Chapter 3: Petty Justice- Part one

"Three?" Tia repeated. "Three plans? You've had three plans this whole time and you let me sit in your guest room in a stinky sweatshirt for three days?"

"I needed you emotionally ready," Maddy said, entirely serious. "Revenge doesn't work if the person executing it is crying into a throw pillow. Timing matters. Presentation matters."

"You sound like you're running a business."

"I am. It's called Justice For Tia, Incorporated, and it is currently accepting no other clients." Maddy pulled her laptop onto her knees, then hesitated, which was so unlike her that Tia sat up straighter just watching it happen. "Okay. Plan one."

"I need to show you something, and I need you to know I only got this two nights ago. I wasn't sitting on it. I would never sit on something like this."

"Sitting on what? Maddy, you're scaring me."

"Reagan had a party Tuesday. Tyler was there, being loud and pathetic about single life already, and at some point he set his phone down on the counter to get another drink." Maddy's jaw was tight.

"I know his passcode. I've watched him type it in front of you a hundred times — same four digits for everything, because apparently commitment isn't his strong suit in any area of his life."

"I never had a reason to use it before. I had a reason Tuesday."

Tia's stomach dropped. "You went through his phone."

"I went through his phone," Maddy confirmed. "I had maybe ninety seconds before he came back, so I just screenshotted everything that looked relevant and got out."

"I haven't even read most of it properly. I wanted to look at it with you, not before you."

"Okay," Tia said, quiet, bracing. "Show me."

Maddy pulled up the message thread and turned the laptop around slowly, like she was handing over something that might go off.

It was Molly's name at the top. The thread went back four months.

Tia scrolled in silence for a moment — the sleepover "at her cousin's," a study session that had run until one in the morning, the weekend Tyler had claimed he was too sick to answer his phone. Every excuse she'd swallowed without question, laid out with a timestamp attached to it, undeniable.

It stung, but it didn't surprise her. Molly had already told her, out loud, outside that apartment — a few months — and here, finally, was the receipt for it.

"That part I already knew," she said quietly. "Just didn't think I'd ever see it in writing."

"I know." Maddy squeezed her hand once anyway. "Keep scrolling. There's something else."

"I only caught it because I was skimming fast and a word jumped out at me, and I need you to brace yourself, because this one I did not see coming."

Tia scrolled further, and stopped.

tyler: sending you tia's finance capstone files rn, the whole model. she left her laptop open at my place last week

molly: omg you're an actual lifesaver, keller's gonna eat this up

tyler: just don't submit it exactly the same lol change some of the numbers around

molly: obviously. she'll never even know

Tia read it twice, certain she was misunderstanding it, and then a third time, and it still said the same thing.

"That's — " Her voice didn't work right. "That's my thesis. That's six months of work. That's my actual capstone model, Tyler had — he just sent it to her, off my own laptop, without even asking—"

"He stole it." Maddy's voice had gone somewhere past furious, flat and cold in a way that was somehow scarier than yelling. "Your entire senior project. The thing you've lost sleep over since September."

"He handed it to her like it was nothing, like it wasn't the one thing in your life that's actually yours."

"I trusted him with my laptop." Tia's hands were shaking now. "I fell asleep at his place working on it, more than once, because I thought — I thought that was safe. That was the one place I thought was safe."

"Nowhere with that man was ever safe. I'm sorry. I should've said that a long time ago."

Tia felt the tears come this time not from heartbreak exactly, but from something closer to violation — the sense that even the parts of her life that had nothing to do with romance, the parts she'd built with her own hands, hadn't been off-limits to him either.

"He didn't just cheat on me," she said, wiping her face hard. "He let her cheat through me. Using my own work."

"Hey." Maddy pulled her in, no jokes this time, nothing clever, just her arms and the quiet. "This is the part where we don't just embarrass him. This is the part where we actually protect you."

Tia let herself cry into her shoulder for a minute, and when she finally sat back and wiped her face, something in her expression had gone very still and very sure.

"I'm emailing Professor Keller," she said. "Tonight. Before Molly gets a chance to submit anything even close to my model."

"Good. That's the smart move. That's the one that actually matters." Maddy pulled the laptop back toward herself. "But we're also posting the dates. Just the affair — the lying, the timestamps, the overlap."

"Not the thesis stuff. That part stays between us and Keller."

"Why not post that too? It's the worst thing he's done."

"Because it's not just evidence against him," Maddy said. "It's proof of exactly what you built, laid out for four hundred strangers to pick apart before you've even had the chance to protect it properly."

"You don't owe the internet your unfinished work just to make him look worse. Keller can do more damage to both of them than a forum post ever could."

Tia nodded slowly. "Just the dates, then. The lying."

"Done." Maddy was already cropping the screenshots, cutting the thread down to the timestamps and the excuses, nothing about the thesis anywhere near it. "There's a photo too — same ninety seconds, straight off his camera roll. Him and Molly, mid-kiss in Reagan's kitchen, timestamped a night he told you he was studying."

"Post that too."

Maddy typed the caption herself, reading it aloud as she went.

Timeline for anyone still confused about what happened here. Overlap starts back in September — do the math. Screenshots and a bonus photo below, straight from the source. He said it himself.

She hit post before Tia could second-guess it.

It had ninety replies within two hours. By morning it had four hundred, and Tyler's own words — reduced now to just the lying and the dates, nothing more — were already circulating through half the group chats on campus, stitched into memes about his honesty.

"That's step one," Maddy said, scrolling the replies. "True, documented, and entirely his own doing."

"Thank you," Tia said quietly, "for not posting the other thing."

"Obviously." Maddy didn't even look up. "I'm petty, not cruel. There's a difference, and it's an important one." She set the laptop aside and grinned, wide and dangerous. "Step two, though. Step two is where it gets fun."

"There's a step two."

"There's a step two, and you're going to love it, because it doesn't require you to lift a finger or feel guilty about it."

"He did this one to himself months ago and just doesn't know it yet."

"Maddy, what did you do."

"Remember that voice memo he sent you? The one where he went on for four minutes about how his own soccer teammates were, quote, 'a bunch of talentless scrubs who don't deserve to be on the same field as him'?"

Tia's stomach dropped again, differently this time. "You didn't."

"I forwarded it to the team group chat an hour ago." Maddy checked her phone, entirely too pleased with herself. "Currently at eleven replies and climbing. Someone's already suggesting he gets voted off as unofficial team captain."

"It's not even revenge, really. It's just circulation. Of the truth. That he recorded. With his own mouth."

"That's evil."

"That's efficient. I didn't even have to lie this time." Maddy held up two fingers. "Two down. And now, unfortunately, we get to the part that actually requires you to leave this apartment and use your words."

Tia sighed. "Molly."

"Molly," Maddy said. "Four hundred dollars and one Chanel bag say it's time."