Chapter 6
I didn’t go back to the restaurant that night.
That sounds dramatic, like a movie line, but it was mostly just me sitting in the passenger seat of my dad’s car with my hands shaking so badly I couldn’t unlock my phone, Kim slumped beside me with a bandage wrapped around his palm and his knee starting to swell under torn denim, and my dad driving like the freeway had personally offended him, jaw clenched, eyes fixed forward as if looking sideways at either of us might make it real.
Nobody spoke for a long time.
Not because there was nothing to say, but because everything that mattered had already been said in one sentence in front of a room full of strangers, and the rest of our lives were still trying to catch up.
My phone kept buzzing.
My mom kept calling.
Then it stopped.
That was almost worse.
Kim stared out the window like he was watching a different world slide past, one where boys didn’t get fired for feelings, where love didn’t come with sirens and ultimatums, and I wanted to tell him he didn’t have to be brave anymore, that he could fall apart if he needed to, that I would hold the pieces, but I didn’t know how to say anything like that without sounding like I was pretending.
My dad pulled up outside urgent care, told us to wait, then came around to help Kim out with the kind of gentle efficiency he usually reserved for carrying heavy boxes. It made something hot and painful swell in my throat—gratitude, guilt, fear, all tangled together.
While Kim was inside getting checked out, my dad sat with me in the waiting room, the fluorescent lights turning everything too sharp.
He didn’t lecture.
He didn’t say “when I was your age” or “you don’t understand how hard it is.”
He just stared at the TV bolted to the wall playing a muted cooking show and said, very quietly, “Your mom is scared.”
I laughed once, humorless. “She threatened to disown me.”
He nodded like that was a normal thing to say. Like he’d heard worse. “That’s what scared people do when they don’t know how to hold on.”
I looked at him, furious and desperate at the same time. “So I’m supposed to let go of him so she can hold on?”
My dad’s jaw tightened. “No,” he said after a moment. “I’m telling you so you understand that the anger isn’t the whole story.”
I didn’t want the whole story.
I wanted Kim.
I wanted my mom to stop turning love into a threat.
I wanted my life to stop feeling like a room with no doors.
Kim came back out with a limp and a paper bag of supplies and a forced smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“I’m fine,” he said immediately, like he could read the panic still sitting in my face. “Just bruised. No stitches.”
I exhaled hard, the relief making me dizzy.
Outside, the night air was warm and smelled like car exhaust and jasmine from somewhere nearby, and for a second, under the streetlights, the world looked almost normal, like we were just two boys leaving a place together.
My dad cleared his throat. “I’ll drive Kim home,” he said.
Kim’s eyes widened. “You don’t have to—”
“I do,” my dad said simply, then glanced at me. “Moon, go home. Shower. Sleep. You have school tomorrow. We’ll talk.”
Home.
The word hit like a joke.
I hadn’t been told I could go home. I’d been told not to come back.
But I nodded anyway, because my body was running on shock and the idea of arguing felt like trying to hold a waterfall in my hands.
I walked the two blocks to our apartment, each step heavier than the last, and when I got there, the lights were off.
My mom was awake, though.
I could feel it.
The silence had a shape.
I opened the door slowly, heart pounding.
She was sitting at the kitchen table in the dark like she’d been waiting in a courtroom for a verdict, one hand wrapped around a mug she wasn’t drinking, her face lit only by the glow of her phone.
“Where is your father?” she asked.
“With Kim,” I said, voice flat.
Her mouth tightened. “Of course.”
I dropped my backpack on the floor. “You told me not to come back.”
“I told you if you left,” she said sharply, “you left our family.”
I laughed, and it came out broken. “No. You tried to make me choose.”
Her eyes flashed. “Because you are my son.”
“And I’m still your son,” I said, the words shaking now despite my effort. “I didn’t stop being your son because I—”
“Don’t,” she snapped, voice cracking on the edge of something dangerous. “Don’t say it.”
I stared at her in the dark, and suddenly I understood something that made my chest ache in a new way: she didn’t want to hear it because if she heard it, she couldn’t pretend it wasn’t real.
I swallowed hard. “I’m not doing this,” I said quietly. “Not tonight.”
I turned toward my room.
She said my name like a warning.
“Moon.”
I paused but didn’t turn back.
“I saw,” she said, and her voice wasn’t anger anymore, it was something tight and brittle, “the way you looked at him.”
My stomach dropped.
Not because I was ashamed.
Because she had noticed.
She had really seen me.
And part of me had always thought that if she ever truly saw me, she’d love me less.
“I’m sorry,” she added, and the words were so unexpected I almost thought I’d imagined them, “that you think I hate you.”
I turned around slowly.
She stared at the table. Her hands trembled around the mug.
“I don’t hate you,” she said, like forcing the sentence out past a wall in her throat. “But I don’t know what to do with this. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what people will say.”
“There it is,” I whispered.
Her eyes snapped up, furious and wounded. “You think I care about strangers more than you?”
“I think,” I said, voice shaking now, “you care about a version of me that never existed.”
Silence.
Her face twisted, and for a second she looked like she might throw the mug across the room.
Instead, she stood up so abruptly the chair scraped loud against the floor.
“Go to bed,” she said, voice cold again, the armor snapping back into place. “We will talk tomorrow.”
Tomorrow felt like a threat.
I went to my room anyway, closed the door, leaned against it, and slid down onto the floor like my bones had decided to quit.
Only then did I check my phone.
And that was when the Gen Z apocalypse started.
Because it wasn’t just my mom calling.
It was everyone.
Group chat notifications stacked like dominoes. Missed calls from people I hadn’t talked to in months. Instagram DMs. A text from Hannah that made my blood turn cold.
Hannah:
UM… are you ok?
I opened Instagram.
My feed refreshed.
And there it was.
A blurry video.
My restaurant.
The counter.
My mom’s voice, sharp and clear even through the distortion: “You are fired.”
Kim’s voice, quieter but unmistakable: “I love him.”
The camera jerked wildly, catching a half-second of my face—eyes wide, mouth open like I’d been punched—before cutting off.
The caption across the top in bright, bubbly text made my stomach drop through the floor:
“VALLEY KBBQ DRAMA??? 👀💀”
The account name wasn’t someone I followed, but the view count was already climbing, and the comments were a war zone.
I couldn’t breathe.
My hands went numb.
I clicked the profile.
It was a local gossip page. Like one of those accounts that posted “spotted at the mall” and “which influencer got dumped” and “restaurant employee fights customer” as if people’s lives were entertainment.
The video had been posted ten minutes ago.
Ten minutes and my world had already been turned into content.
My phone buzzed again.
A DM from a classmate:
“Bro is that you??”
Another:
“You okay? that was intense.”
Another:
“Hot ngl 👀”
I threw my phone onto my bed like it had burned me.
Then it buzzed again.
Kim.
Kim:
Moon. Please answer.
My heart slammed so hard it hurt.
I grabbed the phone, thumbs shaking.
Me:
Are you okay? Did you see it?
Three dots appeared immediately.
Kim:
Yes. I’m freaking out.
Kim:
My aunt already called me. She saw it. She follows that account.
My stomach twisted. “No,” I whispered to the empty room.
Kim:
I didn’t want it like this.
Me:
I’m sorry.
Kim:
Don’t be sorry. I meant it.
That shouldn’t have made me feel better, but it did, like a warm hand pressing against my ribs.
Then he sent another message that made my blood go cold again.
Kim:
Also… Hannah just followed me. She messaged me.
My fingers froze.
Me:
What did she say?
A pause. Longer this time.
Then:
Kim:
She said: “Tell Moon I can help. But he has to be honest with me.”
My mouth went dry.
Help with what?
Honest about what?
I stared at the screen until the words blurred.
Because Hannah wasn’t stupid. Hannah had noticed something from the start. Hannah had looked at us and seen a story forming, and now—now she had leverage, attention, an audience, and whatever strange obsession she’d developed with being in the middle of our lives.
My phone buzzed again, a notification from the same gossip account.
NEW POST.
I clicked before I could stop myself.
A screenshot.
Not of the video this time.
Of a private message thread.
Kim’s profile picture was visible.
Kim’s username was visible.
And the message—cropped, cruel, unmistakable—was from someone else:
“If you don’t stay away from Moon, I’ll make sure everyone knows what you did.”
Under it, one line from Kim:
“What are you talking about? Please stop.”
I stared, heart hammering.
Kim’s “did.”
What did they mean?
The comments were already exploding:
“WAIT WHAT DID HE DO???”
“omg is this like blackmail???”
“the mom is savage but also this is messy”
“not the sketchbook boy being a criminal??”
“someone spill the tea”
My throat tightened like a fist had closed around it.
Because I recognized that threat.
The phrasing.
The tone.
The cruelty wrapped in righteousness.
I knew who wrote it before I even wanted to admit it.
I stood so fast my chair fell over, the sound cracking through my room.
My hands shook as I scrolled back, stared again, searching for any hint I might be wrong.
But the way the sender typed—no emojis, no softness, just sharpness and control—felt like my mother’s anger given fingers.
I couldn’t prove it.
Not yet.
But suddenly, the restaurant wasn’t just a place we worked anymore.
It was a battlefield.
And Kim wasn’t just being fired.
He was being targeted.
I texted him before my fear could talk me out of it.
Me:
Do not answer Hannah. Do not answer anyone. Stay home tonight. Lock your door.
Three dots.
Then:
Kim:
Moon… what’s happening?
I stared at the phone, breathing hard, feeling the walls of my room press closer.
Because the twist wasn’t just that we were viral.
The twist was that someone had decided our love needed punishment.
And I was starting to believe that person lived in my house.
