Chapter 3 - The Livestream
Tyler raised his phone and started recording.
The red live icon glowed at the top of the screen, though the screen itself was unreadable in the sun. He angled the camera so Ethan filled the frame.
“Yo, look at this robot soldier,” Tyler whispered, not quietly at all. “Bet he’s dying under that hat. Bet I can make him react.”
The older veteran near the front took half a step forward.
Then stopped.
Because Ethan was still walking.
Click.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Every person in that crowd seemed to understand the fragile boundary between outrage and respect. No one wanted to be the one who broke the ceremony. No one wanted their anger to become the sound remembered in that sacred place.
Tyler mistook that restraint for approval.
Back home, teachers called his parents before they punished him. Coaches benched other kids, not Tyler. Restaurant managers apologized when he knocked over glasses. Money had taught him one lesson over and over: rules were mostly for people without lawyers.
So when he looked down at the soda can sweating in his hand, he grinned.
“Watch this.”
Lauren looked up too late.
“Tyler—”
He flicked his wrist.
The can arced low across the rope line and struck the marble near Ethan’s boots.
Soda splashed dark against mirror-polished leather.
The gasp that moved through the crowd cut through the heat.
Someone whispered, “Oh my God.”
Someone else said, “Did he really just do that?”
Ethan kept moving.
But his jaw tightened once.
May you like
Only once.
That was the closest he came to showing the pain Tyler had no right to touch.
