Then he typed a message to the number Liam had forced him to save three months ago: Jenny. It’s David. Liam’s dad. The coffee maker is on, and the front door is unlocked. Come home. We’ll figure out the locket in the morning.
She slipped the chain over her head. The locket settled against her collarbone, glinting in the dim light. For a moment, she looked like a child playing dress-up. Then her expression hardened.
David watched her face. Beneath the bravado, he saw the raw, bleeding truth. She wasn’t a thief. She was a girl drowning in the shallow end of the pool, and the boy who promised to teach her to swim was too busy leveling up a digital avatar to notice she was going under.
David didn't go downstairs. He just listened to the soft footsteps cross the foyer, pause at the bottom of the stairs, and then continue—not up to Liam’s room, but into the kitchen. Mysonsgf Jenny
He didn’t mean to click. But curiosity, that old devil, got the better of him.
David’s thumb hovered over the ‘Report’ button. He should wake Liam. He should march into his son’s room and say, Your girlfriend is in my bedroom, live-streaming to four hundred strangers with your mother’s heirloom.
He closed the app. The silence of the house rushed back in. Then he typed a message to the number
He sighed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Jenny. Of course. For the past three months, his son’s girlfriend had been an invisible third resident in their home. She lived not in the guest room, but in Liam’s phone, on his laptop, and apparently, at this ungodly hour, on David’s own curated feed.
Jenny turned the locket over in her palm. “He said he’d call me at ten. It’s almost midnight. He’s playing video games. He always chooses the game.” She took a shaky breath. “So tonight, I choose me.”
She held up a small, familiar object. A silver locket. David’s blood went cold. It was his late wife’s. The one he kept in the ceramic dish on his dresser. The one he’d shown Liam last week, telling him the story of how he’d given it to her the day they’d found out they were pregnant with him. The coffee maker is on, and the front door is unlocked
The notification popped up on David’s phone at 11:47 PM. @MysonsgfJenny started a live video.
“He doesn’t understand,” Jenny hissed, tears now spilling down her cheeks. “He thinks I’m just ‘high-maintenance.’ He thinks a dozen roses on a Tuesday fixes everything. But you know. You know what it’s like to need to feel chosen.”
He heard the clink of a coffee mug. And then, for the first time all night, silence. Not the angry, lonely kind. The kind that just needed someone to sit with it for a while.
From down the hall, he heard the faint pew-pew-pew of Liam’s headset, the muffled laughter of online friends. David stood up. He didn’t go to his son. He went to the kitchen, poured two cups of coffee, and set one on the counter.
OMG Jenny Queen behavior Get it girl