The ring light cast a warm circle on the desk chair, the laptop already open to OBS with the scene loaded — camera source, microphone levels, the overlay she'd designed herself with those soft pink borders and the username NO ONE ASKS in a script font. Alexa adjusted the angle for the third time, nudging the tripod a quarter inch left, then back right, then sighed and left it where Marleny had set it because Marleny always got the framing better anyway.
"You're overthinking it." Marleny was sprawled on the bed, a makeup wipe in one hand, half her face clean and the other still smudged with last night's eyeliner. She looked like a raccoon mid-shed and didn't seem to care. "The stream doesn't start for twenty minutes. Sit down."
"I'm not overthinking." Alexa stepped back, squinted at the frame. The chair was in shot. The blanket draped over the headboard was in shot. The neckline of her crop top sat exactly where it needed to — low enough to show cleavage, high enough that the platform's algorithm wouldn't flag her thumbnail. "I'm calibrating."
"You're spiraling." Marleny wiped the rest of her face clean and tossed the wipe toward the trash can. It missed. She didn't get up. "It's Thursday. You always spiral on Thursdays. What's tonight's theme?"
Alexa pulled up her notes on her phone. "'Study break but I'm the subject.'" She read it flat. "'Open-book exam. Pop quiz on what makes me squirm.'"
Marleny snorted. "You're such a nerd. Even your cam titles are academic."
"It's branding. The engineering majors love it." Alexa finally sat on the edge of the bed, the springs groaning under her weight. She could feel the ring light warming her bare thighs through her shorts. The radiator hissed in the corner, doing its best to turn the small dorm room into a sauna, and the faint scent of this morning's coffee still clung to the air, stale and bitter and familiar. "Okay. I'm calm. I'm ready. I'm—"
Three sharp knocks rattled the door.
Alexa's stomach dropped through the floor. Marleny froze mid-reach for her phone, the makeup wipe dangling from her fingers, and for one terrible second they just stared at each other — two deer in the headlights of a knock that had no business being here, not now, not forty minutes before a scheduled stream with the camera already hot and the laptop open to a login screen that said Alexa_Vixen_420 in big blue letters.
"Alexa? You in there?"
Ben's voice. Low, casual, lazy in that way it always was. Like he had all the time in the world and nothing to prove with it. Like he wasn't standing on the other side of a thin dorm door while a tripod and a ring light and a professional microphone sat in plain view of anyone who walked in.
"Shit," Alexa breathed.
Marleny was already moving. She swung off the bed with the practiced silence of someone who'd helped cover up more than a few close calls, grabbed the tripod by the neck, and shoved it under the desk. The blanket followed, thrown over the whole setup in one smooth motion. The laptop she left open — closing it would've been suspicious, but she angled the screen so the OBS interface faced the wall, and the desktop background of a mountain lake filled the frame instead.
"One second!" Alexa called out, her voice cracking. She cleared her throat, tried again. "One second!"
She looked at Marleny. Marleny looked at her. The room looked mostly normal now — slightly messy, slightly lived-in, the kind of chaos that came from two girls who'd known each other long enough to stop pretending. The ring light was still on, glowing warm against her legs, but it was just a lamp now. A weirdly bright lamp with a circular bulb. Nothing suspicious.
Right?
"Get the door," Marleny said quietly. She settled back onto the bed, grabbed her phone, and looked down at it with the intense focus of someone who was absolutely not hiding anything. "Play it cool. It's just Ben."
Just Ben. Right. The tall one with the tired blue eyes and the dry humor and the way he looked at you like he was already three steps ahead of whatever you were going to say. The one who'd been in their high school hallway every single day for four years, same as his friends, same as them, same as everyone — a face so familiar it had become invisible, until suddenly it wasn't.
Alexa pulled the door open just wide enough to see through the crack.
Ben stood in the hallway, one hand in his jacket pocket, a notebook tucked under his arm. He looked the same as he always did — close-cropped blond hair, steady blue eyes, that patient, tired expression that made him look like he was constantly waiting for someone to catch up. Behind him, the dorm hallway stretched out, fluorescent lights buzzing, a faint smell of mac and cheese drifting from someone's room down the hall.
"Hey," he said. Easy. Casual. "Sorry, I know this is random. You left your notebook in the library. The one with the guitar tabs in it." He held it up, and yeah — that was hers. The spiral-bound one with the frayed cover and the half-finished chords scrawled in the margins. She'd been looking for it this morning. Assumed she'd left it at Marleny's.
"Oh." Alexa blinked. "Thanks. I didn't realize—"
"You were at the desk by the window. Third floor. I saw it when I was packing up." He shrugged, like it was nothing. Like he hadn't gone out of his way to bring it to her dorm instead of just leaving it at lost and found. "Thought you might need it."
"I do. Yeah. Thanks." She took the notebook, and their fingers brushed for just a second — his warm, hers cold from the adrenaline still running through her veins. She pulled her hand back fast. "That's— really nice of you. You didn't have to."
"I know." He smiled, just a little, just at the corner of his mouth. "Figured I was passing by anyway."
He wasn't. His dorm was on the other side of campus.
The silence stretched. Alexa became acutely aware of the ring light still glowing against her bare legs, the way the warmth of it was probably visible through the crack in the door, the way her crop top sat a little too low for a casual Thursday afternoon visit from a guy she hadn't talked to since senior year. She crossed her arms, which only made it worse.
"You got company?" Ben asked. His gaze drifted past her shoulder, into the room. Marleny looked up from her phone and gave a small, neutral wave.
"Just Marleny," Alexa said. "We were just— hanging out. Studying."
"Studying." Ben's eyes swept the room. The blanket-covered lump under the desk. The laptop angled toward the wall. The microphone on the nightstand, which Alexa had forgotten to hide. His gaze lingered on it for a beat — just a beat — then returned to her face. "What class?"
Fuck. "Intro to Psych," she said, because it was the first thing that came to mind. "Big exam next week."
He nodded slowly. "Psych. Right." Another pause. That smile again. "I took that last semester. Dr. Patterson?"
"Yeah." She nodded too fast. "Him. Yeah. He's— a lot of reading."
"He assigns like eighty pages a week. It's brutal." Ben's voice was easy, conversational, but his eyes were still on her, and there was something in them — not suspicion, not accusation, but attention. Like he was watching her the way she watched her own camera feed, looking for the tells.
She needed him gone. Now. Before the stream time hit and she started getting notifications on her phone that she couldn't explain.
"Well, thanks again for the notebook," she said, and started to close the door. "I really appreciate it."
"Wait." Ben's hand came up, palm flat against the wood, stopping it. Not hard. Just enough. "I actually— there's something else."
Alexa's heart stopped. Then started again, louder. "Yeah?"
He hesitated. For the first time since he'd knocked, he looked uncertain — like he was turning something over in his head, trying to decide if it was worth saying. His eyes dropped to the floor, then came back up to hers.
"Hayden's been asking about you."
The name landed in her chest like a stone dropped into still water. Hayden. The quiet one. The one with the dark curls and the slow movements and the way he'd looked at her across the hallway senior year like he was memorizing something. She hadn't thought about him in months — not really, not beyond the occasional blink-and-you'll-miss-it sighting across campus — and now here it was, his name in Ben's mouth, casual and deliberate all at once.
"What about me?" she asked. The question came out before she could stop it.
Ben's smile widened, just a fraction. "He wants to know if you're still playing guitar. Said you used to jam in the music room during lunch. He remembers."
She felt her face heat. The ring light wasn't helping. "I— yeah. Still play. Not as much."
"You should come by sometime. We've got a setup in the basement of Hayden's building. Drums, amps, the works. Liam's always trying to start a band that never goes anywhere, but the space is good." He paused. "You'd fit."
It sounded like an invitation. It sounded like the start of something she didn't have room for, not with her schedule, not with her nights already booked three weeks out with streams and video shoots and the constant grind of keeping her face off-camera and her real life separate from the one where she was Alexa_Vixen_420, the girl who took requests and read tips out loud and pretended every viewer was the only one in the room.
"Maybe," she said. "I'll think about it."
Ben nodded. He stepped back, hands in his pockets, and gave her one last long look — at her face, at the room behind her, at the blanket-covered lump under the desk. If he saw anything, he didn't say it. He just smiled, small and knowing, and turned to walk away.
"See you around, Alexa."
The door clicked shut. She leaned her forehead against the wood and let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
"Holy shit," Marleny said from the bed. "Holy shit."
"I know."
"Did he see the microphone?"
"I don't know."
"Did he see the camera?"
"I don't know." Alexa turned around, her back against the door. Her heart was still hammering, and her palms were slick, and the ring light was still glowing against her legs, warm and accusing. "But he knows something. He had that look."
Marleny sat up, her phone forgotten. "What look?"
"The look that says he's putting pieces together. Like he already had half the puzzle and now he's looking for the rest." Alexa ran a hand through her hair, gripped the ends. "He asked about Psych. He asked about Hayden. He was probing."
"Or he was just being nice. Guys can be nice, Lex. It's not always a chess move."
"It's Ben. Everything's a chess move with him."
Marleny raised an eyebrow. "You don't even know him."
"I know his type." Alexa pushed off the door and crossed to the desk, pulling the blanket off the tripod, checking the camera. Still there. Still recording, actually — she'd left it on. She checked the feed. Just the wall, the blanket, a blur of movement as she'd hidden it. Nothing useful. Nothing incriminating. "He's the kind of guy who notices things and doesn't tell you he's noticed until it's useful."
"Sounds like you."
Alexa stopped. Looked at Marleny. Marleny looked back, expression unreadable.
"I'm not—" She stopped. "That's different."
"Is it?"
The silence stretched. The radiator hissed. The ring light glowed.
Alexa's phone buzzed on the nightstand. A notification from the platform — You're live in 15 minutes! Your regulars are waiting!
She looked at the phone. Looked at the camera. Looked at the door Ben had just walked through, carrying her notebook and a question she hadn't answered.
"I need to reschedule," she said. "I can't stream tonight. Not after that."
Marleny frowned. "You're going to lose the prime slot. Thursday night is your biggest—"
"I know. I don't care." Alexa picked up her phone and opened the app, thumbs hovering over the cancel button. "He's probably standing outside right now, waiting to see if I was lying about studying. And if I go live and he hears me through the walls—"
"The walls are cinderblock, Lex. He can't hear anything."
"He saw the microphone. He knows what a condenser mic looks like."
Marleny was quiet for a moment. Then she stood, crossed the room, and put her hand over Alexa's phone, gently pushing it down.
"You're spiraling again. Breathe."
Alexa breathed. It came out shaky.
"He doesn't know anything," Marleny said, steady and calm. "He brought you a notebook. He mentioned Hayden. That's it. If he knew, he would've said something. He's not the kind of guy who sits on that kind of information."
"You don't know that."
"Neither do you." Marleny squeezed her hand. "But I know you're about to lose a hundred bucks in tips because you're panicking over a maybe. So here's what we're going to do. You're going to stream. You're going to be normal. And I'm going to sit right here and make sure no one knocks on that door for the next two hours."
Alexa looked at her. Marleny's dark eyes were steady, patient, the same eyes that had watched her fall apart during that depressive episode sophomore year without flinching, without judging, just being there until Alexa remembered how to stand on her own.
"You don't have to stay," Alexa said quietly. "I know you have your own stuff."
"My stuff is reading about decomposition rates and watching true crime docs. I can do that from anywhere." Marleny smiled, small and warm. "Besides, if Ben comes back, you're going to need a wingman who's better at lying than you are."
"I'm a great liar."
"You literally just told me you study with Dr. Patterson for Psych. Dr. Patterson teaches Calculus."
Alexa winced. "Fuck."
"Yeah. You're gonna need me."
For a second, the tension cracked, and Alexa laughed — a real laugh, surprised out of her, the kind that eased the knot in her chest just enough to breathe. Marleny grinned, and they stood there in the warm glow of the ring light, two girls in a tiny dorm room, holding the weight of a secret between them.
"Okay," Alexa said. "I'm streaming. But if he knocks again, I'm hiding in the closet and you're telling him I died."
"Already wrote the obituary. 'Here lies Alexa. She was bad at calculus and good at keeping secrets.'" Marleny flopped back onto the bed and pulled out her phone. "Go do your thing. I'll be your lookout."
Alexa turned back to the laptop. The OBS interface glowed, waiting. She adjusted the camera angle, checked her hair in the preview, and took one last breath — the knock still echoing in her ribs, Ben's smile still burned into the back of her eyelids, the word Hayden still settling somewhere low in her stomach like a stone dropped into deep water.
She hit Go Live.
The chat flooded in. Welcome messages, heart emojis, the familiar usernames she'd learned to recognize over the past six months. She smiled, waved, leaned into the camera, and let the performance take over.
But in the back of her mind, Ben's voice lingered. You'd fit.
And she wondered what it would be like to fit somewhere — not as a username, not as a body on a screen, but as her, the girl with the notebook full of half-finished songs and a secret she carried like a second skin.
The smile stayed painted on her face — practiced, warm, the kind of smile that said I'm happy to see you even when her stomach was still doing slow rolls from Ben's visit. The chat scrolled past in a blur of heart emojis and greetings, familiar usernames lighting up the side of her screen like fireflies.
PixelQueen88: you're back!!
horny_engineer: thought you were gonna reschedule tonight
throwaway_4492: missed you last week
"Missed you too," Alexa said, her voice sliding into that lower register she used on stream — breathier, warmer, the voice that made subscribers feel like she was talking just to them. "I know I've been spotty lately. Midterms are kicking my ass."
She leaned forward, let the crop top dip just a little, and watched the tip counter tick up in response. Three dollars. Five. Seven. The familiar rhythm of it settled her nerves the way a metronome steadied a shaky hand.
Marleny was on the bed, earbuds in, scrolling through something on her phone. She looked up occasionally, gave Alexa a thumbs-up or a smirk, then went back to her own world. The lookout system they'd developed over months of close calls — Marleny faced the door, eyes flicking to the handle every few seconds, ready to cough if anyone lingered too long.
Alexa talked through her setup for the night. A Q&A session, she'd decided — answering questions from the chat while she painted her nails a deep burgundy red. Low effort, high engagement, the kind of stream that felt intimate without requiring her to do anything too physical. Her viewers loved it when she talked. They told her she had a voice made for late-night radio, for confessions whispered in the dark.
"Alright," she said, twisting the cap off the nail polish. "Who's got a question for me?"
The chat exploded. She scanned for the ones that weren't creepy, landed on a regular who always asked thoughtful stuff.
quiet_watcher: what's something you've never told anyone?
Alexa laughed, small and genuine. "That's heavy for a Thursday night. You want me to bare my soul between base coats?"
The chat flooded with laughing emojis. She grinned, shook her head, and started painting her thumbnail a careful, steady stroke of burgundy.
"Okay. Something I've never told anyone." She paused, the brush hovering. "I used to play guitar. Like, a lot. In high school, I'd hide in the music room during lunch and just — play. Write songs I never showed anyone. I think I was better at saying things through chords than through my actual mouth."
The words came out before she thought about them. She hadn't meant to say that much. But the chat was already responding — hearts, guitar emojis, someone asking if she'd ever play for them.
noise_cancelling: play us something!!
throwaway_4492: seconded
horny_engineer: I'd subscribe for a song
"Maybe sometime," she said, and meant it. "I'd have to dig my guitar out of storage, though. It's at my mom's place, collecting dust, probably out of tune."
She finished her thumbnail and moved to her index finger. The brush was steady now, her hand no longer shaking. The stream felt good — warm, easy, the kind of night that reminded her why she'd started this in the first place. The money helped, but it wasn't the only thing. It was the being seen. The way strangers looked at her and saw someone worth watching.
She adjusted her position, leaning to the left to catch the ring light better, and her eyes flicked to the laptop screen — to the preview of her own camera feed, the familiar frame of her face and shoulders and the wall behind her.
And in the reflection of the glass of her desk clock, just visible behind her own shoulder —
The door handle moved.
Slow. Deliberate. Pressing down.
Her stomach dropped. The nail polish brush skidded across her finger, painting a streak of burgundy across her skin instead of her nail.
"Hold on," she said, her voice somehow still steady. "Got a — my phone's buzzing. Give me one sec."
She reached for her phone on the nightstand, but her eyes never left the preview. The handle was still now. Pressed down. Someone was on the other side of that door, and they had their hand on the latch, and they were waiting.
Marleny hadn't noticed. Her earbuds were in. She was scrolling.
The handle started to turn.
Alexa's heart slammed against her ribs. She couldn't freeze — she was live, the camera was rolling, the chat was still scrolling with questions about her guitar and her favorite movies and whether she'd ever done anything she regretted. Five hundred people watching her right now. Two hundred of them in this room with her, through the screen.
If someone walked in — if the door opened — if whoever was on the other side saw the setup, the camera, the ring light, the laptop screen with Alexa_Vixen_420 in the corner —
"Marleny," she said, and her voice cracked. "Hey. Marleny."
Marleny looked up. Saw Alexa's face. Saw the color drained from it. Saw her eyes fixed on the door.
She pulled out her earbuds. "What?"
The handle turned all the way.
And the door swung open.
Ben stood in the doorway.
He had his hand on the latch, his jacket still on, his expression unreadable. He looked at Alexa — perched on the edge of her desk chair, phone in one hand, nail polish brush frozen mid-stroke, wearing a crop top and shorts that suddenly felt like a confession. He looked at the laptop. At the ring light. At the camera mounted on its tripod, its small red light glowing like an accusation.
And then he looked at the screen.
The OBS interface. The chat scrolling in real time. The overlay with the pink script font that said NO ONE ASKS.
The silence stretched for exactly one heartbeat.
Then Ben's hand moved — not toward her, not toward the camera, but backward, pushing the door closed behind him until it clicked into the frame.
"Hey," he said. His voice was low. Casual. The same voice he'd used in the hallway. "Sorry. I knocked. You didn't answer."
Alexa's throat was closed. She couldn't speak. Her brain was screaming — he saw, he saw everything, he knows, he's standing in your room while you're live, five hundred people are watching this happen — but her mouth wouldn't move.
"I'm —" She swallowed. "I'm kind of in the middle of something."
"Yeah. I can see that." Ben's eyes flicked to the laptop screen again. His expression didn't change. If he was shocked, if he was judging, if he was anything other than calm — he didn't show it. "I'll wait."
He sat on the edge of her bed. The same spot Marleny had been sitting in. He folded his hands in his lap and looked at her, patient and steady, like he had all the time in the world.
The chat had noticed.
throwaway_4492: who was that
PixelQueen88: wait is someone in your room??
horny_engineer: tell him to join lol
quiet_watcher: you okay?
Alexa looked at the chat. Looked at Ben. Looked at Marleny, who was already on her feet, her expression sharp, her body angled between Ben and the door like she was ready to throw him out if he so much as twitched.
"I'm fine," Alexa said, and her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Just — roommate forgot his key. Give me a minute."
She muted her microphone. The red line on the OBS stayed on — still recording, still streaming, still broadcasting every move she made.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, and her voice was harder now. Sharper. The panic was hardening into something else — anger, maybe. Or fear dressed up as anger because that was easier to wear.
Ben didn't flinch. "I forgot to give you something."
"You already gave me my notebook."
"That was earlier. This is different." He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small object — a guitar pick, worn at the edges, the kind with a faded design that had been printed on a cheap machine a decade ago. He held it out to her. "You dropped this in the hallway. Must've fallen out of your notebook."
Alexa stared at it. A guitar pick. A guitar pick. He'd followed her back to her room, opened her door while she was live, seen her camera and her ring light and her laptop with her streamer name in plain view — for a guitar pick.
"You could've left it outside," she said. "Slid it under the door. Texted me."
"I didn't have your number."
"You could've —" She stopped. Pressed her fingers to her temples. "You could've knocked and waited more than two seconds."
"I did knock. You didn't answer." He said it simply, without defensiveness. "I figured you had your earbuds in. Figured I'd just leave it on your desk and go."
He paused. His eyes found the laptop screen again, the scrolling chat visible from where he sat.
"I didn't know you were... busy."
The word hung in the air, careful and deliberate. Busy. Not streaming. Not doing cam work. Just — busy. A neutral word that could mean anything. A word that gave her room to explain, if she wanted to.
Marleny stepped forward. "Ben. Maybe we should talk outside."
"No." Alexa's voice cut through. She looked at Ben, really looked at him — at the steadiness in his blue eyes, at the way he held the guitar pick out without pulling it back, at the patience in his posture that said he wasn't going anywhere but he wasn't going to push, either. "No. It's fine. He's already seen everything."
"Lex—"
"He's seen it, Mar." She laughed, short and hollow. "The camera, the ring light, the laptop. The name on the screen. He's not stupid."
Ben was quiet for a long moment. Then he set the guitar pick on the corner of her desk, within reach but not forced into her hand.
"I don't know what I saw," he said carefully. "I saw you with a camera. I saw a screen with a lot of people typing. I saw a name I didn't recognize." He met her eyes. "That's all I know. And if you want it to stay that way, it stays that way."
The offer landed like a stone in still water. He was giving her an out. A door she could walk through, and he'd never mention it again, and she could go back to pretending she was just a girl who studied Psych with a professor who taught Calculus.
But he'd seen it. And she was so tired of pretending.
"It's not what you think," she said. Then stopped. "Actually. I don't know what you think. So maybe it is."
Ben's mouth quirked, just slightly. "I think you're a lot more interesting than I remembered."
Alexa blinked. The chat was probably losing its mind behind her muted microphone, but she couldn't bring herself to care.
"I stream," she said. The words came out flat, confession-flat, the kind of flat that came after the panic had burned through and left only exhaustion behind. "I'm a camgirl. I do shows. People pay me to watch me. I've been doing it for about six months."
She said it to him, but she was saying it to herself too — saying it out loud in the same room as someone who wasn't Marleny, someone who'd known her back when she was just the girl with the notebook and the half-finished songs.
Ben absorbed it. His face didn't change. He didn't look away. Didn't look at the camera, at the ring light, at the evidence of the life she'd been hiding. He just looked at her.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay?"
"Yeah. Okay." He leaned back slightly, hands still folded. "Is it going well?"
The question was so unexpected, so absurdly normal, that Alexa laughed — a real laugh, surprised out of her. "You're asking if my cam career is going well?"
"I'm curious. You always did have a thing for performing. The talent show senior year. The way you'd play guitar in the music room like you forgot anyone could hear you." He shrugged. "Makes sense you'd find an audience."
The words hit her somewhere soft. He remembered. He remembered the talent show, the music room, the way she used to lose herself in chords and forget the world existed. He'd been watching her back then, too.
"It pays the bills," she said quietly. "And it's — nice. Being wanted. Even if it's just on a screen."
"That's not just on a screen."
She looked up. His eyes were steady, unreadable, but there was something in them that made her chest tighten.
"You're not just anything," he said. "You never were."
The silence stretched. The radiator hissed. The ring light glowed. And somewhere in the chat behind her, five hundred people were still waiting for her to come back, unmuted and smiling and pretending she was just a girl with a secret and not someone whose secret had just been cracked wide open by a boy with tired blue eyes and a guitar pick he'd carried across campus.
"I should —" She gestured at the screen. "I'm still live. I need to —"
"Yeah. I'll get out of your way." Ben stood. He didn't look at the camera. Didn't look at the laptop. He looked at her, one last time, and something passed between them — a door opening instead of closing. "But Alexa?"
"Yeah?"
"That invitation. To jam. It's still open. Whenever you want." He paused. "No cameras. No audience. Just us."
He walked to the door, pulled it open, and stepped into the hallway. Before it closed behind him, he glanced back over his shoulder.
"And hey — nice setup. The lighting's good."
The door clicked shut.
Alexa stared at it. The silence in the room was deafening. Marleny was frozen mid-step, her phone dangling from her hand, her mouth slightly open.
"Did that just happen?" Marleny whispered.
Alexa turned back to the laptop. The chat was a wall of question marks and concerned emojis, someone had typed who's the dilf, and her muted mic was still glowing red.
She unmuted it. "Sorry about that. Roommate drama." Her voice was steady, practiced, sliding back into the performance like a coat she'd worn a thousand times. "Where were we?"
The chat flooded with relief. Hearts. A few jokes. Someone asked if she was okay, and she said she was fine, everything was fine, just life being life.
But her hands were shaking as she picked up the nail polish again, and the burgundy streak on her finger had dried into a thin red line that looked almost like a cut, and in the back of her mind, Ben's voice lingered — no cameras, no audience, just us — and she wondered what it would feel like to play for someone who saw her as more than a screen.
"Marleny." Alexa's voice came out thin, the word cutting through the hum of the laptop fan and the radiator's steady hiss. She didn't take her eyes off the chat, which was still scrolling, still alive, still full of people who'd just watched a boy walk into her room while she was live. "Can you read the chat for me?"
Marleny was already moving, crossing the room in three quick strides, her phone forgotten on the bed. She leaned in close to the laptop screen, her dark curls brushing Alexa's shoulder, and scrolled up with the mouse, her brown eyes scanning fast.
"They're mostly asking if you're okay," Marleny said, her voice low, pitched for Alexa's ears only. "A lot of heart emojis. Someone named horny_engineer asked if that was your boyfriend."
"Ignore him. Look for anything about— about him. His face. His voice. If anyone recognized him."
Marleny's jaw tightened. She scrolled further, her thumbnail clicking the mouse wheel in steady bursts. The chat history unspooled on the screen—a river of usernames and timestamps, reactions and questions, the digital footprint of the last five minutes.
"PixelQueen88 says 'hope everything's okay.' throwaway_4492 says 'that guy looked tall.' quiet_watcher says 'you seemed nervous—you good?'" Marleny paused. Her finger hovered over the scroll wheel. "There's a comment from bigdaddyp80 asking if he can join next time."
"Ignore that too." Alexa's hands were pressed flat against her thighs, the nail polish brush abandoned on the desk, a thin line of burgundy drying on her skin. "Keep going. Look for anything specific. A name. A description. Anyone saying they know him."
Marleny scrolled. The chat kept moving in real time, new messages layering over the old ones, but she stayed a few minutes back, combing through the archive of the moment Ben had walked in.
"Nothing," she said finally. "A few people asking who he was. A joke about him being cute. One person said 'tell him to sit on the bed and stay.' But nobody's saying they recognize him." She looked at Alexa. "I think you're clear."
Alexa let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. The knot in her chest loosened, just a fraction, but it didn't unravel. "Check the voice. Did anyone mention his voice?"
Marleny scrolled again, slower this time, her eyes tracking each line with the careful precision of someone who'd spent years reading medical texts and autopsy reports. "There's a comment from noise_cancelling that says 'his voice is nice.' And another from lurker_99 that says 'tell him to speak up.' But nothing about recognizing it. Nothing that suggests anyone knows who he is."
Alexa pressed the heels of her palms against her eyes until she saw stars. "Okay. Okay. That's good. That's— that's fine."
"It's fine, Lex. People walk into rooms. It happens. You handled it."
"I froze. I literally froze. The chat saw me freeze."
"They saw you look surprised. That's human. That's relatable." Marleny's hand found her shoulder, squeezed once. "You're fine. The stream's fine. Nothing's compromised."
Alexa dropped her hands and looked at the laptop. The chat had mostly moved on—someone was asking about her nail color, someone else was requesting a song, the usual rhythm of a Thursday night stream reasserting itself like water closing over a stone. She unmuted her microphone, and her voice slid back into that warm, easy register like she'd never left.
"Sorry about that, guys. Roommate needed his key. Where were we?"
The chat flooded with responses. Someone pasted the question she'd been answering before the door opened—what's something you've never told anyone—and she laughed, a little breathless, and picked up the nail polish brush again.
"Right. Deep secrets and burgundy nails. I think I was at the part where I used to play guitar in the music room."
She painted her middle finger, the brush steady now, her hand no longer shaking. Marleny stayed beside her, close enough to read the chat over her shoulder, close enough to catch anything that slipped through. The lookout had shifted from the door to the screen.
The stream continued. Alexa answered questions, laughed at jokes, leaned into the camera and let the performance carry her. She finished her nails—a clean, glossy burgundy that caught the ring light and made her hands look elegant, deliberate. She talked about her favorite movies, her worst date, the time she'd accidentally set off the fire alarm in her freshman dorm by burning popcorn at 2 AM. The chat ate it up. The tip counter ticked up. Thursday night was saved.
But in the gaps between questions, in the pauses where she pretended to think of an answer, her mind kept circling back to Ben's face in the doorway. The way he'd looked at her setup—not with judgment, not with shock, but with recognition. Like he'd found a piece of a puzzle he'd already been solving.
And the guitar pick still sat on the corner of her desk, worn and faded, a token from a boy who remembered her from before.
The stream hit the two-hour mark. Alexa stretched, rolled her shoulders, and smiled at the camera. "Alright, loves. I think that's my limit for tonight. Thank you for hanging out with me. Same time next week?"
The chat flooded with goodbyes, hearts, the usual wave of affection that followed her off-screen. She blew a kiss to the camera—her signature sign-off—and hit End Stream.
The OBS interface disappeared. The desktop background bloomed across the screen, and the silence of the room rushed in to fill the space where the chat had been.
Alexa let her head fall back, her eyes closing. "I need a drink."
"I have tea," Marleny offered. "And a bottle of wine under my bed that's been calling my name."
"Both. I need both." Alexa opened her eyes and looked at the guitar pick. It sat exactly where Ben had placed it, a small rectangle of plastic that had somehow become a question she didn't know how to answer.
Marleny followed her gaze. "You're going to think about him all night, aren't you?"
"I'm going to think about all three of them all night. Because now I have to decide whether to take that jam invitation, and if I do, I have to face Hayden, and if I face Hayden, I have to explain why I disappeared after high school, and if I explain that—"
"You don't have to explain anything." Marleny's voice was gentle but firm. "You don't owe them your story. You can show up, play a few chords, and leave. That's it."
"Ben knows."
"Ben knows you're a camgirl. He doesn't know why. He doesn't know about the depressive episode, or the bills, or any of it. He just knows what he saw." Marleny picked up the guitar pick, turned it over in her fingers, and set it back down. "And he didn't run. He sat on your bed and waited for you to finish your stream."
Alexa was quiet for a long moment. The radiator hissed. Somewhere down the hall, someone's music thumped through the cinderblock walls.
"He said the lighting was good."
Marleny snorted. "He's a drummer. They notice lighting because they're always in the back."
"Same energy." Marleny pulled her phone out of her pocket and scrolled for a second. "I'm ordering pizza. You're going to eat, you're going to stop spiraling, and then you're going to decide if you want to text him or not."
"I don't have his number."
"He left his guitar pick here. That's basically his number."
Alexa laughed—a real one, surprised out of her. "That's the dumbest thing you've ever said."
"And yet." Marleny was already tapping at her phone, the pizza order placed. She looked up, her dark eyes steady. "You kept the pick."
Alexa looked at it. She had. She'd picked it up at some point during the stream, or maybe after, and now it was in her hand, the worn edges familiar against her palm. A guitar pick from a boy who remembered her talent show performance. A guitar pick from a boy who'd seen her secret and sat down anyway.
"I don't know what I'm doing," she said quietly. "I don't know if I'm ready for any of this. The jamming. The friendship. The— whatever this is with Ben."
"You don't have to be ready. You just have to show up." Marleny tucked her phone away. "And if it sucks, you leave. That's the beauty of being an adult. You can just leave."
Alexa looked at the guitar pick in her palm. The faded design—something geometric, maybe a band logo she didn't recognize. It had been in someone's pocket, pressed against someone's thigh, carried across campus because she'd dropped it in a hallway.
She thought about the way Ben had said you'd fit. Not you should come. Not we'd love to have you. You'd fit. Like he already knew where she belonged.
She thought about Hayden—the quiet one, the one with the dark curls and the slow movements and the memory of her guitar playing lodged somewhere in his chest. He'd been asking about her. Ben had said so. Hayden's been asking about you.
And she thought about Liam, who she barely knew but who apparently tried to start a band every other week, lanky and loud and full of ideas that probably never worked but were always fun to talk about.
Three boys from the hallway. Three boys who'd been background noise for four years until suddenly they weren't.
"Can I borrow your phone?" she asked.
Marleny raised an eyebrow but handed it over without a question. "I don't have his number either."
"I'm not calling him. I'm looking something up." Alexa opened the browser and typed in the name of Ben's building—the dorm he'd mentioned, the one with the basement setup. She found a campus directory, scrolled through a list of names, and found it: Feist, Benjamin — Room 214, North Hall.
She memorized the address. Closed the browser. Handed the phone back.
"I'm going tomorrow," she said.
Marleny's eyebrows shot up. "Tomorrow?"
"Yeah." Alexa set the guitar pick on her desk, next to the laptop, next to the ring light that was still warm. "If I wait, I'll talk myself out of it. So I'm going tomorrow. After my shift at the front desk. I'll text him—I'll figure out his number somehow—and I'll show up."
"And play guitar?"
"And play guitar." She said it like a promise. To herself, maybe. Or to the girl she'd been in the music room senior year, before everything got complicated and she'd buried that part of herself under bills and secrets and a username that wasn't her name.
Marleny smiled, slow and warm. "That's my girl."
They sat in the glow of the desk lamp, the pizza on its way, the night stretching out ahead of them. The stream was over. The secret was still intact, mostly. And tomorrow, Alexa was going to walk into a basement full of amps and drums and three boys who'd known her before she learned how to hide, and she was going to play guitar like no one was watching.
For the first time in months, the thought didn't terrify her.