Love, Comment, Subscribe by Cathy Yardley

CHAPTER 6

Tobin was pleasantly buzzed, sitting at one of the red couches at the Belly Up Tavern. It had great beer on tap and great musical acts. They’d been listening to a cool band he’d never heard of, a mix of rock and EDM. “Maybe I could do a video on a band,” he mused, leaning his head back against the cushions.

“I don’t know, Tobin,” his friend Josh said, taking a pull from an Arrogant Bastard Ale. “You set the bar pretty high with that Beacons video. Congrats on that, by the way.”

Tobin raised his glass with a little nod. “Thanks. Congrats on your new restaurant-thing opening. Or should I say your five restaurants?”

Josh grinned. He was the proud creator and owner of five “ghost kitchens” in San Diego that delivered food via Door Dash and Uber Eats, and he was making bank. Josh was usually too busy to hang out with the Nerd Herd crew much anymore, at least those townies that had remained in Ponto, so the fact that he’d made time to hang out with Tobin and the rest of them was a big deal, and Tobin appreciated it.

“All I know is, people expect consistency, even when they want something fresh,” Josh said.

Tobin grimaced. “Same but different. I know.” He sighed.

Asad plopped down on the couch across from him, his boyfriend, Freddie, sitting next to him and putting his arm around Asad’s shoulders. “You still stressed about a follow-up?” Asad asked, looking sympathetic. “Dude. You should be happy, not all stressed out.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you stressed,” Josh mused.

“Hey! Will you all stop saying stressed?” Tobin complained, rubbing at his temple with his fingertips. “I’m . . . concerned. Just having a little trouble coming up with a new idea, that’s all.”

He was concerned that he was starting to have trouble coming up with ideas. His conversation with Jeffrey hadn’t helped that process one bit. He’d tried mind mapping, free journaling, doodling.

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

Now, he was trying beer and brainstorming with his buddies. If this didn’t work, he was going to look into a vision quest or something. Or maybe one of those physical challenges where you were alone out in the wilderness living on twigs and berries.

He frowned. “Hey. What if I did, like, a hard-core survival thing? You know. Film myself for a week or something in, like, Antarctica or the Yukon or whatever.”

Josh’s eyes widened. “Um . . . I think you’d die.”

“I love you, man,” Asad agreed, “but let’s just say it: you’re indoorsy. Rugged, you ain’t.”

Tobin frowned. They had a valid point. He wasn’t quite so desperate that he was going to risk permanent bodily harm for content.

Not yet, anyway.

“I am stuck,” he finally admitted.

Josh leaned forward, looking intent. Tobin knew that look. It was his “thinking face.”

“I wish I’d brought my Post-its,” Josh grumbled. “Hold on a sec.” He got up, heading to the bar.

“Maybe some old-school game playthroughs?” Freddie offered. “Like, super old school. Old Activision Pitfall or something from ColecoVision, like Zaxxon.”

“Who the hell has a Coleco?” Tobin said with a little laugh. “That’s not a bad idea, though. And I do like the idea of Pitfall, but the graphics are so crap, I think it might not translate well. Still, at the end of the day, they’re just playthroughs. I don’t know if that moves the needle enough?” He frowned. Maybe do a live-action Pitfall? How would that work? He stored it away in the metaphorical file cabinet in his mind that stocked the seeds for weird ideas. “Anything else?”

“LEGO reenactment of . . . ,” Asad began, but Freddie quickly interrupted.

“Nope. Hard pass.”

“What? Why?” Asad protested.

“One, filming stop-motion is a pain in the ass,” Freddie pointed out, “and two, there are channels that do that already, and do it better. He ought to stay in his lane.”

“Weaponized silliness,” Asad agreed. “Okay. So, what’s silly?”

“That’s just it,” Tobin moaned. “I have lost touch with my silly. I am currently silly-less. This is a disturbing state of affairs.”

Josh returned to the table with a small stack of white cocktail napkins and a pen, and the surrounding friends groaned.

“Not your cards,” Tobin begged. Josh had developed this obsession with “creative life design,” like, six years ago—something their friend and fellow Nerd Herd member Tam turned him on to—and now he seemed to believe every problem could somehow be solved with sticky notes, thoughtful doodles, and a bunch of brainstorming. The guy sketched out everything. “That’s cruel and unusual.”

“My kitchens are making millions because of these cruel and unusual cards, my dude,” Josh said mildly. “I used this system to go from being a dishwasher to a restauranteur and businessman. So suck it up, and let’s ideate.”

They kicked around ideas for a half hour, until Tobin was ready to punch himself in the head. He was relieved when his phone rang. “Sorry, I have to take this,” he blurted, fleeing the noisy bar and heading outside to where it was quiet. He didn’t care if it was a telemarketer pimping burial plots. He just needed a break.

But the caller was even more of a shock, and he stared at it for a second.

Lily Wang wants to video call me?

Curious—and, admittedly, at least half-bagged—he hit the answer button.

Lily’s face filled his screen as the sounds of a noisy party surrounded her. She looked . . .

Well. She looked beautiful, like some cherry blossom goddess in a really good anime. Only, you know, Taiwanese. Of course, she always looked beautiful. She probably spent hours carefully constructing her look.

But she always looked good, makeup or not,his beer-soaked brain provided, not necessarily helpfully. He shushed his errant thought.

Not today, Satan.

“Well, well, well,” he said instead. “Lily Wang. What’s up?”

“I just, uh, wanted to congratulate you,” she said, her voice smooth as Parisian hot chocolate. “The viral video. It’s a big deal.”

And there it was. The reason he was suddenly hearing from Lily.

He knew she was a YouTuber now, too, although beauty YouTubing was hardly his area. He hadn’t really kept track of her—they’d lost touch since she moved to LA and her parents moved to the Bay Area, giving her one fewer reason to head back to Ponto.

“Thanks,” he said, hating how wooden he sounded. “How are you doing, anyway?”

“Fine,” she said. “I’m, um, at a party . . . well, a launch party, and—”

“Is that really you, GoofyBui?” a woman’s voice drawled off screen. Suddenly, what looked like a flapper popped in front of Lily’s face. “This one here claimed she knew you personally, and, well—”

“We didn’t believe her,” another voice chimed in, as another heavily made-up face crowded onto the screen. “Shame on us! Is it really you?”

He thought he recognized the second person: Chrysalis, an absolute titan in the beauty community. Influential enough that even he’d heard of them.

“It’s, um, really me,” Tobin said, feeling odd, although part of that might’ve been the beers and brainstorming session. “And yes, I know Lily.”

“That’s so sweet,” the flapper said, sounding saccharine. “And you’ve known each other since high school?”

“Since grade school,” he corrected. “Went to the same elementary, middle, and high school. I’ve known her forever.”

Lily, or at least what he could see of her, looked mollified. The other two looked curious.

“She’s actually not a bad gamer,” he added, feeling a little looser after the beers. “I mean, she’s kind of a psychotic rage warrior, and she always killed me, even when I was on her team. But she had some button-mashing skills.”

Chrysalis burst out laughing, and Daisy snickered. Lily looked less entertained. “Tobin . . .”

“You know,” he said, feeling pretty damned amused himself by this point, “she actually tried to kill me in real life before, now that I think about it. Remember? Sixth-grade camp?”

“You got kicked out of camp,” Lily said, sounding like she was talking through gritted teeth. He couldn’t help it. He grinned broadly. “For drawing on my face.”

“In my defense, she fell asleep first,” he pointed out, watching as Chrysalis and the flapper leaned on each other, chuckling. “And I was pretty proud of my artwork. Drew the Darth Maul pattern in full detail. She didn’t wake up once.”

“You drew it in Sharpie!” Lily snapped. “It didn’t come off all week!”

Chrysalis actually hooted. “God, I can’t tell if it’s enmity or foreplay,” they said, gently dabbing at their eyelashes. “But you two are hilarious. You’ve got this whole kiss-me, kill-me vibe. You two ever get together?”

“Absolutely not,” Lily said, sounding so disgusted that Tobin’s asshole response triggered like a bear trap.

“Oh, there was that one time,” he teased, waiting for Chrysalis and the flapper to lean in, obviously interested. “In ninth grade . . .”

“Do. Not.”Lily’s tone was the voice of doom. Alas, by this point, he could not give less of a shit.

“Somebody smuggled Goldschläger to a little party we were having—just us geeks, not like a kegger or anything,” he clarified, unsure of why he bothered to do so. “Anyway, we wound up somehow playing seven minutes in heaven? And I got Lily in a hall closet, and shot my shot.”

Flapper giggled. Chrysalis arched a perfectly drawn eyebrow. “So what happened?”

“I was about to kiss her.” He waited for a moment, a dramatic beat. Then he grinned. “Then I puked on her shoes.”

“Oh, God, kill me,” Lily moaned.

Chrysalis laughed, while the flapper shook her head. “You are too funny,” the flapper said with a look of interest. “And so cute! EverLily, you ever think about collaborating with him?”

“Not really,” Lily said, her voice so tight you could bounce a quarter off it.

“Oh, you should!” Chrysalis said, clapping their hands.

“Yeah, Lily,” Tobin echoed, knowing his over-the-top cheer would drive Lily bananas. “We should totally collaborate!”

“We’ll see,” she said, even though he could tell she looked ready to shoot fire out of her eyes before driving down to Ponto to murder him.

“I’ll call you, sweetie!” he yelled. “We’ll totally hook up! On this collab, I mean!” He winked.

She growled. Then she hung up on him.

He laughed, harder than he had in months. He did not know what it was about Lily Wang that tempted him to push every single one of her buttons. Maybe it was her uptight attitude and her evident disapproval of his approach to life. Or maybe it was her strange and mistaken belief that she needed the approval of people who, ultimately, didn’t matter to who she was. Whatever it was, she managed to wave a red cape in front of the bull that was his subconscious, and before he knew it, he was off and running.

He went back into the bar, still chuckling. “What took you so long?” Josh said, the cards spread out like some kind of drunken-doodle tarot spread. “We think we’re really on to something.”

“You won’t believe who called me,” he said, then plowed forward before they could guess. “Lily Wang.”

“Lily, who hates you?” Asad asked, expression bewildered.

“Last time you two were together, she threatened to give you a vasectomy with a weed whacker,” Josh added.

“She was a bit perturbed,” Tobin agreed with a grin, feeling the tension he’d been carrying flow out of his shoulders. He probably shouldn’t get this kind of hard charge from teasing Lily, but it had been a long time since he’d been able to—she didn’t visit as much as she used to. And there was absolutely no stress relief quite like winding Lily up.

“Oh! That time we all tried to go camping, and you pretended you were a bear?” Freddie said.

“You are so lucky she didn’t murder you,” Asad breathed. “Like, for real. I am surprised she didn’t run you over with her car.”

“What the hell is it between you two, anyway?” Freddie asked. “I’ve only seen you together a handful of times, and I can’t tell if it’s, like, ‘I tug her hair because I like her’ or you’re just literally trying to drive her insane.”

Asad rolled his eyes. “You should’ve seen them in high school. It was even worse.”

Josh snickered. “Like ‘get a room’ worse.”

“Trust me, we have never gotten together,” Tobin said with a grin. “She would probably literally kill me.”

But what a way to go.

He frowned at himself. No. He didn’t think that.

Did he?

He sighed. “She was just calling to score some points with influencers,” he said, and his heart fell a little, the buzz from the beer and the phone call starting to wear off. “She’s focused on the job. So I guess I’d better get my own act together, huh?”

With that, he forced himself to focus on the stupid cards, and the stupid brainstorming, and hoped like hell he’d come up with some kind of new idea.