Page 86 of Close Knit

“Hi,” she murmurs, a shadow of her usual self. She moves further into her apartment, putting a distance between us that feels more final than it should.

“Duck, are you okay?”

“I’m not,” she says with a quaver in her voice.

“Can I come in?”

She scans my face as if deciding whether to let me in—not just into her apartment, but into whatever weight is crushing her mind right now. She steps aside. Her coffee table, typically a testament to her organized chaos, is now overrun with candy wrappers and half-eaten bags of chips. Empty glasses and mugs are scattered around the living room. Crumpled tissues litter her fuzzy rug.

“I’m handling the article,” I assure her.

She curls into a ball on the couch, her phone lighting up her face. “It’s not the article. It’s…” Her voice trails off, and my heart aches at her struggle. I’ve felt defeat on the field, but this feels different. “Just see for yourself.” She hands me her phone, showing her latest YouTube video. “It’s the comments.”

I scroll through the first few of thousands.

Lol. Never bring me back to this side of the internet again.

Why would Hastings be with someone like that

Mal Kelly did it better

THIS is the reason Lyndhurst’s keeper cost us the early matches????

Attention seeker

What is this therapy knitting nonsense

Are you signing up for Lust Island Season 9?

Sorry, you knit for a living? How is that even a thing?

Cameron obv likes them dumb

WHY DOES SHE USE SO MANY EXCLAMATION MARKS

Hear earlobes look like saucers

She looks like and talks like a child

Purple hair attention much

An insidious anger pulses in my temples.

I clutch her phone, memorizing the names and profile pictures behind the cruel abuse aimed at Daphne. I should have kept an eye on the situation. When Mal spewed lies about me,she was praised in the media. But when it’s Daphne, the sweetest soul I know, the world turns against her?

She knits for charity, for fuck’s sake.

My jaw clenches, and my fists ball up. Then realization crashes over me. I did this. I brought these vultures into her safe space. Guilt claws at my throat.

“I’m sorry,” I manage.

“It’s not like you wrote them.” She sighs.

“You can’t believe any of this nonsense. They’re all lies, you must know that.”

She grabs the phone from me, and her bloodshot eyes fall back on the screen. “I—hundreds of comments are pouring in on all my videos and posts. I’ve gained over ten thousand followers, and I don’t want any of them. I don’t want a single one of these strangers in my life. They crashed my website.”

My mind spins. When this happened to me, my agent turned off all the comments on my public pages. We cut off posting, apart from the contracted brand deals that were already lined up. That helped cut out so much of the noise. “Why don’t you turn off the comments or private your page until we get the article taken down?” I ask, desperate for a solution.

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