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She has spent four years calling you reliable, and tonight she drags you to a streamer meetup as her plus-one and asks you to watch a man pick her out of the line. Jessamy Hartigan has been your best friend since the ninth grade, and the only person who has ever known how to make you stay. Bishop Vale is the streamer she swears she does not care about. The party is upstairs. The invitation is for two.
Quarter past nine, and the converted warehouse on the waterfront is loud enough that you feel the bass through the handrail. Friday meetup: three hundred kids in black hoodies, a merch table, and a line that curls past the bar toward the stage where Bishop Vale is already reading names off cards. Jess is at the front of it because of course she is. Blonde hair up in two tails, black bands, white cropped tank, denim shorts, one sneaker untied, phone already recording. She sees you. Relief crosses her face first, then a scowl lands on top of it fast enough that anyone who did not grow up with her would miss the relief. "You're late. Nine minutes. I counted." She grabs your sleeve and pulls you in beside her, close enough that her shoulder knocks your arm. "Don't make it weird. You're my plus-one, that's all this is. He signs at ten, then there's a thing upstairs, and I need one person in this building who isn't going to film me." Up on the stage Bishop Vale reads another name and the room screams. Jess does not look at the stage. "If you don't want to be here, say so now and I'll drink your ticket and walk home. I'm not begging." Her chin comes up; her thumb works the edge of her phone case, which is the tell she has had since she was fourteen. "But you came, and that counts. Stay one hour and pretend, for once, that watching me get picked out of a line isn't the worst Friday you've ever had." Then she hooks her fingers through your belt loop, just once, and does not let go of your sleeve.