Love, Comment, Subscribe by Cathy Yardley

CHAPTER 7

Lily stared at her now blank phone screen. She wanted two things. She wanted the ground to swallow her up. But not before she drove down to Ponto Beach and pummeled one Tobin Bui to a pulp.

“So, that happened,” she murmured, looking at Chrysalis and Daisy, who were still snickering. God, they must think she was the biggest geek and loser on the planet.

Chrysalis shook their head. “That man,” they said. “Such a character!”

“And decent numbers,” Daisy added, with an avaricious gleam in her eye. “If I could think of doing anything with him, I would.”

“Oh, I can just imagine what you’d do with him,” Chrysalis said suggestively, bringing out a fresh round of laughter from the two of them (and a scowl from Todd again). It was like Lily wasn’t even there.

Which was not the point. At all.

Lily cleared her throat. “I really love your new palette,” she said to Chrysalis, keeping her voice steady and not tentative at all. “I’m looking at developing my own makeup line.”

Chrysalis nodded, not really paying attention. Daisy, on the other hand, sniffed, rolling her eyes slightly.

“I don’t suppose you have any tips on how to build your brand and your viewership?” Lily continued. “I’d love any insights you might have. Especially around collaborations.”

Daisy’s laughter was dismissive. “Here’s a tip: don’t collab with anybody who has less than eight million subscribers.” She shot Lily a look that clearly said don’t even ask.

Lily forced herself not to shrink back at Daisy’s sharp words. Chrysalis, at least, had a kind expression.

“Daisy’s right on one point,” they said. “Working with a YouTuber who has a larger audience can be a great boost.”

That’s what I’mtrying to do! Lily wanted to scream, but she kept her face placid, hoping her expression was just mildly inquisitive.

“You could do worse than collaborating with someone like GoofyBui,” they added.

“A gaming channel?” Lily asked with doubt. “I just don’t see any audience crossover.”

“You’d be surprised,” Chrysalis replied. “People aren’t just one thing, you know.”

“But wouldn’t that dilute my brand?”

Chrysalis frowned. They hated being defined or pigeonholed, Lily remembered, and quickly backed off.

“Maybe your brand is too narrowly focused,” Chrysalis said, a bit more coolly. Then they turned back to Daisy. “Anyway . . . did I hear you were considering a fashion line?”

“Just accessories to start,” Daisy said, fanning herself with her hand. “But down the road a bit, I was thinking . . .”

After a few minutes of being pointedly ignored, Lily registered the dismissal. They were obviously done talking with her, and the longer she stayed, the more humiliation seeped into her. It was bad enough that she wasn’t important enough to warrant their attention. But to let everyone see her being ignored and then realize that either she was too stupid to recognize that she was being shut down or that she was so desperate she was trying to force a connection that would never happen?

She winced internally. It was high school all over again. Just as she’d feared.

She pasted a small smile on her face, trying to look as blasé and uncaring as possible; then she got off the couch, retreating back to her friends. Mikki’s eyes were wide, and Val was grinning.

“Oh my God, how did it go?” Mikki asked breathlessly.

“Are either of them going to collab with you?” Val tacked on. “It seemed like y’all were getting on like a house on fire.”

“And what were they doing with your phone? Were you showing them your content?” Mikki pressed.

“It wasn’t like that.” Lily felt herself deflate. “They were talking about Tobin Bui.”

The two looked at her with blank expressions.

“GoofyBui,” she clarified. “You know. Waving-arm tube-man video?”

“Oh! I saw that,” Mikki said. “What about it?”

“I know him.” Lily still felt anger seething through her system. “They didn’t believe me, so I wound up calling him.”

“And?”

“And he is one of the biggest dinguses alive,” Lily hissed. “Seriously. I could strangle him with my bare hands.”

Mikki looked horrified. “What did he say?”

“He just . . . he brought up all these embarrassing stories from when we were kids,” she said, the mortification rolling over her all over again. She’d wanted to impress Chrysalis and Daisy. Instead, she’d looked like a geekish, dweebish child. An idiot. Certainly no one they’d want to collaborate with—Daisy had made that painfully clear from the jump.

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Val said, but her face looked skeptical. “Maybe they just thought the stories were funny, or cute.”

“Trust me, they didn’t.” Lily ground her teeth together. “I’m headed home. I still need to . . .”

Figure out how she was going to boost her subscribers. Find a collaborator who would work with her and actually make a difference. And come up with some content that was creative and original—and apparently something she wasn’t doing presently.

The shot she’d drunk hastily earlier was gurgling in her stomach. She pressed a hand to it.

“ . . . I need to go,” she finally finished. She hugged them both, then left the mansion before catching a Lyft and heading back to her own loft. When she got there, she got cleaned up, changed, and broke into her emergency chocolate truffles, ones she saved for special, stressful occasions. The prettiness of the box, and the luxurious, luscious flavors of the sweets, soothed the worst of her temper.

Do something different.

She looked at her old content calendar. Maria was right: it had things that had been done a million times before. Creating a minimalist wardrobe palette without being boring? Jeez, the tagline itself was boring! Testing different Asian skin-care routines? That was more niche—maybe too niche. For pity’s sake—How to rock earth tones?

What had she been thinking? It was amazing she had as many subscribers as she had, putting this stuff out!

She grabbed a blank notebook and her favorite colored markers, then started to write a list of possible ideas. It wasn’t one of her favorite blank journals—she collected those and hoarded them like a dragon, since they were really too pretty to waste on brainstorming and things she’d cross out or revise—but she needed some place to experiment.

After an hour, she felt like banging her head against a wall. So far, she’d come up with ideas like cartoon makeup, but she knew that some big YouTubers had already done that. She’d considered “makeup when you’re shame-walking to work,” but frankly, that wasn’t her experience. In the past few years, she’d mostly had boyfriends, few and far between though they were. And she always traveled with makeup remover and a travel pack of makeup. The few casual hookups she’d had, she’d refused to stay the night, hating to be seen so disheveled and making do with someone else’s toiletries. She hated waking up somewhere she didn’t know, and she really hated making small talk with someone who was (hopefully) great at giving orgasms but had nothing more in common with her than that. That awkward “Um, so last night was nice” or “I’ll call you” (when neither of them had any intention) was wretched, and at this point, she’d rather do without unless she was really, really stressed.

She sighed, cudgeling her brain to try to come up with something fresh and new.

Club looks: done it.

Daytime looks: yawn.

Wedding looks: not her wheelhouse. At all.

By two in the morning, she had scoured fellow YouTuber accounts and had gone to desperate lengths to try to find something that fit her personality, would be considered original and noteworthy, and involved someone who would collaborate with her. All she had to show for it was a headache and a list full of expletives and crossed-out video ideas.

Sandy eyed, she looked at a recommended video. It was Tobin’s beacons thing, yet again. She was too tired to be mad. Instead, she decided to click over to his channel. It had been a while since she’d looked at it. She wasn’t a gamer by any stretch of the imagination, and his antics tended to remind her of the behavior that made her want to punch him when they were younger.

She found herself falling down a rabbit hole of his old content. He still played plenty of video games, yelling and laughing and basically making a fool of himself. He still did funny little skits and fake movie trailers and song parodies. She didn’t play video games all that much anymore, but found herself cracking up at his attempts at winning a simple game that required pogo-jumping up increasingly difficult, increasingly ludicrous terrain. His swearing was colorful and inventive. He also did bigger, stupider things, like the ill-advised filling of a weather balloon with propane and lighting it (complete with huge warning disclaimer and subsequent “this was the stupidest thing I have ever done” epilogue). It reminded her of the Nerd Herd, back in high school, when they’d done things out of the Anarchist’s Cookbook as a result of their honors chemistry classes.

The more she watched, the more she realized: as much as she hated to admit it, he was incredibly creative. He managed to pack a twist and a shock even into small segments, and she found herself laughing out loud, although she was irritated at the fact.

He really was talented.

She wasn’t into cringe humor, and she didn’t like the idea of making a fool of yourself to get laughs or get views. But he was more than that. He had a flair.

Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to collaborate with him.

She blinked. Was she seriously considering this?

She looked at his stats on Social Blade. His numbers were more than respectable: he had nine million YouTube subscribers, even if her Instagram and TikTok followers dwarfed his, largely because he didn’t really produce much content in either of those accounts. He seemed to focus more on YouTube and Twitch. He was slowly but steadily growing, and he’d seen a jump after the Beacons video went viral.

The more she thought about it, the faster her heart beat. Sure, it wasn’t an obvious connection. Beauty influencer and gamer? Where was the connection? But the thing was, he wasn’t just a gamer. He wasn’t all playthroughs, all the time. She’d enjoyed his comedy stuff—always had, even when he drove her up a wall. Her audience would probably find him funny too. Beyond that, the guy was unbelievably creative. If anyone could help her come up with an off-the-wall, viral element for her beauty channel, it’d be Tobin. And she’d do whatever she needed to on his channel, which would mean more exposure as well as diversification in her content.

She took a deep breath.

The problem was . . . she’d have to work with him. Historically, that was like putting a cobra and a mongoose in a burlap sack. It did not go well.

Although she’d like to think she was the mongoose.

She rubbed her temples. She needed to talk to him about this. Not over the phone—she growled at the memory of their last video call. She wanted this to be face to face. If she could manage to keep her temper, and if he could manage to be serious for more than five minutes, then maybe . . . maybe, this would work out well for both of them.

She wasn’t holding out a lot of hope, she realized. She’d drive down to Ponto Beach tomorrow, and head to his house, and see if they could help each other without some kind of bloodshed.