Love, Comment, Subscribe by Cathy Yardley

CHAPTER 1

Present Day

“Is this weird?”

Lily looked around the crowded party, frowning at her friend Mikki’s question as she took in the scene. “Weird, how? What do you mean?”

Mikki made a face, his flawless, glittery makeup at odds with his sour expression. “We’re hanging out at the unholy love child of a prom and a strip club,” he pointed out, gesturing to the go-go dancers and the sloppy-drunk people surrounding them, dancing badly and taking selfies. “I could be at an actual club, having a better time.”

“If you want to be a beauty influencer,” she said, nudging him with an elbow in his ribs so his eye-shadowed eyes widened, “then this is part of the gig.”

She wasn’t kidding. This was an after-party from the earlier CreatorCon, which they’d dutifully attended despite not having booths or speaking on panels. CreatorCon was one of the smaller conventions for YouTube and TikTok “celebrities,” with only eight thousand or so attendees, but because of its location in LA, it still managed to attract some big names. She and Mikki had scored tickets to this after-party, hosted by a camera company or something, after much flirting and begging. It was touted to be “fan-free”—creators only, not even press. There were free drink tickets to the wildly overpriced bar. There were even elaborate props set up, encouraging influencers to take selfies—a huge set of lips, a snow globe set, an amusingly phallic banana-shaped chair. And, of course, the company’s logo featured prominently everywhere.

It was grasping, she realized, and crassly commercial, and it didn’t matter. This was just a hoop to jump through. She was here on a mission; the surroundings weren’t important.

“Don’t look at it as a party,” she counseled Mikki. “Look at it as a job. This is work.”

He blew a raspberry. “At least they’ve got guy dancers as well as girls this time,” he grumbled. “I need a drink.”

She shook her head. Mikki, a.k.a. Mikki MUA (for Make Up Artist), was a relatively new YouTuber. She’d met him at a party, and they’d both waxed rhapsodic about an obscure brand of Chinese eye cream, and they became fast friends soon after. She now often used Mikki as a date of sorts for these kinds of strategic engagements. “One drink,” she said. “Then we’re going to track down our target.”

“Why do you always talk about these things like you’re going behind enemy lines and trying to save the world from Axis forces?” Mikki rolled his eyes.

They got their drinks—a beer for him (which was priced at ten dollars without drink tickets, despite being domestic, something Mikki scowled at) and a cranberry juice for her, her drink of choice since it was easy to pass off as a vodka-cranberry. Generally speaking, she didn’t drink on the job. You never knew who was filming at these things, and the internet was both eternal and unforgiving. She’d learned she could convincingly fake being drunk if she felt she had to.

“So,” Mikki said, then took a long pull of his beer and scanned the crowd. “Where’s this guy we’re trying to meet?”

“The guy we’re looking for is standing over by the banana chair,” she said, before taking a sip of her juice and gearing herself up for . . . well, battle, as it were. “Come on. We’re going in.”

“Who is he, again?”

“He’s one of Chrysalis’s entourage,” she said.

Mikki’s eyes bugged out. “Chrysalis is here?”

“No, of course not. They’re way too big,” Lily said. “But this guy is a friend, supposedly, and always brags about being one of their inner circle and having invites to their parties. We’ve got this.”

They made their way to the man and several of his friends, who were goofing around with the banana-chair prop. She laughed, a bit forced, as he positioned the banana to seem to be his equipment. He looked at her with an interested quirked eyebrow. “Well, hello,” he said with a smile.

She just smiled in response. Was his lazy survey of her body icky? Sure. But it was also reflexive, and she tried not to take it personally. “Hi. Aren’t you Rickalicious? Fitness trainer, skin-care-regimen guru?”

His chest puffed up with pride, and his smile widened. “Sure am. You looking for a workout?”

She tamped down on impatience. Why were men like this?

“Actually, I was wondering,” she said, trying to sound friendly but not necessarily flirtatious. “Do you have any extra tickets to the PEACOCK launch? I know you’re a close friend of Chrysalis’s.”

“I might have a few,” he drawled, studying her as his friends continued goofing around on the chair. She was wearing what she considered her signature clothing—rose-gold baby doll dress with kitten heels, purse. “Good girl” chic, and he obviously approved. “Who are you again, darlin’?”

“I have a beauty channel, EverLily,” she said. “My name’s Lily Wang, and this is Mikki MUA.”

His smile was bright, making his words seem even harsher. “Never heard of you.”

This was irritating, but again, not surprising. She wasn’t sure if he was negging her or just being honest, but either way, she couldn’t afford to take offense. “I’m more of a niche brand at this point,” she said, overemphasizing the sweetness in her voice. “But I’m at close to five million subscribers and growing.”

He seemed to mull this over, eyes narrowing as he stared at her face. “Is it in English, though?”

“Yes, it’s in English,” she snapped, then stopped herself. “I started the channel when I was still at UCLA,” she added when her facade was safely back in place.

“Hmph.” He pulled his phone out. “EverLily, you said?”

She knew exactly what he was doing—checking her numbers and profile on Social Blade. She didn’t blame him. She waited until he verified her stats: number of subscribers, number of views, followers on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. Then he looked at her. “Okay, those are decent numbers,” he admitted grudgingly, typing something else in and frowning. “I don’t recognize your sponsorships, though—they seem pretty small, a lot of them foreign.”

“I’ve got some things in the works,” she hedged. He saw through it and frowned.

“What about your own cosmetics?” he pressed. “Any deals?”

She shook her head. “Not quite yet.”

He looked unconvinced, judgmental, and she felt a pang of desperation but knew better than to show it.

“I just really want to see the palette,” she gushed. “I’ve been waiting since Chrysalis teased they were launching the new eye shadow collection, back in January. I would just love to see it and test the samples on my channel!”

She’d chosen that plea specifically. Rick was a member of Chrysalis’s entourage, sure, but he was a fitness YouTuber, not a beauty influencer, and his numbers were a lot lower than Chrysalis’s. (He wasn’t the only one who could use Social Blade, and there was no way Lily was going to go into something like this blind.) Lily knew he’d have tickets to the party. Chrysalis’s assistant had distributed a lot already, to the crème de la crème of LA’s influencers, but there was social currency in inviting people to the party—showing you had the access to invites, sure, but also inviting the right people. Rick would stand to curry some favor if he brought in someone with good numbers who could spread the word about the launch—a good review on a subscriber-heavy channel could only help. On Lily’s side, writing about the launch would bring more viewers to her site who wanted to know more about the palette. Win-win, which Rick would recognize if he had any intelligence at all.

That was not to say that he did. She waited.

“All right,” Rick said with just a hint of reluctance in his voice. “Give me your number, and I’ll get an invitation sent.”

“Two,” she corrected, looking at Mikki.

Rick seemed to size Mikki up, then shrugged. “Sure, two, why not,” he agreed. “It wouldn’t hurt to have some nobodies there, to pad out the crowd.”

She could feel the ire coming off Mikki in waves, so she quickly gave Rick her number and then dragged Mikki off.

“The nerve of that asshole,” Mikki growled. “Just because I don’t have a lot of subscribers or anything . . .”

“You know how it is,” she said, trying to console him. “It’s a numbers game. It’s just the way things are with the beauty community. Or any YouTube or social media community, I guess.”

“It’s fucking high school all over again.”

High school.

She couldn’t help it. She winced.

And of course Mikki had to notice it. “Ooh. That struck a nerve,” Mikki said, his impish face looking immediately curious. “So what happened? Tell me all about it.”

She shot him a nervous glance. She liked Mikki. He was the closest thing she had to a friend in Los Angeles. But it had been years since she’d really had best friends . . . not since high school, really.

She noticed that Mikki was still waiting impatiently and smoothed on a smile. “It wasn’t a big deal,” she said. “I spent years as one of those nerdy kids—you know, advanced classes and extracurriculars, journalism and academic team, California Scholarship Federation and National Honor Society. You name it.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Mikki said, before taking another sip of beer. “You’re sort of insanely organized and, like, super smart.”

“Yeah, well, by senior year I was sick of just being seen as one of the ‘Nerd Herd’—can you believe we actually called ourselves that?—and I wanted to hang out with the popular crowd.” She squirmed. “That sounds terrible, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not judging.”

She looked at him, and it really seemed like he wasn’t, so she kept going. “I just . . . they were all so good looking. They always had stories about these parties and glamping trips where they’d get drunk and get wild, and they were having sex, and it was so damned exclusive, even though there wasn’t anything specific, you know? It wasn’t like they were a country club or something. You just . . . you fit in, or you didn’t.”

Mikki paused for a second. “I’m guessing it didn’t go well,” he said finally when she didn’t automatically continue.

“It went about as well as expected,” she said, even as memories swamped her.

Vanessa’s judging, puzzled expression. “So . . . did you, um, want something?”

Lily felt her stomach knot, even after all these years.

“Anyway,” she said brightly, “we did what we set out to do.”

“Was there any doubt?” Mikki said, clinking his beer bottle against her glass. “You, my dear, are an absolute beast, and I think there’s nothing you can’t get if you set your mind to it.”

She smiled back at him. Being a YouTuber might seem frivolous, but she knew better than anyone it was a business, one that took hard work and dedication, one you had to take seriously.

No one took success more seriously than she did.