The Switch - jschlatt

15

While Schlatt was still in town, he avoided me completely. He stayed at a hotel every night and refused to come over. He still made plans to hang out with the boys, and although no one said it, I knew I wasn't invited. Every day for a week, I woke up to an almost empty house. It felt like when I was first kicked out again. I barely saw or talked to my friends, and Schlatt completely hated me. My free time was spent missing my friends in sadness, yet also understanding why Schlatt would not want to see me.

Josh stayed home with me a few days, mostly because I think he felt bad for me. We took the empty house as a chance to stream together, and we were having lots of fun. I spent the days Josh wasn't home streaming as well. My popularity had started to climb again until it had reached an all time high, but more importantly I was genuinely having so much fun. Things were bad but they could have been so much worse.

As I was in the middle of a Just Chatting stream one day, Cooper walked in.

"I just dropped Schlatt off at the airport- Oh, sorry didn't realize you were streaming," he caught himself. I muted my mic and turned to face him.

"Really? He didn't even want to say goodbye to me?" I asked. Cooper looked at me sadly. I at least thought he would have said goodbye, but it was too late now.

"I'm sorry, Mik. Just give him some time," Cooper offered. I nodded and waved as he shut the door behind him, unmuting my mic and looking back to chat. It was filled with questions about Schlatt and I, as well as why Cooper looked so sad.

"Schlatt's good," I lied to chat. "Cooper? He looked sad? He's fine, I promise," I laughed through my lie. I continued my stream for a few more hours, ignoring any further mention of Schlatt. And I did that for a long time, until any trace of him seemed to vanish.

---

"Ted! Stop!" I screamed into my mic. He was rambling on and on about a mistake I had made trying to make me mad, and it was working. We were playing Minecraft, and I had accidentally referred to an iron golem as "Iron Man". Charlie was wheezing in the background.

"It's not funny, Charlie!" I yelled, instinctively looking over to the direction his room used to be, before remembering I didn't live with him anymore. As much as I loved that group of friends, sleeping on an air mattress with five rowdy guys in the house was not the perfect living situation. I ended up renting a small apartment in LA close by. It was super expensive, but with my twitch earnings, I made ends meet. I had originally asked Ashley if she wanted to rent something with me in LA, but she had plans to move to New York in the next few weeks, leaving me by my lonesome. Living by myself was lonely, but thankfully I saw my local friends often and played online with friends all the time too. Plus I had been living alone for almost a year now, and I was getting pretty used to it.

"I didn't know Robert Downey Jr was in the game," Ted said with a mocking voice.

"TED! I swear-" I yelled again, but something in chat caught my eye. I looked over, catching sight of a name I hadn't seen in ages. I couldn't believe my eyes, but chat confirmed what I saw, aggressively spamming his name: Schlatt.

"Oh, hey, Schlatt?" I asked it as a question. Before he could answer in chat, Charlie had added him to the call.

"Hey, Ted!" Schlatt said in his persona voice. "Make some more Marvel jokes! I love those!" My face was getting red with embarrassment.

"Charlie, make them stop!" I pleaded.

"I would need Thanos's time stone to do that," Charlie laughed. I grunted in agony, leaving the Minecraft server in rage, which only caused everyone to laugh more.

"She's just disappointed Tom Holland isn't in the game," Schlatt added. I looked over to chat, which was filling up with various emotes at my expense. As I rejoined the game, I saw Schlatt had joined the server. It was his first time on the server, so we showed him around, giving him some basic tools. The rest of the live stream went well. It was fun, easy going, and filled with great content. As I ended my stream, I felt confident that this would make a great YouTube video. Charlie and Ted were ending too, and they said their goodbyes to chat. After we all ended stream, Ted said goodbye to us, Charlie following suit. Then it was just Schlatt and me.

"Hey," I said awkwardly.

"Hey, Miki. I'm really sorry for how things went, but I think you'd understand where I'm coming from. And although it will be hard to ever truly accept, I'm ready to move on," Schlatt said. It sounded like he had rehearsed that over and over.

"Thanks for saying that," I smiled. It was a surprise to say the least, but I truly appreciated every word. "You definitely had the right to act the way you did, and I hold no grudge against you."

"Thanks, Miki." He sounded a little surprised, but more relieved than anything. "Can we give friendship another shot?"

"Yes," I agreed.

The next day I streamed Minecraft again with Schlatt and Ted. It was another great stream where everything flowed naturally and content was coming in fast. My viewer count grew as the server gained popularity. The trend continued the next few days as I continued to play Minecraft with various people. By the end of the week, Schlatt and I had been playing alone, and spending more and more time after stream just talking on Discord. It was so relieving to have my friend back, the fact I still had a tiny crush on him barely bothered me. 

Everything was looking up, but like the rollercoaster my life had been, it was only a matter of time before it all fell apart again...