It seemed to simmer him down for a few months.
I still saw him in the comments section, but he kept his comments on the game instead of on me.
Then I woke up to check the comments on my new video to find him talking about how pretty my lips were.
And, as you can imagine on the internet full of the world's most vile male specimens, all the comments in reply to his were about what I could do with my mouth. It spiraled even worse from there, making me need to delete Patrick's original comment to try to make it stop.
It didn't seem to matter that I had never seen these people, that I never would see these people, it still felt skeevy to see those things about me. It was like being catcalled just without the immediate danger of possibly being raped and murdered for my rejection.
-- That asshole.
That was the response I'd gotten from KitKatTalksBack, my only real friend in the gamer sphere, who responded when I'd messaged her about Patrick.
- I know. I've tried blocking him, but he just keeps making new profiles. It's obnoxious.
-- I know it sucks for the algorithm, but you can turn your comments off.
Kit played the same games I did. That was how we'd "met" originally, in a thread about our favorite game and the book series it was based on.
I liked most of my viewership. And since I lived by myself in the middle of nowhere with no actual friends, interacting with these online people was the most socialization I got in my life. It was my lifeline in tough times. So I was willing to deal with a couple creeps to keep that small connection to the world.
In retrospect, maybe moving away from my old life had been a mistake. My apartment had been within walking distance to all the shops and take-out places I liked to frequent, which gave me a sense of normalcy.
But it was also close to family. And mine could be of the invasive sort. Always trying to swoop in and "save" me or "fix" me, even though over a decade of therapy had never managed that before I finally decided to quit working on the whole exposure therapy thing, and just accepted that car avoidance was a part of my life.
I guess I had figured it wouldn't be a big deal. I wasn't a people-person by nature. I liked being alone. That was still true. But I guess there was something therapeutic about seeing the faces of people every couple of days that helped keep your social coffers full.
It had been a week since Jones had visited, since I had met the hulking Huck.
I'd been crushing out more videos than usual, just wanting something to do to fill my time. Especially because I hadn't been sleeping.
That wasn't new for me. I had never been someone who passed out and got eight solid hours, but my insomnia had been worse than usual, leaving me pacing my back porch at all hours of the night.
Like tonight.
It wasn't pacing weather, what with the humidity set to a thousand, making my clothes feel like they were sticking to me within minutes. There I was anyway, drinking grapefruit seltzer water like an old lady, and wondering if it would be worth it for me to make a trip into town myself to do some window shopping, see some people, maybe even share some face-to-face words with a few.
It was never easy, having to walk for about forty minutes in the sweltering heat to get to the train station, then get off and walk another half an hour before I made it to town.
I was exhausted just thinking about it.
A low, rustling noise had me stopping in my tracks, my stomach plummeting. My mind always went to snakes, even though I hadn't seen one since moving in.
But not two seconds later, I felt something cold press into my calf, making a shriek burst out of me as I jumped up and over two feet while somehow turning at the same time, spilling my seltzer on the front of my tank top.
That was when I heard a low whining noise that definitely wasn't like any snake I'd ever known.
"Oh, hey," I said, heart thumping as my gaze landed on a wide-headed, sweet-eyed pit bull with a hot pink collar sitting on my back porch. "Heya, honey. What's up?" I asked. "You don't belong here," I reminded her as she looked at me expectantly, her little stubby tail waggling back and forth. "Did you break outta that joint?" I asked, looking over toward the biker clubhouse.
I'd gotten so accustomed to the party sounds that I hardly noticed them anymore. But, sure enough, the front yard was lined with cars as well as the usual bikes and the one or two vehicles that belonged to the MC—a fancy-looking race car and a SUV.
The music, as usual, was thumping. And people milled in and out of the front and back doors.
Which was likely how the dog had escaped.
There was no guesswork in who she belonged to. I'd seen one of the bikers walking four dogs morning, noon, and night on top of the potty break walks around the property.
"I, ah, I guess I need to bring you back home, huh?" I asked, looking down at my outfit that was not meant for a party at all—a pair of yellow and white boxers and a black tank top with red flip-flops, but I didn't want to risk going back inside to change, and having her run off on me. "Can I touch your collar?" I asked, tentatively reaching out toward her, not seeing any signs of aggression. "That's a good girl," I decided, snagging the little loop where her tags hung, and walking half crouched to the side across my and then their front yard.
I was just closing in on the door when it suddenly flew open, two women stumbling out, laughing as they went, leaving the door open.
"See? That's how you got out, isn't it?" I asked the dog. "Come on. Let's find your dad. And hopefully he can put you somewhere safe for the rest of the night, yeah? Can't have you wandering around. I guess we should just go in," I decided, looking through the open front door.
I had no idea what to expect on the inside. Our places couldn't have been more vastly different on the outside. Mine was a white-sided ranch with very little originality. Theirs was a two-and-a-half floor home with a basement and sand-colored stucco. And where my house was modest at best, theirs was a sprawling thing that had to have at least boasted five-thousand square feet, not counting the basement or the half third floor which I figured was an attic.
They also had the pool that I very much envied. It was perhaps the only thing I missed about my childhood home, the Olympic-sized swimming pool I used to swim endless laps in on bad anxiety days.
But there was no telling what the inside looked like. Especially with all-male partying residents.
Inside the front door toward the left was a staircase tucked in a corner in a room that should have been the dining room, but was dominated by a beer pong table, red cups all lined up.
To the right was a living room that was, in fact, decorated as such with a leather sectional and a massive TV. If you, y'know, ignored the fist holes in the walls and the utter lack of any hints of decor. Like curtains or throw pillows, any art on the walls. It was bare-bones, a bachelor pad through-and-through.
"You must be Harmon," a voice declared from the living room, pulling my gaze off the holes in the walls.
There, situated among about half a dozen bathing-suit-clad women was one man. Whoever he was, he was a little person with keen eyes, and a nice suit, who also had the balls to wear an actual bowler hat in this day and age.