To hear her tell it, Jane wasn’t a competitive woman. She enjoyed video games as a way of blowing off steam after work, and playing online games with multiplayer voice chat meant she could get some socialising in while she played - and the Lord knew she needed that - but she wasn’t competitive, and she didn’t take it seriously.

She’d definitely told people that in pretty much those exact words, even, when hanging out at the bar on the rare occasions she had both the energy and the enthusiasm to catch up with her actual friends, or responding so some teasing by her family. And it was something she absolutely believed.

Moments like this one, where Jane gripped the controller with enough fury that she might risk cracking it, were pretty far from her head at those points, and the cackling, high-pitched laughter coming across voice chat would be forgotten or retconned into something cheerful and apparently friendly in her memory not long after she’d finished playing.

For the time being, though, she was being spawn camped by a bunch of the other players on the server and was having to restrain herself quite carefully from hurling obscenities into her headset microphone.

Every respawn was followed, a few moments later, by another death, and that set off laughter more grating than a Disney hyena. She’d thought at first they were kids, although at least one of them was definitely drunk and when they talked briefly about their lives, college was mentioned. She’d still bet money they weren’t more than freshers, though - still with the easy arrogance of men who’d never had to look after themselves or balance checkbooks, let alone balance their diets.

One of them, Huey (or maybe Hughie - his gamertag was EdgeMaster1138), claimed to live on Pop Tarts. She still wasn’t sure if this the truth or if he honestly thought it would give him some kind of street cred. She had taken some care not to think about the possibility it would.

Her team actually won the fight, in the end; half of the other team had been so focused on keeping her killed ‘for the meme’ that they’d completely abandoned any attempt to take or hold objectives, and they lost in a landslide. Jane’s own howled “YES!” would certainly give the lie to the idea she was competitive.

The voice chat channel she was on went to shocked silence, and for a moment or two the idea hung in Jane’s mind that perhaps she’d actually taught them a lesson. Then there was a nasal snigger and a male voice said softly - but not softly enough - “Oh my God…”

That speaker had barely kept their laughter in for the sentence, but it was the trigger; it opened the floodgates. Laughter spread through the channel and, as Jane’s cheeks burned, she realised it now wasn’t just the students who’d been tormenting her; others from the chat were laughing now. She’d shown them clearly that they were getting to her, she thought ruefully. What else had she expected?

“Oh…” she said, her voice faint with uncertainty - but the laughter died away, so it was into an expectant silence that her tongue got ahead of her brain and what she said was “…fuck all of you.”

Laughter resumed, but now muted just the littlest bit as some of the other players clearly sensed that this had slipped over the edge; that for at least this moment, her exhaustion and exasperation was real. Something about that, in turn, sparked something in her; she burst out laughing herself.

It took some of the edge off her frustration, but there was still a sour taste in her mouth.

*

She had four or five friend requests waiting for her after that session, and the first two she recognised immediately as players who’d worked effective duos with her, so she accepted every request. It wasn’t until a day or two later, the Thursday night of the week, when, spotting one of the other names online, she stopped to wonder if maybe he’d been one of the assholes.

Buuuut she really wanted a game - it had been a hell of a day - so she logged into the server and connected to voice. Besides, she reminded herself, it wasn’t like they knew who she really was. The best they’d got as an indicator was her gamertag, Thunderwave. They’d assumed she was another guy until she’d opened her mouth.

So sure, this guy FisherKing was an asshole, but as much as he might frustrate or infuriate her, he wasn’t going to be able to do more than that. He couldn’t touch her for real.

She ended up on the same team as FisherKing that game, and once he recognised her voice, while he sounded amused, he didn’t seem too aggressive toward her. There was the occasional joke - “Hey, Thunderwave, think you can get those guys to camp you so hard they lose?” - but he came across as less of an asshole than his friends. Or maybe it was just that his friends weren’t on to egg him on and wind her up.

Maybe one of them alone wasn’t too bad. She could believe that.

They won the round, and the next, and then Huey joined when a spot opened up and his braying laugh started to grate on Jane’s nerves again. Didn’t help that always - well, almost always - it followed some kind of joke about one of the female players that was only a joke if you were feeling generous.

Sooner rather than later, she thought, someone will take that lad in hand, sweep him off his feet, and he’ll realise what he’s been missing, but the wakeup call is going to have to come from outside because he’s clearly clueless that one might be needed. She briefly considered trying to say some of this to him, but rapidly decided that it would be far from worth the effort. After another round and another victory, Jane felt like she had a pretty good excuse for calling it a day - and winning meant it wasn’t going to sound like sour grapes.

“Well, guys, it’s been fun,” she said, “but I’ve really got to get on with my night. Thanks for the game, everyone.”

There was a chorus of goodbyes from most of them, but she’d already started logging out. This was just a simple precaution against Huey - he wasn’t the quickest thinker, and she was offline before he’d come up with whatever he’d been going to come up with.

Moments afterward, her launcher got a message from FisherKing.

FisherKing: You did good there. Game again tomorrow?

She stared at it for a long moment. This felt like a gamble, buuuut…

Thunderwave: Sure, I’m in.

They couldn’t be as bad as she’d felt they were earlier in the week. Not if they were being friendly now.

*

Friday did not go the way she’d hoped it would.

Jane was actually in a better mood than she usually was at the end of the week. Calls from clients are always hit or miss, but when one goes right it can really lift your mood, especially if you get to end the week mentally calculating the bonus payment you just earned. She wasn’t playing to de-stress that night, but she’d agreed to play. And besides, there wasn’t anything else she particularly wanted to do. At her age, the energy involved in a Friday night out wasn’t really something she could muster up every week.

…

She was far too young to be complaining about being old. She hadn’t hit thirty yet. It just turned out that some stuff she’d thought wouldn’t hit until middle age showed up a lot earlier, at least if you leaned toward the introverted side of life.

So she logged on, and she ended up on a team with FisherKing and EdgeMaster1138 and - it turned out - a bunch of his other friends, including SlaaneshiTastes, DanAwesome, and a whole bunch of other names, many of which she didn’t understand but could tell just from looking at them were stupid, awful names coined by stupid, awful people.

With all of his friends with him, FisherKing was worse than he had been the night before, but he wasn’t nearly as bad as some of the others. And the fact she’d voluntarily joined the team seemed to make it all worse.

Huey was still making the horrific comments that seemed to be his standard train of thought, and two of his friends were egging her on. Somehow worse were the others, who would give her an opportunity to think she had team support when she made a play, then vanish and leave her to die, their only response to her sharply-grunted frustration an amused snickering.

FisherKing, who it seemed like they all looked to for guidance, wasn’t doing nearly so much, but he wasn’t intervening, either, and he seemed to find the whole thing hilarious. Jane was pretty sure she could tell his laughter apart from the others - he somehow managed to sound aloof while laughing, something she was pretty sure shouldn’t be possible.

She snapped midway through the second game. Perhaps it was the speed with which they’d brought her mood crashing down, perhaps something else. Perhaps she’d spent more time replaying Huey’s laugh than she thought she had. It didn’t matter. Her mouth opened and her frustrations started to spill out. She began with “Listen, you self-serving, entitled, know-nothing prick,” and went on for some time. She cut the call, took a few deep breaths, and shuddered; and when she tried to recall what she’d said, she couldn’t. It had just been one extended babble of fury.

She got up and went through into the kitchen where she mixed herself a stiff drink, and she sat at her kitchen table for a while, both hands around the glass, thinking to herself, totally silent.

For the first time she wasn’t making apologies for them. It had been too much; she could remember how physically she’d felt her own rage, and that wasn’t something she wanted to repeat. Her cheeks had burned. She’d been able to feel her teeth grate. The tension in her shoulders was still there.

When she meandered back toward her computer, though, there was a message waiting for her.

FisherKing: Sorry about that. The boys can be a problem sometimes. I told them you were right, though.

Jane sighed. Not because he’d reached out, but because she’d felt herself be touched for a moment. And, as a result, she knew that sooner or later she was going to end up talking to him, and possibly even playing again.

She nearly went straight back out of the room - it was tempting - but she decided in the end to sit down and have the conversation then, when she was still angry enough to stand her ground.

Thunderwave: I hope they’ll listen to you, but the problem is they clearly don’t care much about listening to me. Or anyone like me, I’m prepared to bet.

She folded her arms. She knew the point she’d wanted to make, and she thought she’d made it well enough to get it across. But was he actually smart and sensitive enough to get it?

FisherKing: Not all of them. We’re young, and they get carried away easily. I’m not going to make excuses. It happened. But it does make me feel bad that we got to you. Honestly most of them feel bad now they’ve calmed down and had a chance to think.

Thunderwave: Most?

FisherKing: I’m not going to lie to you about this. But, look, if they don’t get the chance to do better they’re going to be like that for the rest of their lives. And you’re just a voice. It’s easier for some of them to talk to you than the girls on campus.

Thunderwave: Why, for God’s sake?

FisherKing: If I answer that you’ll lose even more respect for them. But they’re still my friends. I’ve known half of them for ten years now. And I can’t teach them better on my own.

Thunderwave: They’re not my responsibility.

FisherKing: You know what? That’s fair. That’s totally fair. I didn’t mean to say they were. It’s more that I was asking for help - actually, never mind. I don’t want to just do the same thing again.

Well. At least one of them had the capacity to learn. She supposed that was good.

Thunderwave: Thank you.

FisherKing: Let me make it up to you.

Thunderwave: How on earth do you plan to do that?

FisherKing: I was going to host you for a game. Not me and the guys, just you and me. A chance to talk.

Thunderwave: How is that making it up to me?

FisherKing: The game’s designed to help players blow off steam. It’s two player only, so I’m not going to lie, you’ll be doing me a favour too, but mostly I was thinking you’d probably need to blow off steam.

Thunderwave: And what’s this game? I’m not buying something new.

FisherKing: You don’t have to. I can host it. That’s how it’s meant to work. You talk, you play the game, and the way it’s designed is a stress absorber.

Thunderwave: Don’t you mean stress reliever?

FisherKing: Play it and you’ll understand the difference.

FisherKing: You up for it?

She should have said no. She knew she should have said no. But she knew, too, that if she did she’d have beaten herself up for not doing the right thing for years to come.

One of those old kids’ authors had written about it, hadn’t he?

“Make your choice, adventurous stranger

Strike the bell and bide the danger

Or wonder ‘til it drives you mad

What would have happened if you had?”

Thunderwave: Fine. Whatever. But I reserve the right to quit out at any time.

FisherKing: Cool. I’ll send you an invite.

Thunderwave: What’s this game even called?

*

The game was called Pastime, and that had something to do with enjoying time passing when you played it, apparently. It looked sort of like a card game where the cards were also stacks of tiles laid out in multiple intricate patterns. You made links between them, and they disappeared, while the host attempted to create new links that kept them in place and built up the patterns.

It looked like the two of them were evenly matched, despite this being her first game. Jane wasn’t sure if he was going easy on her while he walked her through the rules, but it felt like the game might just be that balanced. Like winning was deliberately not something you did.

But she’d give FisherKing this much; it was fun, and peaceful, and resisted her getting too obsessive or competitive. Keeping her eyes sharp for new strategies didn’t seem to work. Somehow, just as she found an effective strategy, the game stopped presenting opportunities for her to use it, so she’d go on a burst and then slow right down. Then she’d think she had something else that would work, and again, a burst of play and then things would slow right down.

The music in the background encouraged that, too; it was quiet enough that she’d had no particular interest in turning it off, and it was slow and steady. She’d get excited and actually be able to feel her heart rate slowing again as her natural rhythms drifted back to the beat of the music.

After he’d explained the rules, the intention had been to chat, he’d said. But once she started to get the hang of it she’d fallen silent, focused on the game, and so had he. There was one exception, two or three minutes into the game, where she’d broken the silence to ask “How did you ever find this game?”

“Believe it or not, I got a copy from my Dad. He and Mom used it about five years ago, when they were going through a rough patch, and Dad reckons it’s the thing that kept them together. Said their marriage counsellor was useless but playing this together reminded them how much they liked each other.”

“Huh.”

She’d fallen silent again after that. Thinking of topics to raise felt like struggling against a weight, somehow, and looking for pairs to match was simple and easy and pleasant, and the way that cards swirled away once eliminated was lovely to watch. She wondered if establishing links felt as good.

Moments passed, and minutes, all uncounted. Jane had no idea how long she’d been playing. If she were hungry or thirsty, that passed by unnoticed. The aura of peace the game projected settled on her like a gentle caress and a warm blanket.

There was a soft tingle up and down her spine and across the back of her shoulders as her body settled, the last tension seeming to ebb away. Jane’s lips parted and something between a sign and a whimper slowly trickled out. It might have made it to her microphone, even; she thought she heard a chuckle on the other hand.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” he asked.

“Mm-hmm,” she acknowledged, syllables slowed into a laggy cadence. “Feels… good…”

“Awesome,” he said, his tone casual, but there was something about his voice. She had a vague notion that he might be hiding something or concealing how he thought or something similar. It was just difficult to care about that. “So hey, if you’re feeling good, have you calmed down about earlier?”

“Calm,” she agreed, after a long moment. Answers seemed to come slowly. Everything seemed to come slowly. Thoughts and words appeared in her head without it feeling like she had anything to do with thinking them. And that was lovely, that was just easy and even peaceful.

“That’s good. Do you forgive me?”

“Forgive… you…”

“You forgive me,” he persisted.

“I… forgive… you…” The words seemed to take an age to spill out from her, but once they were done she felt a strange rising euphoria, as if something had been lifted from her.

“That’s good. I’m going to need you to relax around me.”

“Relax… around…”

“That’s right.” FisherKing sounded amused. Like he was trying not to laugh at a private joke of some kind. Jane had no idea what that could be.

“You’re not angry with me.”

“…not… angry… with… you…”

Jane had a new theory now, and the new theory was that this was actually a dream, somehow. Still, the words she was saying seemed to be completely in line with what she was thinking, so that was good.

“You can be honest with me. In fact, you trust me so much I’m one of the people you come to when you need to talk.”

“…honest… trust… people…” Processing the idea was almost making her head spin, to the point it was uncomfortable. But then she matched two more cards, and the discomfort eased. “You’re one of the people I come to when I need to talk,” she said, and she thought, fleetingly, that that wasn’t exactly a long list, either.

“You confide in me. You wouldn’t hide anything from me.”

“I confide in you. I wouldn’t hide anything from you,” she agreed. There turned out to be a broader clarity in playing the game more successfully. It was easier to understand what her friend was saying. Repeating it didn’t seem important, but she’d gotten into a rhythm now, so why stop?

“You love this game. You’d play it any time I offered.”

“I love this game. I’d play it any time you offered.”

“You don’t need to remember what we talk about when we play.”

“I don’t need to remember what we talk about when we play.”

*

The plan was to spend her weekend buried in her other hobbies, the ones that took hours at a time in full concentration - she had time, when she could pull most of a day together at once, after all. Jane was pretty much entirely offline throughout Saturday, and only booted her computer up on the Sunday morning while she was relaxing with a coffee, looking for a Youtube video to chill with before she got back to it.

There was a message notification waiting for her, and out of habit, she clicked on it, idly thinking at the time that her washing needed to be fetched into the drier soon.

FisherKing: Hey - do you want to play some more Pastime?

The message had been sent sometime the previous night, but he was online. She set down her mug with a smile - her friend was looking to hang out, and that was wonderful. Plus she loved Pastime.

Thunderwave: Sorry I missed this! Is your offer still open?

FisherKing: You know what? Sure. I’ll send you an invite.

*

There was no need, this time, for FisherKing to explain the rules, and so they quickly got taking. Jane led the discussion at first. “I’ve just got to ask,” she began. “You’re such a nice guy, you know, I come to you when I’ve got problems-” she continued, somehow overlooking the fact that their first proper chat had been just a couple of days before, “-but the guys you hang out with-”

“-aren’t so nice,” FisherKing concluded. “I mean… obviously I kinda disagree on that.”

Jane chuckled, politely but uncertainly. “They don’t have your level of understanding.”

“Well, I mean, I guess that’s true. Like I said before, I’ve known some of them for years.” He laughed. “I’m going to have seen their best sides, where you maybe haven’t. Even the new guys, I’ve known a while now - since they came into town for college.”

“Oh, you’re all students?”

“A lot of us. Not all. But we go to the same parties, you know? We try the same things, we hang out in the same places, and nobody our age can live on their own.”

“Mm.” Jane didn’t say more than that, and didn’t really want to - why spotlight the difference? But she was still curious. “So you all live together. Are you a student?”

“Not exactly. Management track training at our local big-box. Which sucks - that’s why I’m always online. Escapism, you know?”

Jane had never felt more connected to her friend than right after he said that.

“Oh, definitely. I do that a lot.”

“Yeah? But you weren’t gaming yesterday…”

“No, well, I’ve got a lot of craft supplies here and they’re not going to use themselves up,” she said. “I make jewellery, for example. Resin moulds and dyes or playing around with chain mail links and such. Saturdays and Sundays are better for those.”

“Interesting,” he mused. “What do you do with it all?”

“Well… some I keep? But I do sell some on; I’ve got an Etsy store for all that sort of thing.” She never usually admitted this. But she could tell FisherKing anything, and besides, the more they played the easier it was to talk. She hadn’t had to think about her answers since asking if her friend was a student.

She was just thinking about the game. Or, well, not even that; on her second play through it was starting to come naturally, almost automatically. And talking to her seemed to slow her friend down, so she could whittle down the structures while he chatted.

It was easy to go deeper when he was speaking.

“I suppose that’s what makes you stand out,” she murmured quietly.

“Err… sorry?”

“Oh. Just…” The moment she paused to think out a sentence ahead of time, that same strange slowness descended on her, almost as if it had just been waiting for the opportunity. “You… work. Your friends… students… not… grown… up…”

That wasn’t how she’d have wanted to express herself. There were whole sentences, packed with nuance, that had formed in her head, but by the time she came to speak, all that were left were some key words, and those seemed hard for her to put together. She retained only the basic sense of what she was saying.

“Yeah, well, it’s a party town,” FisherKing said dismissively. “Listen, we could use you playing this afternoon.”

“You… use… me…”

“You’re pretty good as a support class.”

“Pretty… good… support…”

“So I want you to play with us this afternoon,” FisherKing said. “It’s a priority.”

“Play… priority…” Jane said, and it felt like an agreement.

“Don’t worry too much about the guys,” he said. “They’re just pushing you to be better.”

“Guys… pushing… be… better…”

Her head spun. That wasn’t how it was.

…was it?

It couldn’t be. But this was her friend, someone she trusted. He saw her clearly, didn’t he?

Maybe…

She heard him laugh. “If you do well, I’ll reward you with more Pastime.”

“Do… well… more… Pastime.”

The idea made her lightheaded, and Jane felt suddenly much better.

*

Her coffee was less than half finished, but it had gone cold in the mug. Her laundry was still in the washing machine, still sopping wet. It was nearly lunchtime, and Jane had to play with the guys that afternoon.

The peace and calm that had settled over her during her round of Pastime was gone, and she hurried to start getting her various chores done.

Lunch would have to be bolted down in a hurry or she’d be late for the game, and that couldn’t be accepted. She mentally chided herself for allowing it to get so late before she got back to her important tasks. While she was at it, she told herself off that she couldn’t remember a single thing she’d talked about with her friend.

*

She was at her computer in time for the game. In the end she’d brought her lunch plate with her, the omelette taking longer to cook than she’d factored in, and half of it not eaten yet. Her controller rested just in front of the keyboard, but despite how important she knew this game was for FisherKing, she wasn’t happy about it. She knew this was going to be tough, and for all that the young men were just pushing her to be better, it still hurt.

She took some time to psych herself up. It was going to be worth it if she delivered properly, after all.

*

Jane made it through the ridicule, but while she didn’t snap, scream, rant or rave, she did find her eyes welling up with tears on more than one occasion, despite the fact they were winning, despite the fact some of her efforts were clearly helping the group. For many of these young men, just being female was enough to make you a target, and they inexplicably seemed to find her bond with FisherKing funny.

Maddening, really. She and their unofficial leader had hit it off so well, so quickly, that it felt natural, and it was when people were laughing at them for it - well, at her, for being so happy to follow his lead - that it felt unnatural and she ended up a little uncomfortable.

And to cap things off, her friend didn’t get around to offering her a game of Pastime later that night. Disgruntled, she hurried through the remaining chores for her weekend and went to sleep late, bracing herself for a frustrating week.

*

Monday evening saw another message in her inbox from FisherKing, and just as she’d known she would when he first reached out, she found herself forgiving him once again, simply by seeing the name there.

She was too forgiving, she thought. That was the problem. She was going to let him get away with stringing her along, because it was what she did.

She was already cursing herself when she clicked on the link, but when she saw an invitation to play Pastime, she jumped on it straight away, all frustrations forgiven.

In no time at all the two were playing against each other again. Jane kept quiet, not feeling comfortable raising any complaints, but not willing to give them up entirely. The game occupied her focus and her fascination, and it wasn’t long before she felt that familiar calm pleasure settle over her. She welcomed it, this time, willing to wrap her up more deeply, to soothe both the frustrations of the day and the panic that had closed out her weekend.

The pleasing flow of the game and the smooth animation of the cards as they moved came to fill her mind entirely, and she was able to lose herself, which was very pleasing. FisherKing seemed to have picked up on her need for silence, and didn’t talk for a long time. When he finally did speak, she’d forgotten he was there, that there was a call happening at all, even that she was playing against a human opponent.

“Are you single?” he asked.

“…yes…” Jane said. Despite herself her answer came out clearly, without hesitation, where she might have preferred to mumble it. She tried not to focus on that.

“Hm. What’s your name?”

She had somehow completely forgotten he knew her only as Thunderwave. It didn’t seem possible that they were so close and he didn’t know, and the fact she knew him only by his own screen name didn’t occur to her.

“Jane… Mulligan…” she answered, her voice still slow and heavy.

“Would you count yourself as sexy, Jane?”

“…no…”

“Why not?”

She was silent for a long time. There seemed to be a pressure building up somewhere just behind her forehead, as if she were somehow caught between an impossible need for secrecy and the urge to tell her confidante everything. But FisherKing waited calmly, without comment, for her to snap and for the words to start spilling out from her - which they did, helplessly, when the dam finally burst. As she’d experienced before, once she’d had to think carefully about something other than the game while playing, everything seemed to return to its normal pace.

“Everyone else just looks better,” she began. “I’m not the right shape and I don’t move right and there’s something wrong with my smile. At college I was always the runner-up and honestly I sort of stopped trying a couple of years afterward.”

It was FisherKing’s turn to be silent and she worried, as much as you could worry while Pastime was on the screen, that somehow she’d given him a wrong answer.

Eventually he said “Jane, do you have a Facebook?”

“Yes,” she answered, and heard the clatter of keys from the other end of the call. She sat almost completely still, except that she was still matching cards. But even with FisherKing’s attention elsewhere there always seemed to be more to solve. She hadn’t won a single game yet.

“…You actually look pretty good,” he said slowly.

“I actually look pretty good,” she echoed. If her friend said it, it had to be right. A tiny, long-buried voice in her mind exulted, and Jane barely noticed.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong,” he said, “I’m going to put you on a fitness regimen and you can shape up a little for me, but I’m pretty sure you just stood next to the wrong hotties in college. How long ago was that? About five years?”

“Seven,” she answered honestly, wondering why her friend was going down this line. It never occurred to her to ask how he’d have the authority to dictate her excercise. Occupied by Pastime, her brain accepted it as reasonable to save her from thinking about it.

“Are you still friends with any of them?”

Her heart sank, though Pastime brought it bobbing back up to the surface. “Yes,” she admitted.

“Well, we can deal with that later, maybe,” he thought. “So you just gave up on dating?”

“Yes.”

“You must be crazy sexually frustrated.”

“I must be crazy sexually frustrated,” she repeated. FisherKing was so right, she realised.

“Heh.” She heard him chuckle. “Playing Pastime makes you want to masturbate,” he said.

“Playing Pastime makes me want to masturbate.”

“You always have one hand in your panties while we play.”

“I always have one hand in my panties while we play.”

Her hand crept down to her waistline even as she spoke. She shifted in her chair, thighs grinding together before they parted to give herself access.

“Every time you cum you think of how you feel playing Pastime.”

“Every time I cum I think of how I feel playing Pastime.”

She was surprised to discover just how wet she already was, even though it really made sense with her being crazy sexually frustrated.

“Every time you cum you want to play more. Want to change more.”

Change? She hadn’t changed. But she echoed, all the same, “Every time I cum I want to play more. Want to change more.”

“I’m going to send you some fitness guides. You might think they’re kinda demeaning, but you’ll do them. You’ll get enthusiastic about them.”

“I might think they’re demeaning, but I’ll do them. I’ll get enthusiastic about them.”

Her fingers were eager, the situation she was in so arousing, and her friend was clearly keen to help her get fuckable. Everything was right with the world. Jane came loud and enthusiastic, buoyed up by her performance on Pastime, feeling on top of the world.