MY BOYFRIEND HAD A SECOND PHONE UNDER THE BED WITH HER PICTURE
My hands were shaking so hard the old wooden chair rattled against the floorboards as I sat down.
I was trying to vacuum under the bed when my fingers brushed against something hard and cold tucked deep in the corner. It was a cheap, burner phone, hidden away, buzzing silently against the dusty floorboards covered in cobwebs. When I managed to turn it on, the lock screen showed a picture of a woman I’d never seen before, her face smiling up at me.
My heart started hammering against my ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage, beating wildly. I felt a wave of nausea wash over me as I scrolled through the gallery – picture after picture of her, smiling, laughing, sometimes standing right next to *him*, looking like a couple. It felt like the air was being sucked out of the room.
He walked in the bedroom door just as I found the messages, hundreds of them stretching back months. “What the hell are you doing with that?” he yelled, his face instantly contorted with a mixture of panic and fury. The air in the room felt thick and hot, suddenly making it hard to breathe.
“Who. Is. This?” I choked out, holding the phone up, the harsh screen light burning my eyes like acid. He lunged for it, but I pulled back instinctively, the phone now slippery with sweat and tears in my palm. He stopped, breathing heavily, his eyes darting around the room.
Then I saw a text message preview across the top that just read “Mommy.”
👇 *Full story continued in the comments…*His eyes fixed on the screen in my hand, on the word “Mommy.” The fury drained from his face instantly, replaced by something raw and desolate I’d never seen before. His shoulders slumped, and he took a shaky step back, running a hand through his hair.
“Oh god,” he whispered, not yelling anymore, the sound thick with pain. “You… you saw that?”
“Who is this?” I repeated, my voice trembling less now, but still filled with a desperate need to understand. The images of her face, the perceived intimacy, still burned behind my eyes, but the “Mommy” text had thrown everything into disorienting chaos.
He sank onto the edge of the bed, burying his face in his hands. Muffled sobs shook his body. The rage had evaporated, leaving behind a profound, heartbreaking grief.
Confused, I slowly lowered the phone. The frantic beating in my chest began to slow, replaced by a cold dread. “Who is she?” I asked again, softer this time. “Why… why is she on this phone? Why is it hidden?”
He looked up, his eyes red-rimmed and full of tears. “That… that was my mother,” he choked out, gesturing weakly at the phone. “She died six months ago.”
My world tilted again. My mother. I hadn’t even considered… The smiling woman in the pictures. The messages. “Mommy.”
“This was her old phone,” he continued, voice thick with emotion. “Or… not hers. It’s a cheap one I got right after. Her real phone… her real number… I just couldn’t. It was too much. Too final.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I transferred everything I could. Pictures. Old texts. Even some voicemails she left me.”
He looked at the phone again. “I look at it sometimes. When it’s bad. When I miss her so much it hurts. I… I read the old messages. Look at the pictures. It’s stupid, I know, but it feels like… like she’s still there, in those messages.”
“Why… why did you hide it?” I asked, the initial wave of jealous panic replaced by a crushing sadness and hurt that he had been carrying such a burden alone, in secret.
He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Because it’s pathetic,” he mumbled. “Because I haven’t dealt with it. Because I fall apart when I look at them, and I didn’t want you to see me like that. I didn’t want to… to bring it up all the time. I just… I hid it.”
The pictures of her looking like a couple… I looked at the screen again, at her smiling face. They were just photos of a mother and son, maybe on a holiday, at a family gathering. My mind, fueled by fear and suspicion, had twisted them into something else entirely.
Tears welled in my own eyes now, a different kind of tears – for his pain, for my misunderstanding, for the hidden grief that had been living under our bed. I sat the phone carefully on the bedside table.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I whispered, my voice breaking. “That you’re still… that you’re hurting this much? That you needed this?”
He finally looked at me, his expression a mix of shame and despair. “I tried,” he said, his voice barely audible. “When it first happened… I talked a little. But then… it was easier not to. To just… shove it away. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry I hid this from you. I didn’t mean…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. The air was still thick, but not with accusation and fury anymore. It was heavy with sorrow and unspoken words. I stood up, walked to the bed, and sat beside him. He didn’t pull away when I carefully put my arm around his shaking shoulders. He leaned into my touch, and for the first time since he walked in, we weren’t standing on opposite sides of the room, separated by suspicion, but sitting together, beginning to navigate the quiet, painful space his secret had created. The cheap phone lay on the table, no longer a symbol of betrayal, but a small, sad vessel of memory and unresolved grief.