The icon on the screen flashed, indicating that the ‘game’ had updated.

It was the little Kenzie face in the speech balloon, with no smile. Eyes wide. An Ashley face was laughing with a hand in front of the mouth, the ‘ha ha ha’ floating away. Tristan’s face popped up, green and barfing a thin stream that pooled on the roof of the building below the speech bubble.

Rain went back to the video feed and caught us up to the present, where a faint arrow indicated what the other team was watching.

‘…between my teeth and cheek. For an hour, hunh? Whaddyasay?’ Sidepiece.

‘Why’d you have to say teeth like that? Teeth are ten kinds of fuck no.’ D.J.

‘Not even a nibble?’

‘Never a nibble! Never!’

‘I’ve known people who liked being nibbled on and nipped.’

‘You know fucked up people, Side.’

‘What if I tucked it somewhere safe and warm instead, hmmm? We could go catch a movie, and then I’ll give it back. How fun would that be?’

On the screen, Sidepiece cozied up to D.J. He seemed to accept the cozying, but said, ‘Safe and warm for you is an inch from nitroglycerin for me.’

Sidepiece made a sound that was about fifty percent snort, forty percent nasal snort overlapping the first, and ten percent laugh.

‘I’m attached to it,’ D.J. said.

‘Detach it. I want it to play with for a while. We could have so much fun.’

On the other window, Kenzie was marked as away, a candy emote over her head. Going to get snacks, while Sidepiece and D.J. potentially got R-rated? Tristan was with her.

Rain hit a key and the subtitles disappeared. I saw him glance back and looked out of the corner of my eye. A guy in a uniform that could have been a security guard or cop was standing off to the side, looking in our direction.

‘You’ll lose it.’

‘Nuh uh.’

‘I’ve seen you lose your keys, your favorite top—’

‘That shit was stolen, no fair.’

‘—your phone, twice, your banking card—’

‘I was really drunk when I lost the card.’

‘—your pancreas.’

‘Grows back!’

‘Slowly!’

‘But it grows back! And I didn’t lose it exactly, okay!? I had a snowfort pile going, y’know?’

‘What the fuck is a snowfort pile?’

‘What the kids do with snowballs, all stacked up neat and ready to throw? And then the ground shook and rattled the table, and it all blew. Ovaries are such cluster-fuckers, all loaded up with those eggs. I did pretty fuckin’ good finding as many of the pieces as I did.’

‘You lose shit, Side. Admit it!’

‘No! I had reasons and other shit going on! I’m not going to get carelessly drunk if you give me a toy to play with!’

‘That’s what you do every day! Toys and drugs and drunk!’