MY GIRLFRIEND CALLED ME A SUBSCRIPTION SHE FORGOT TO CANCEL

PART 2: THE PHOTO HAD HIS ADDRESS. THE WOMAN WHO OPENED IT WASN’T HER

Livia panics as every shared permission disappears. Rhodes tries to turn Cormac into the controlling ex, but his story starts collapsing when the envelope reaches Apartment 4B and Maris, Rhodes’s real girlfriend, opens the photo.

The next morning, Livia called me from Greer Monroe’s phone. I knew because Greer began the call awkwardly, saying, “Cormac, she just wants to ask if you can fix her phone data.” I said, “That sounds like a carrier issue.” Then came the sound of the phone being grabbed, a sharp breath, and Livia’s voice cutting into my ear. “You really removed me from everything?” I turned a tiny screwdriver on my workbench at the phone repair shop and looked down at an iPhone screen cracked clean across the middle. “Everything under my name.” She said I was being petty. I said, “Petty would have been leaving your streaming profile active and renaming it Upgrade Trial Expired.” On the other end, Greer snorted once and then coughed fast to hide it. Livia was furious. She said Rhodes thought this looked like financial control. I said, “Rhodes can add you to his plan.” There was a silence worth more than any confession. Not long. Just long enough for me to know Rhodes had not offered. Livia said transferring a number took time, she needed data for work, her reels were in the cloud, the studio calendar was synced, client content was in the album, and I could not just erase her from her digital life. I said, “I didn’t erase you. I stopped hosting you.” She called me cold. I said, “You called me a subscription.” The call ended with her shoving the phone back at Greer. By noon, the effect of cancellation began appearing in small, ordinary ways. Livia got logged out of the shared music library during a promo shoot for a new class. Her rideshare app demanded a new payment method. The grocery app told her she was no longer part of the household membership. The cloud album stopped syncing. Her streaming profiles vanished. None of that destroyed her life. That mattered. It only showed how much of her “upgraded” life was still running through a man she had called a subscription. At 1 p.m., Greer texted me privately: “She told us Rhodes handles everything now.” I texted back, “Then today should be easy.” Greer replied, “It is not easy.” Meanwhile, Rhodes started performing calm masculinity. An unknown number texted me, “You’re making yourself look small over a few apps.” I asked, “Rhodes?” He did not answer that. I texted again, “Add her to your phone plan.” No response. I put the phone down and went back to replacing a customer’s screen. At 4:12 p.m., another unknown number appeared. “This is Maris Bellamy. Why did you send a photo of your girlfriend standing in my apartment?” I stared at the line for a while. So the woman in the framed photo had a name. I typed slowly, “Because I believe Rhodes is involved with my girlfriend, and the photo was backed up from a shared cloud album under my account. I thought you should know.” Maris replied, “Rhodes said she was a client from the studio.” I looked at the photo again on my laptop. Livia was barefoot in the kitchen, wearing Rhodes’s hoodie, holding wine. The word “client” was doing too much work. I wrote, “I am not asking you to believe me. The metadata shows time and location. I can send a screenshot of the info page with my personal account details cropped out.” Maris told me to send it. I did. No revenge speech. No insults. Just data. At 5:30, Livia called. This time her voice was different. Not angry first. Afraid first. “What did you send to Rhodes?” I said, “One photo.” “His girlfriend opened it.” “Then I sent it to the right address.” She started crying and said Maris misunderstood, Rhodes and Maris were “basically over,” they only still lived together because leases were complicated, Rhodes had not lied, that night had only been a content planning session. I said, “Barefoot wine content.” She snapped, “Don’t be disgusting.” I said, “I’m not. I’m describing the image.” Then Maris sent me another picture. Not from my album. A screenshot from the apartment building’s security app. Livia entering with Rhodes at 11:42 p.m. on a Thursday. Then another screenshot. Livia leaving at 6:18 a.m., wearing different clothes. That was the week Livia told me she had stayed late at the studio preparing a campaign. Maris wrote, “He told me he was helping a trainer move equipment.” I replied, “She told me she was working.” Same lie. Different audience. Livia called again, almost choking. “Tell her the photo is old.” I asked, “How old?” She did not answer. “Tell her metadata can be wrong.” I said, “It can. But your panic is very accurate.” She went silent. Then Rhodes called. His voice was not soft anymore. He said I was harassing his household. I replied, “I mailed one printed photo to the address where it was taken.” He said Maris was sensitive and I did not understand what was going on inside their relationship. I said, “Then you should not have brought another woman into her kitchen.” He said Livia misunderstood the connection between them, that she exaggerated things, that he was only trying to help her feel more confident. And there it was. The upgrade began downgrading her on speakerphone. I heard Livia in the background say, “Rhodes, what are you saying?” The call cut off. By dinner, Livia called from yet another number. She was crying so hard her voice had gone raw. Maris wanted to know why Rhodes’s address was attached to the photo, why the cloud location said Apartment 4B, why Livia knew the building code, why the security camera showed her staying overnight. She begged me to explain it as a mistake. I asked, “Which part?” “The address.” “That is where you were.” “The photo.” “That is what you took.” “The time.” “That is when you lied.” She said I was ruining her. I said, “No. I removed services. The photo provided tech support.” Near midnight, Maris sent me one final screenshot. She had found Livia’s name in Rhodes’s phone. He had not saved her as “Livia.” Not with a heart. Not as “the woman of my life.” He had saved her as: “LV — trial upgrade.” Trial upgrade. I sat in the dark apartment staring at those words for a long time. Livia had called me the subscription. Rhodes had called her the trial. I forwarded the screenshot to Livia without adding a single word. The message showed as read. No reply came. Ten minutes later, Maris texted, “I found more on the tablet in the apartment. He was using her to test whether he could leave me without losing rent.”