Love, Comment, Subscribe by Cathy Yardley
CHAPTER 13
I am going to hell.
Tobin grinned. He was probably going for other things, too, let’s face it. But waiting to jump scare Lily, under the pretense of a dating sim that was actually a horror game, definitely earned him a first-class ticket on the downward escalator to Scorchville.
“Run, Lily!”he shouted. Her eyes wheeled like a panicked horse, and she started button mashing so hard that he wondered if he’d have to buy a new controller. “Hit him! Hit him with the bat!” he tried to instruct, then realized she had no idea how to do that.
It made it that much funnier, to be honest.
Then the main horror antagonist—ironically called Mr. Perfect, the titular character—filled up his large computer screen, and she screamed and dropped the controller, throwing her hands in front of her face.
He couldn’t help himself by this point. He let out a shout of laughter, both at her reaction and at the sheer delight that the plan he’d devised for this video had actually worked. She couldn’t have reacted more beautifully if he’d designed her in a computer.
He saw the exact moment her fear shifted into something else.
Rage.
She was no longer paying attention to the screen, which was probably just as well. Mr. Perfect slaughtered her in a splatter of blood, and a text box stating “YOU DIED” showed up in white text on red, taking up the center of the screen, over a chorus of bloodcurdling moans of torture.
“What the fuck, Tobin?” she shouted, which was a big clue: she only swore when she was truly pissed off, or scared, or both.
He was still laughing. In fact, he was laughing harder.
He really should have known better.
She got up out of the chair and started smacking him on the shoulders with her delicate open palms. “What! Did! You! Do!”
He let out a little yelp and tried to evade, doing a rolling dive out of his chair, still laughing. She followed him, yelling obscenities.
Honestly, it was just like old times.
“You jerk!” Her voice was loud enough that his neighbors would probably hear it if they weren’t at work. “You . . . you asshole! You knew that was going to happen, didn’t you?”
His smirk must’ve been answer enough. He held his hands up defensively, grinning like a fiend.
She surprised him by tackling him. A full-on tackle, right onto the small couch behind his gaming setup. He was so literally blindsided by it he fell onto the short sofa with an oof. She was straddling him—not in a sexy way, but more in a way that would’ve made it hard to breathe if she didn’t weigh next to nothing. She grabbed a nearby decorative pillow that had “for fox’s sake” cross-stitched on it with a little illustrated fox (a gift from one of his viewers), and she started systematically whacking him right in the face.
“Son! Of! A! Bitch!” she yelled, pounding him to punctuate each furious word. “Son! Of! A! Bitch!”
He couldn’t breathe, the result of her bearing down on him, the pillow periodically covering his mouth, and his hysterical laughter. Tears rolled from his eyes. “Mercy! Mercy!” he gasped, as best he could.
She got up off him, creating a moment of relief.
Then she took the pillow and absolutely belted him, teeing off like she was Tiger Woods.
Okay, that actually hurt. He rubbed his jaw, disgruntled. But he was still amused, his chuckles slowly dying down.
She spun on her heel and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
He stopped the video, then opened the door, following her. “Lily! That was gold,” he crowed, heading for the kitchen, where he sensed she’d retreated. “The traffic is going to . . .”
He stopped abruptly as he took in her face. She was crying, her makeup smeared, her full rosebud mouth pursed in a suppressed sob.
“Whoa! Hey, hey, hey,” he said, rushing to her and rubbing her shoulders, trying to pull her into a hug. “It’s just a game! Nothing to be scared of.”
She shoved him away. “This isn’t because I’m scared, you idiot,” she replied, but it lacked snap because of the soft, teary hiccup that emerged. “This is . . . that was . . . Tobin, that was not okay.”
Guilt welled up. “Let me explain . . .”
“I assaulted you.”
He blinked. Not where he thought this was going. “That was nothing,” he said, brushing it off, but her dark eyes remained intense.
“I shouldn’t have hit you. It’s really not okay.”
He sighed. “Lils, you’ve been ‘assaulting’ me since we were in grade school,” he pointed out. “I’ve gotten hurt worse in jujitsu classes. You have all the arm strength of overcooked spaghetti, and the worst you’ve ever managed to do to me is kick me in the nuts once in the pool when we were twelve, and I almost drowned.”
“Oh, God, I forgot about that,” she said, rubbing at her face and making her makeup smear even more.
“In your defense,” he added, “I was being a dick at the time, I think.” He couldn’t actually remember what he’d done, but odds were good. Besides, he wanted to take that stricken look off her face.
“You were a dick just now too,” she countered, and he smiled, hoping she was rallying. “But back then, we were just kids. We’retwenty-eight now, for God’s sake, Tobin.” She glared at him. “This is stupid, and immature, and wrong.”
He felt his gut clench. “This,” he said, his tone serious, “is my job.”
When are you going to get areal job, Tobin?
He brushed the unwelcome thought aside. He’d heard the comment enough from his parents in person; his subconscious didn’t need to play the rerun on a loop. “I get paid well for being stupid, immature, and wrong. And you came to me, knowing the kind of content I do,” he said, a sharpness of his own creeping into his voice. “You want to back out now?”
She let out a long huff of breath. “I . . . I don’t know. I just don’t like being made fun of on camera. It feels cruel.”
He winced. If he posted what he’d just done on the Am I the Asshole board, he wasn’t quite sure what kind of sentence he’d get . . . but he had a bad feeling he’d probably get a thousand “Asshole” votes.
“Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s add me giving you an apology on camera afterward. We can explain that you smacking me was just play fighting, something we’ve done since we were kids. And I promise . . . I’ll never jump scare you again. At least not without you having some advance notice. Okay?”
She looked at him with dark, serious eyes, her eyelashes still damp with tears. Slowly, uncertainly, she nodded. “Okay, I guess.”
“Good. Trust me, though. The video? Will be epic.”
“I’ll bet,” she muttered. “I’m getting mocked, I screamed like a frightened six-year-old, and I look like a complete idiot.”
“You looked adorable.”
She blinked at him. He realized that probably came out a bit more earnest than he’d intended.
“More importantly, you looked authentic,” he pointed out. “Do you know why reaction videos are so popular? Because people want to recreate the feeling of experiencing something for the first time. You were totally, utterly real, and people are going to eat that shit up with a spoon.”
She still looked uncertain. He took her hand.
“Go on. Fix your makeup, and we’ll do the ending, okay?”
He waited in his recording room while she got herself together. When she came back, she looked like nothing had ever happened: her makeup was perfect, her expression almost zen. Maybe a little more subdued.
He turned to the camera. “So that happened,” he said. “It has been pointed out to me that fooling someone into playing a horror game when they think they’re playing a dating sim is a bit of a dick move.”
“Kinda,” she agreed.
“And I feel a little bad about laughing,” he said, then smiled. “Although you have to admit, it was also a little funny.”
“I bet a bunch of AITA posters would disagree,” she muttered, echoing his earlier thought. He sobered, clearing his throat.
“Right. So I am formally apologizing to EverLily here, for putting her in this situation and yelling at her and scaring her.”
“And I am apologizing to Tobin,” she said, sounding gracious as a queen, “for . . . um . . .”
“Beating the shit out of me,” he finished, and her eyes flashed at him. “In her defense, though, it was really just play fighting, mostly. Totally consensual.”
“His safe word is Captain Crunchyroll,” she added, deadpan, surprising a laugh out of him.
“Besides, it’s something we’ve done since—how long have we known each other?”
“Twenty-one years,” she said, and he gaped.
“No kidding? That long?” He shot a grin at the camera. “And yet, in all that time, she still hasn’t killed me.”
“Yet.”She grinned herself, nudging him with her shoulder, which surprised him enough to make him pause. She sounded playful.
“So, right, bottom line: no YouTubers were harmed in the making of this video—and, gang, don’t do this to your friends.” He paused. “Enemies are fine, though.”
They wrapped up the video with a little more patter, and he shut off the camera. “Okay. I’ll edit all of this and probably post it tomorrow. Or maybe Monday? I don’t want to step on your Sunday traffic.”
“If you can get it edited, tomorrow’s fine.”
“When do you want to film the next video?” Normally he’d be all wrung out after a day of filming, but he found himself eager to schedule the next. Because it had been fun. And not in a vaguely stressed way, like the Beacons video had been. It had just been hanging out, having a good time, for the most part. Kind of like when he’d done goofing-around videos back with the Nerd Herd.
It was nice. He wouldn’t mind doing that again.
She cleared her throat. “About that.”
He stiffened. “I thought we were cool?”
“We are.” She sounded prim. “But . . . maybe we should see how well the video does, before we commit to the whole series.”
He frowned. It was logical. It made sense. And it was probably good that he kept the fact that she was doing these collabs to get a boost in stats, rather than any particular personal fondness she had for him, front and center.
“How long do you want to wait?” he countered, glad that his own voice sounded calm and rational.
“Well, I can’t imagine that it will go as viral as your wavy-arm thing,” she said. “But . . . if you post on Saturday, we could check back on Monday and decide from there, maybe? See what the numbers look like?”
He nodded. Then he looked at the clock. They’d played all morning and through lunch. “Wanna grab something to eat?”
Her stomach growled, but she shook her head. “I should head back,” she said. “I’ll grab something on the way.”
“Suit yourself.” He felt unsettled for some reason. “So . . . we’ll talk on Monday?”
“Talk on Monday.” She headed for the door.
He felt his jaw clench, and he sighed. “Lils?”
She glanced up from where she was putting shoes on. “Yes?”
“I really am sorry.”
She looked at him, hesitant, as if checking to see if he was making fun of her again. Something in his face must’ve convinced her, because she shrugged.
“Talk to you Monday, Tobin,” she said, then let herself out.