When the Cable Cut

Maya's hands shook as she reached for the HDMI cable. This was it — her first real stream, and zero viewers felt like a blessing right now. Beside her, Jax kept doing that thing where he bounced his leg like a caffeinated squirrel.

"You got this, bro," he said, though his voice cracked mid-bro. Classic Jax.

"Easy for you to say. You're not the one about to have an existential crisis on the internet."

The zombie game loaded up. They'd spent three weeks grinding to unlock this legendary weapon, and now some random twelve-year-olds in chat were about to witness either their greatest triumph or most humiliating fail.

Suddenly, Maya's foot caught on the water bottle she'd strategically placed nowhere near her desk because physics had other plans. Water cascaded across the floor like a tiny, very sad tsunami.

"Maya!" Jax lunged for the cable. "Your setup!"

The HDMI connection slipped from the port. Screen went black. Chat, if there was anyone watching, just witnessed approximately zero seconds of gameplay.

Maya stared at the dark monitor, her face burning hotter than a GPU rendering 4K. "Well. That happened."

But Jax was already running across the room, fishing a spare cable from his backpack like he was a cable magician who'd prepared for exactly this disaster. "Dude, I got you. Remember when I spilled that entire coffee on my keyboard last month? Always carry backups."

He crouched beside her, hair falling in his face, and plugged everything back in like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like friendship wasn't supposed to be complicated. Like he hadn't been weirdly distant all week, canceling plans with vague excuses that Maya was pretty sure were lies.

"Jax," she said softly. "Why have you been avoiding me?"

He froze, cable halfway to the port. "What? I haven't."

"You literally have. I'm not clueless."

He sighed, dropping onto the floor beside her. "Okay, fine. You know how I've been talking to that girl from robotics?"

"Oh my god, YOU have a crush?"

"Shut up. Anyway, I thought... I don't know. I thought maybe you'd think it was weird or something. That things would change."

Maya stared at him. "Bro. We've been friends since we were literally zombies playing Minecraft until 3 AM. Some girl liking you isn't gonna change that. Unless she's secretly an alien. Then we need to talk."

Jax cracked a smile. "You're the actual worst."

"I'm aware. Now plug in the cable so I can humiliate myself properly."

The stream started up again. This time, when the zombies came, they destroyed them. Not perfectly — they still died a ridiculous amount — but they laughed through every fail, and that felt like winning.