My Garden || Dreamwastaken

33

I sat at the table in between Clay and Kate as we ate Thanksgiving dinner. I gave endless compliments to Kate and Kathy for cooking. I don't know how Clay, the guy who was eating an untoasted Pop-Tart yesterday because he couldn't cook anything, was related to them. It made zero sense in my mind. You'd think he would've picked up something from his mom, but no.

  For the most part I stayed quiet and let the family catch up. It was their time together and I was only a guest. I really only spoke when spoken to. I was a bit distracted by my food anyways.

The mashed potatoes that Kathy made held my full attention with their flavor. I don't know how someone could make mashed potatoes that well. She left bits of the potato skin in with it and it added so much to the flavor. I'd always been a huge fan of potatoes, but I felt like at that moment my liking for them increased tenfold.

"Heather, you do YouTube too, right?" Kate snapped me out of my potato-induced trance.

I turned to her and shook my head, setting my fork down as I spoke. "Not really. I stream on Twitch rather than post to YouTube, but they're in the same community."

"So that's how you met?" She questioned.

I looked at Clay, surprised he hadn't mentioned how we met. Then I remembered how strange of a story it was and chuckled. It was no surprise he didn't tell his family that he met his girlfriend during MCC. "Kind of, yeah. We were in the same Minecraft event and I met him through one of his friends who was on my team."

That seemed to catch Sadie's attention. "Wait, who?"

I smiled, remembering that she had met him. "Tommy. He was trying to replace Clay with me or something." I answered honestly, most likely confusing everyone at the table, except for Sadie who snickered. It made complete sense to her that Tommy would do that.

"Oh! He's a nice boy. He's the one I met, right?" Kathy looked over at Clay who slowly nodded. He seemed to be holding in laughter.

I chuckled at her description. I don't think anyone has ever referenced Tommy as a nice boy when meeting his online persona. I loved Tommy, but that description didn't fit. He was great when the camera wasn't on him, but I knew that Kathy had met him on stream. He was a lot like Jameson in that way where they had intense personas on stream.

"Technically he didn't introduce us." Clay argued and looked at me. "He just tried to make me think you hated me or something."

I laughed. He was right, but the first time we interacted might've been an even more embarrassing story for him. "Yeah. You donated to me. That's actually how we met."

Sadie started laughing and Clay covered his face in embarrassment. "You didn't have to say it like that." He muttered to me.

"Like what?" I laughed at his behavior. "That's exactly what happened. You donated to me, then I donated it back to you and that kept going until you messaged me on Instagram."

Kate started holding back laughter. "You really exposed him like that."

I shrugged. "To be fair, all of that is literally on the internet except for the Instagram messages. I feel like it's not exposing if it can be found with a Google search."

  "Where are you normally for Thanksgiving, Heather?" Nate changed the subject to save him the confusion. He very clearly wasn't enjoying the topic at hand.

  I froze for a moment. The fun moment of bonding with Clay's siblings over embarrassing him was over. "I don't normally celebrate it." I gave him a plain answer. Talking about this stuff felt like I was walking on a tightrope.