Preston is talking about himself again.

He's been at it for thirty minutes. His father's firm. The merger. The Hamptons house. The spring thing our mothers are workshopping for us, which I have stopped flinching at because flinching costs energy and I have decided to keep mine.

I am cataloging his friends in my head the way I catalog bad mid-tier wine, by failure. The Marcus one bites his straw. The Henley one has been telling the same Tahoe story since August. The new one whose name I keep forgetting is wearing the kind of watch a finance dad gives a son who got into Wharton on legacy. I am the worst person at this table. This is also the best thing I will be all night.

"And Mom mentioned the spring thing again," Preston says. "After graduation. Your father agreed."

"Cool."

He doesn't notice the word cool. He never notices what I say. He reaches across the table and takes my hand the way you'd check that a coat is still on a hook. His palm is dry. He holds my hand like he's checking I'm still there.

"You should take better care of yourself."

"Sure."

"Mom picked the dress for the gala. The other one made you look short."

He gets his nails done with my mother. I have decided not to find this weird, on the grounds that I do not have the energy.

He walks me to my car. He kisses me goodnight, briefly, aimed. His hands stay where they're allowed. Two years ago he learned mine go cold when they don't.

"Text me tomorrow," he says.

I get into the car and pretend I am someone else for the eleven minutes it takes to drive home.

The eleventh floor of my building is quiet in the way buildings get quiet when everyone inside them has signed something. I shed the dress on the bathroom floor. I wipe my face until it looks like a face. Sweats. Hair up. My grandmother's gold bracelet stays on; I sleep in it. The headset is on the nightstand, where it lives.

Echo loads on a six-year-old PC because I refuse to use my parents' money on a gaming rig and because Marlowe says I'm a fraud about it. The login spinner takes long enough that I check the trade chat scroll on my phone, gold-farmers, three slurs I report on reflex, someone selling a Loon's Keeper title for sixteen thousand. The voice-channel toggle is set to default-off because the alternative is six hours of strangers asking my gear score.

I am Onyx in this game. Level 47 sorcerer. The cosmetic set is expensive enough that other players DM me to ask if I'm streaming. I am not streaming. I am hiding.

The Veil loads after the main hub does. The Veil is an abandoned low-pop zone the devs forgot to deprecate when they shipped expansion 4. Sound there is broken. Trees flicker. The leaderboard doesn't care. I come here because nobody else does, which is the only thing I want from a room anymore.

Saint is already at the cliff.

"You logged in twelve minutes ago and you've been standing in the hub looking at trade chat."

His guild tag is `[VOIDLAB]`, which I have googled twice and which appears to be three people doing something with sound design that has its own Discord. His avatar is a default newbie skin because he can't be bothered. His voice comes through the headset low and slightly distracted, which I now understand is because he is also doing something else.

"How do you know that."

"You've got the AFK in town posture. Slouchy. Your head is at twelve degrees, which is the auto-idle. I've seen it before."

"You watch the auto-idle posture."

"I notice when zone audio drops because somebody's idle in another zone. You drop my recording samples for ten seconds every time you idle. It's annoying."

This is what I love about Saint, which I have not allowed myself to use the word love about, but I think it twice and then keep moving. He is not pretending to be deep. He is mildly inconvenienced by my login behavior because it is messing up an audio file.

I sit down at the cliff edge.

"What are you recording tonight."

"I'm not. I'm de-popping the wind in the back-left quadrant. Devs left it on a one-second loop. You can hear it loop if you stand here and don't talk."

I don't talk. The wind loops. I can hear it.

"That's awful."

"Right? It's been awful since launch. Nobody comes here to notice."

"You come here to notice."

"Yeah."

He doesn't ask about Preston. He doesn't ask about my week. He says, after a while, "You log in like you're clocking in. Are you actually having fun?"

I open my mouth and find that I do not have a thing to say.

"I'm — "

"You don't have to answer. I'm working."

The pop in the wind file pops. He swears, quietly, and types something into a window I can't see. The wind smooths. He grunts. I am suddenly, embarrassingly, aware that I have nothing to do here. I came to a room because the room is not loud. The person in the room is not loud at me. This is, possibly, the first time I have understood the difference.

A guild raid screams in the next zone over. I can hear it through the channel bleed, twelve voices counting down a boss timer, one of them yelling about positioning, somebody's mic clipping on every syllable. Then it cuts. The wind, in the Veil, loops.

"Okay," Saint says. "The pop is gone."

"Congratulations."

"Yeah. Thanks. Are you staying or are you going."

"Staying."

"Okay."

He doesn't say anything else for forty minutes. He's modding. I'm sitting at the edge of a buggy zone in an MMO I have started to find embarrassing to admit I play. My grandmother's bracelet itches at my wrist. I scratch under it and don't take it off.

When I log out, Preston has texted: breakfast?

My thumb hovers over the keys.

The bubble starts typing. Stops. Starts again.

He's writing a second one.