned that I was looking to stream, and Jackson did this massive deep dive. Helped me figure out the best equipment, how to create VODs, everything. Even pitched in to buy the tech when I couldn’t afford it. He was there when I filmed my first stream as NightBlade32, an OG, really.”
“Oh, wow. Was he streaming, too?”
“No, he didn’t start his own channel until a few years later. That’s when he dropped out of college in his sophomore year. Which his mother blames me for even though technically he started everything and still got his degree later.”
She laughs, her chest bubbling against mine. “Did you go to college?”
I shake my head. “I considered it, but it was during my senior year of high school that my streaming channel blew up. I had been playing Death Valley for years, but I began role-playing DV3 and really found my niche in it. It’s still my primary content and what I have the most fun with.”
“How many years have you been streaming then?”
“Technically eleven, but I count it as ten.”
She sits up, looking at me. “That’s such a long time. And you’ve never felt burned out?”
It’s a hard question to answer.
There have definitely been times over the years when I’ve felt burned out, when I’ve had to push myself to stream. When gaming felt like more of a job than something I did for enjoyment. But at the end of the day, playing games is like breathing air: I can’t survive without it. It will always be a part of me.
“I have. I even stopped streaming for a month once, but I have a support system now. When my popularity first rose, it rose quickly. I tried to do everything, be friends with everyone. I felt cool for the first time. But I was young, na?ve. Icarus, flying too close to the sun. Despite the warnings, I got burned. The media was in a frenzy over the ‘bad boy’ of gaming. Luckily, I had Parker and Jackson. The System was my haven. There wasn’t so much pressure for me to be me. It went back to just me and my friends having fun. I got to solo stream whenever I felt like it, and I started playing different games. I’ll always love it, even in the dark days.”