Page 24 of Choke

What the hell happened this weekend? You’re all over TikTok.

I don’t have a TikTok account. There is no reason for me to be anywhere on that app. This is why seeing Kendall’s message about TikTok completely throws me off. But usually, I haven’t gotten into the middle of a fight between teammates of a viral beer league hockey team.

Excellent start to the week.

By some miracle, I make it to the office in record time. Setting my belongings down at my desk before 9:30 am. Immediately, I make my way down the hall to Kendall’s office. The difference in the way I walk today versus last week is undeniable. I keep my head down, eyes trained on the floor, avoiding the development team I pass. They’re all young and definitely of the TikTok era. When I get to Kendall’s office, I gently knock. She waves me inside.

When I enter, I’m like a dead man walking. I drop into the chair opposite Kendall, whose face mixes excitement and curiosity.

“Tell me everything; leave nothing out. What the fuck?” She presses.

I lean my head back.

I don’t even know what’s happening, what’s out there. How can I tell her what happened when I don’t know where to start?

Breathe in. Breathe out.

“Show me what’s online.”

It’s a demand, not a request.

She grabs her phone, pulls up the video, and hands it to me. There must be two possibilities. Someone filmed me with Nate, hot and heavy in the booth, or the fight on the dance floor.

It’s the latter, but it started before the fight. Someone had been filming Rosie and Ronan dancing, which looked like a scene from Dirty Dancing. The user had spliced the video to show them dancing,then me coming up and trying to pull her away, Nate grabbing me from behind and pulling me in to dance, and Adrian pulling me away and punching him in the face.

The moment Adrian stepped into the frame, the energy shifted. Even on the screen, the intensity in his eyes was chilling. He didn’t just look angry—he looked… possessed.

They replayed the punch at different speeds and zoom levels. The final image shows Rosie’s face as she screams at the blood spraying across her golden dress. It has hundreds of thousands of likes.

“It has something like 80 million views,” Kendall says, breaking the trance the video has me in.

My throat goes dry as I hit replay.

My fingers twitch around the phone. Watching the punch on replay, my stomach churns. I take in his form in the grainy footage; he’s so controlled and calculated. The video has added music, eliminating the actual sounds of the club, but my brain supplies the dull, wet crack anyway.

This is my fault.

If I hadn’t danced with Nate initially, hadn’t let him buy me that drink, hadn’t been so captivated by his touch. Perhaps things would not have spiraled so far out of hand. That said, Adrian looked ready to explode when I saw him. Maybe he would have found another excuse.

There’s no denying it’s me. If I was even a little less conspicuous, maybe I could claim it was someone who looked similar. But no, I had to cover my body in bright, highly recognizable tattoos.

And that dress.

God, it’s so short.

As I view the comments, my pulse thuds in my ears. A flood of strangers picking me apart, commenting on my body, my face, my tattoos. Others call him unhinged; some are laughing at how fast he lost his shit, and others—God help me, they romanticize the whole thing.

“That’s Adrian Liberty.”

“Dude lost his mind over her.”

“I’d burn down a city for her too, not gonna lie.”

“Who’s the girl???”

“You can get your knuckles bloody for me, Daddy.”

I lock the phone, unable to see another second and slide it across her desk, struggling to fight growing nausea in my guts.

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