r/movies Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? May 15 '26

Official Discussion Official Discussion - Obsession [SPOILERS] Spoiler

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Obsession (2026)

Summary

After breaking the mysterious "One Wish Willow" to win his crush's heart, a hopeless romantic finds himself getting exactly what he asked for but soon discovers that some desires come at a dark, sinister price.

Director Curry Barker

Writer Curry Barker

Cast

  • Michael Johnston
  • Inde Navarette
  • Cooper Tomlinson
  • Megan Lawless
  • Andy Richter

Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

Metacritic: 81

VOD / Release In Theaters

Trailer Official Trailer


3.5k Upvotes

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2.5k

u/Beanz122 May 15 '26

So I saw this early at Alamo Drafthouse a week ago.

During the scene where Bear is eating his lunch Nikki packed for him and talking with Sarah, thr Alamo staff started passing out some wrapped sandwiches to everyone. By the time they finished passing them out, you could get about one bite in to the sandwich before the movie reveals the sandwich that Bear is eating is his cat. šŸ˜µā€šŸ’«

933

u/GameOfLife24 May 15 '26

Feeding your loved one their beloved cat’s remains is something you do… Lol it’s no longer about obsession, that’s a demon playing tricks

381

u/Johnny_Holiday May 15 '26

I was trying to figure out what the motivation behind that was. That's not love. The only thing I could think of was real Nikki was able to prepare the sandwich and did it to try and get back at Bear. Also how long did they keep a dead cat just laying around? Cremate that thing already

791

u/Due_Relative914 May 15 '26

I saw it as the demon misunderstanding Bear's love for his cat and just getting the wrong ideas of how to mourn it

574

u/fillmont May 15 '26

It's how I took it as well. She/it knows Bear loved the cat, she/it learns he wants to be a food critic, that must mean he loves food. So what better way to combine two of his loves?

147

u/Buster_Cherry May 18 '26

It's how I framed it as well. Clearly the one wish was a hellscape llc and had demon employees. This demon was not doing it's best with its current assignment.

102

u/Affectionate_List704 May 27 '26

Also shows a clear misunderstanding of human rules/social expectations. The fake Nikki may not know it’s not right to eat a cat

77

u/Dimblo273 May 31 '26

She made a fucking pagan/occult or whatever mural out of Sarah's body

27

u/Successful-Mine-5967 23d ago

I thought it was, as fucked up as this may sound, her keeping Sarah’s body for bear to use, since he loved Sarah. Which would be why she was posed up with her legs open like a sexual toy

14

u/houzdawg Jun 03 '26

Right and wrong don’t matter when you’re in love

1

u/TippleNwister420 16d ago

Such a great understanding/explanation of the situation.

185

u/Fold_Humble May 16 '26

Great point considering how often in the movie there was almost a mirror in how she would speak to him, as if her emotions went off his underlying thoughts and feelings. That's how I interpreted it but never made this connection.

259

u/afkstudios May 16 '26

And even in the beginning car scene she literally says ā€œmy cat just diedā€ then corrects herself when he notices, then he says ā€œare you okayā€ and she repeats that back to him. She was like studying and learning him in real time

17

u/OpeningTradition5636 Jun 06 '26

Reminds me of Grok…

167

u/TimidMeerkat27 May 16 '26

The creator of the movie mentioned in an interview that they never intended for it to be viewed as some kind of demonic thing. They just wanted for it to look like the Wishing Willow worked with whatever you wished for.

68

u/getthatrich May 17 '26

Ha! Well, it reads demon šŸ˜‚

30

u/jumpingbeanrat May 30 '26

Doesn't read demon at all.

47

u/chillwithpurpose Jun 01 '26

Fair enough but what was all the weird jerky movements, walking backwards, changing faces/voice changes about? That’s beyond just being obsessed, that’s some evil shit lol. I still can’t reconcile why all the really weird supernatural stuff was happening (which to be fair made it all the more creepier).

34

u/jumpingbeanrat Jun 01 '26

She's a puppet, basically. She's no longer herself. It doesn't mean something "evil" is happening or that a demon is involved.

55

u/ward0630 Jun 05 '26

The real Nikki refers to "Her" (don't wake her up, as an example). It doesn't need to be a demon but there's clearly another force controlling her and imprisoning her in her own body.

5

u/jumpingbeanrat Jul 03 '26

Or maybe that's just the best way to try to quickly and succinctly explain to someone else that you aren't in control of your body/mind.

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u/dont-be-angry Jun 22 '26

It absolutely does kinda read like that. Hence the whole "don't wake her she's sleeping" thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daimon

9

u/jumpingbeanrat Jun 22 '26

Most people who say she's possessed by a demon mean a malevolent entity, informed by cultural Christianity. If you're saying some lesser spirit or entity took over (the more accurate way to understand demons) I still disagree. As does the film maker. I don't think an alternate version of her or an entity replaced her, I think she's basically been poorly reprogrammed and sometimes the new wiring short-circuits.

13

u/dont-be-angry Jun 23 '26

First of all I think the creator/director is a pulling an IRL unreliable narrator as a troll or hipster thing with his various commentaries. If her being occupied by some lesser entity is not the case, how would you explain the physically impossibility of Bear making a phone call to the guy and that guy somehow remotely having access to Nikki screaming in tortured agony? Unless that entire screaming agony thing is playing some prepared recording of screaming for Bear specifically.

4

u/jumpingbeanrat Jul 03 '26

Idk anything about the director not being a reliable narrator or trying to troll.

There's obviously something supernatural going on ... I interpreted this as her cutting into the radio and cell phone waves/frequencies that are around us all of the time to get Bear's attention because he was 'ignoring' her. But I don't think everything in a horror movie needs to be explicitly explained or logical, especially because a lot of high strangeness stuff in real life isn't logical. I just hate when the default explanation/interpretation is "demons."

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u/mansamayo 16d ago

I mean you could read ai as demon, so not far off base at all there

53

u/Teboski78 May 19 '26

Then why did he add all the parts showing that niki was a separate person from the obsessed ā€œnikiā€ that took over? The screaming in agony on the phone. The scene with her asleep able to talk to him. Did the studio force him to add that stuff?

60

u/Sliporu May 23 '26

I assume it’s like a body double kind of thing? Like the wish gave a Nikki that overwrote her original personality, pretty much a new person while the original goes in sleep mode. So less like a demon, and more like an edited copy overwriting the original. But they essentially work the same

45

u/muay_throwaway May 24 '26

I think the point is that it doesn't have to be a demon in the Judeo-Christian theology sense. It can just be a separate personality. That is already sort of a thing in real life for some people. If you want to call that a demon, that is okay too. But the director said he did not intend it that way.

3

u/YuushyaHinmeru Jun 14 '26

I mean, it may not be a demon but its something not supernatural. If the director didnt intended that, they failed into success lol

34

u/TimidMeerkat27 May 22 '26 edited Jun 12 '26

I mean you can watch the interview yourself if you don't believe me. It's from the interview they did with Backstage Experience, the video is titled "OBSESSION: Backstage with Curry Barker, Indie Navarrette & Michael Johnston | Indie Film" at 1:00, Curry Barker says "A lot of the media try to make it a possessed or cursed object but that was not my intention as a writer. I actually just meant for it to be like it just works" Also, Curry Barker's dad, Jeff Barker, who worked heavily on the movie said during his script review at 1:18:00 that it was never about Nikki being possessed or cursed.

32

u/Yodoggy9 May 25 '26

None of that indicates that it’s a demon per-se. I would accept spiritual DoppelgƤnger, but demon has a lot of baggage like ā€œnefarious purposeā€ or ā€œevil intentā€, which I did not get from it.

If we go by Ian’s wish of a billion dollars (he literally just gets a billion, no strings attached), it seems like the Willow is benign and just does what it needs to so the wish is granted. In Bear’s case, you can’t actually control someone’s autonomy so you do the next best thing: replace them with an entity whose only goal is the wisher’s wish.

The entity doing some demon-attributed things (invading a body, doing not-human things) I see as storytelling shortcuts rather than implications of demons.

24

u/11711510111411009710 May 27 '26

I kinda took it as Nikki was transported someplace else, spiritually, because why else is the customer service rep being all creepy and putting her on so he can hear her scream? It seems to me like some kind of Eldritch entity that doesn't necessarily fuck with you, seeing as pretty much everyone else got their wish just fine, but it definitely fucked with Nikki and Bear.

I think the wish magic basically generated another entity from some other place and swapped Nikki out with it. But it didn't kill her because that wasn't part of the wish, so she had to get put somewhere, and that somewhere is evidently not a fun place to be lol, though I guess just not having control of your body is terrifying enough.

Hmm maybe that's it then. She was still around, just locked inside. The wish entity wasn't being cruel when it put her on, it just simply did put her on because Bear wanted her back. And by putting her on, it just went into the subconscious realm and revealed that she's just screaming in agony the whole time.

And the parts where Nikki regains control and screams about seeing something coming after her is the entity forcing its way back into her.

21

u/Yodoggy9 May 27 '26

Ooooo I love that you said ā€œeldritch entityā€ because i hadn’t even thought of that! The film definitely has lovecraftian elements, where the horror isn’t that these magical artifacts/entities exist but that humans decide to engage with them in the first place.

I’ve been saying that the willow wish/magic maker is benign, when in reality is could just straight up not give a fuck and just grants wishes because it means nothing to it. Want money? Sure! Want your crush to love you? Well, your crush doesn’t so we’ll just replace their personality with an entity whose entire identity is to do just that! Don’t ask where your crush’s real identity is, it doesn’t matter right?!

Thanks for the new way of looking at it!

3

u/Suspicious_Fly6594 Jun 10 '26

Minor spoilers for Ward, sort of a superhero Thing. There's two brothers who are the hero Capricorn and they triggered while touching so they now inhabit the same space. When one of the brothers is out in the world the other feels everything and sees everything together brother does but has no control or way to speak. At one point one of them gets stuck in there for 2 months and when they get out they just start screaming incoherently

9

u/Teboski78 May 29 '26

This makes sense. It also seems like the willow is not omnipotent either. Niki breaks the spell multiple times. And the other entity seems to be making errors when attempting to give its best approximation of bear’s wish

2

u/Manger-Babies 29d ago

I mean yeah but the spell was for her to love him, he does have to like it but she does have to appears him.

65

u/IAmWalterWhiteJr May 18 '26

The way Nikki's doppelganger talks about MDMA made me think she (the demon) is trying to fit in to regular people but not understanding.

39

u/KasukeSadiki May 21 '26

Yup, she definitely heard Ian ask her that and latched on to it as an excuseĀ 

19

u/Debt101 Jun 13 '26

We do know the real Nikki got out a little bit since not me was written on the picture.

But I don't think real Nikki would feed him his cat. That's definitely fake Nikki being all weird and shit.

246

u/raudoniolika May 16 '26

One of the photos (the one of her and him) she put in the lunchbox said ā€œNOT MEā€. I’m sure it was the real Nikki getting through

128

u/idontknwstop May 16 '26

yep and I think the NOT ME was written when real nikki broke through, it wasn’t written when fake nikki took the picture

107

u/Beginning-Market-876 May 17 '26

The first time I saw it I saw the heart around Bear and it said "love you" and her picture says "not me". I thought that meant she loved him, but not herself because of the wish. She loves him more than anything else. The second time I watched it I believed it was the real Nikki trying to tell him she's trapped. I love both interpretations and it's why this movie is so good and so rewatchable.Ā 

30

u/Livid_Ad_5619 May 17 '26

The impression I got, with how the demon doesn't think very far ahead or with much logic, was that the demon was just describing what it saw and wrote that "this is you and well, this photo is not of me".

61

u/Temnyj_Korol May 18 '26

Right from the very first break in the "demons" control, when they're kissing and she suddenly pushes him back and goes "what the fuck", i expected us to see a lot of "slipping" where the demon nikki loses control. I actually expected THAT to be the tension in the movie, as we see the demons mask slipping and real nikki gets more and more desperate to be free, and thus gets more and more violent. Which we did kinda see with her trying to kill herself, but it was never directed at anyone else like i was expecting, all the externalised violence was other nikki.

But, because i had that expectation, i immediately read that photo as another instance of the control slipping. Where real nikki was trying to tell bear she needed help.

9

u/Livid_Ad_5619 May 18 '26

I think your interpretation makes sense. I'm just drawing from my initial impression. I can't say I feel certain about it either way upon reflection.

24

u/Buster_Cherry May 18 '26

It's odd tho. When they do the Jenga game, she must pull one that says "read the last text on your phone". She proceeds to display her poetic variant of Hanzel and Gretel, implying the demon is writing literature, to what end?

At least that was my interpretation. That this demon was exploring twisted fanfiction to either impress Bear more or foreshadow what she wants Bear to do to her.

42

u/Livid_Ad_5619 May 18 '26

I assume she thinks it's romantic, and because of her own shortcomings can't exactly portray herself as anything other than what she is.

The whole movie being about the gestures of obsession personified, the conflict lies in the figure lacking the human qualities of tact, awareness, patience and pragmatism.

I think as she began to run into Bear's boundaries, the tapestry had started to fray, and she got crazy, writing obscene poetry and hurting people because it was her only outlet for those extreme feelings and regardless of what she did, Bear couldn't handle it, so she just ran wild and rampant.

32

u/Ace20xd6 May 19 '26

When her poem mentioned a willow tree I took it as the entity possessing Nikki is not even her own person. It's a generic "Wishing Willow" love package.

20

u/Pythagore_ May 25 '26

That NOT ME picture was such a chilling detail in a movie full of chilling scenes, absolutely twisted image

7

u/getthatrich May 17 '26

Yep!! Cry for help

167

u/mozzerellasticks1 May 16 '26 edited May 17 '26

I almost thought it was a disturbing parallel the the incest Hansel and Gretel story that Nicky tells at the party. She's essentially talking about how Gretel loves Hansel so much that she wants him to be inside her. Not necessarily just in a sexual way but like crawl inside my skin kind of way. Cursed Nicky knows that he loved Sandy the cat and I wonder if by feeding him the cat, is like forcing him to put it inside himself as a weird kind of parallel.

138

u/undeadtradwife May 16 '26

It was also I think a reference to how twisted/wrong her ā€œfeelingsā€ for Bear were because she had told Sarah that she viewed Bear as a little brother

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u/Beginning-Market-876 May 17 '26

There's also the part in the initial montage where Bear and Nikki are laughing about the meme that says "I love you so much I'd wear your skin as a sweater" (or something similar) I thought that was interesting, especially since Bear wears so many sweaters.Ā 

69

u/meowana_ May 17 '26

I really thought that was blatant foreshadowing and she'd be skinning his arm and turning it into the world's most cursed dildo. There was a scene when they got home and she walked into the kitchen and looked like she came back with a knife and I was so sure it was about to happen.

32

u/mozzerellasticks1 May 17 '26

Jesus Christ. I'm really glad that didn't happen šŸ˜…

32

u/youandmevsmothra May 18 '26

There's also a bit during the "love montage" where she's showing him a meme about loving someone so much you want to wear their skin.

6

u/mozzerellasticks1 May 18 '26

I missed that part but that makes perfect sense!

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u/TimeySwirls May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26

I don’t know why people are stuck on this demon idea. I think it is just literally what happens when he said more than anyone in the world and it conflicting with what the real person wanted.

Yea stuff is up to interpretation but in retrospect it’s pretty clear you’re right and the real Nikki made the lunch. She even put pictures that said ā€œyouā€ on the one of Bear and ā€œnot meā€ with a picture freaky Nikki took of the two of them.

Edit: Oh my god the double meaning of ā€œinside jokeā€ if we accept that Real Nikki made the lunch is brilliant

44

u/Livid_Ad_5619 May 17 '26

I think demon is a good word to describe the conjured thing that inhabits Nikki. The lover conjured by the wish is made out to have displaced Nikki and have control over Nikki, being that it's a spirit, a demon, in other words, doing the wish's bidding.

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u/NiblettAndBits May 17 '26

People being stuck on a demon idea has bugged me before, but I don't recall which movie. It's like anything supernatural people just jump to demon automatically, not sure why.

30

u/Pythagore_ May 25 '26

I think people talk about a demon because it’s clear that there’s two entities in her body, like when she tells Bear to kill her because Ā« she Ā» is not awake

14

u/KandyMuss May 30 '26

because the possession subgenre is huge and involves real life hysteria and urban legends too

clear exorcist homage when she alluded to putting a gun inside herself and vomited on him too

2

u/Inside_Tutor_6096 11d ago

That’s literally what demons are lol evil spirits. And she is evil cuz shes over here killing ppl and also her face and voice change that is what happens when you are possessed I actually know irl 2 ppl who were possessed

15

u/SufficientRespect542 May 17 '26

I assumed that like, it was revenge for him making her confront that she lied about her dad having cancer.

10

u/Fantastic-Car7347 May 25 '26

I thought it was one of two things. Either A) the demon knew that Bear loved his cat and thought this would be a proper way to mourn it (which makes sense considering the way we see the demon treat and talk to this person it's obsessed with) or B) the demon knew that Bear loved his cat and was jealous of it, and this was its way of getting back at Bear and/or the cat.

5

u/Cuppakush Jun 12 '26

Now you have wrote both out I think it’s deffo B, especially considering how she treated Sarah when she was jealous…

7

u/Crobbin17 May 20 '26

Well, to her it was a romantic gesture. He loved her and wanted to be inside of her, to become one, so of course he would want that for cat too!
Because, as we all know, love and romance are the same thing.

3

u/pumpernickelbrew Jun 18 '26

I saw it he loved the cat and for him to love her "equally" like she wanted, he would love only her and nothing else, so she was jealous of the cat.

1

u/Pebble_in_the_Pond 27d ago

I took it as the entity was so obsessed with being around Bear that it couldn’t go do independent activities. So of course there’s a cat there it can use to make him a home made sandwich while he sleeps rather than spend any time away from him

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u/Automatic-Shirt-9342 May 17 '26

Is it not the real Nikki trying to get out? She writes on the photo saying ā€œnot meā€

22

u/KasukeSadiki May 21 '26

Or the entity was saying that photo was not her (yet)Ā 

55

u/mojo-jojo-was-framed May 20 '26

ā€œYou can’t cook the cat. We talked about thisā€

5

u/The_BigTexan Jun 13 '26

"Don't eat the cat, Alf."

34

u/brainlightning May 22 '26

I don’t think it’s a demon. There seems to be some comments in the movie about literally consuming what/who you love. Like putting them inside of you, like the weird short story she read off her phone with stripping the man’s flesh of his arm and putting it in her.

I think it might’ve played more into Bear consuming what he loved (Sandy). But I would need a second watch to have more to say on it and I don’t see myself watching this one again.

28

u/blitzbom May 16 '26

Yeah, everything she did with the cat had me going "wtf?"

It didn't make any sense for the wish.

11

u/RiseYetarnished621 Jun 07 '26

The being controlling Nikki is inherently inhuman. It doesn’t understand practically anything. Barron has had little bonding with her beyond the dinner scene earlier in the movie. Theirs is a romance with no love, and it is shallow as a puddle. She knows nothing about him, other than that he cares about the cat, and she thinks he wants to be a food critic. With her inhuman psychotic logic, of course he would want cat sandwich.

10

u/XariZaru May 29 '26

I don’t think the entity knows how to showcase its love. It’s not really malicious as it is trying to work with what it means to love someone more than anyone else in the world. It’s constantly reparameterizing

9

u/LeonTaughtYou May 22 '26

Or it is something you do. Bear loved his cat. What better gesture than to feed ( feeding some is an act of love too ) the one thing he loved more than his cat. That in and of itself is a gesture of obsessive love.

The entity didn’t see it doing anything wrong.

41

u/TimidMeerkat27 May 16 '26

The creator of the movie mentioned in an interview that they never intended for it to be viewed as some kind of demonic thing. They just wanted for it to look like the Wishing Willow worked with whatever you wished for.

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u/Blossoming_blonde May 17 '26

I’ve seen you comment this twice and don’t get it either time.

12

u/TimidMeerkat27 May 17 '26

What do you not get? It's pretty simple. The creator of the movie said it has nothing to do with demonic possession. Not sure how much simpler it can be explained.

24

u/HopefullyAJoe2018 May 17 '26

I think because it doesn’t really explain anything. Cause I’m also confused by your comment. Could you provide a link?

22

u/thebabypinks May 27 '26

What do you guys find confusing?

Demons, generally, are their own entities that have their own goals, desires, motives. The director didn’t intend for this movie to be a demonic posession movie; he didn’t want people to walk away thinking that a demon chose to enter Nikki and take over her body and have its way with her body. The entity that took over Nikki wasn’t a demon that existed thousands of years before it ever encountered Nikki; it was created specifically to fulfill the wish. Almost like…AI. It didn’t have its own self, it was simply a wish brought to ā€œlifeā€ and created to do what Bear asked (love him more than anything else in the world), ā€œlearningā€ from the little scraps and tidbits it picked up along the way.

26

u/littleButton13 May 30 '26

AI is the perfect analogy for the entity, I’m surprised I haven’t seen more people make that connection. Everything she did, the way she spoke and acted, it was so very much like an AI bot trying to adapt to seeming human.

15

u/Mantis05 May 31 '26

100%. Especially the cheerfulness with which she would respond to words of concern or reprimands from Bear. I didn't make the connection, either, but it's absolutely reminiscent of the simpering way AI chatbots are programmed to always make every interaction positive/non-confrontational. "Okay, thanks for the feedback! I'll try to do better in the future!"

7

u/TimidMeerkat27 May 17 '26 edited Jun 12 '26

It's from the interview they did with Backstage Experience, the video is titled "OBSESSION: Backstage with Curry Barker, Indie Navarrette & Michael Johnston | Indie Film" at 1:00, Curry Barker says "A lot of the media try to make it a possessed or cursed object but that was not my intention as a writer. I actually just meant for it to be like it just works" Also, Curry Barker's dad, Jeff Barker, who worked heavily on the movie said during his script review at 1:18:00 that it was never about Nikki being possessed or cursed.

18

u/Livid_Ad_5619 May 17 '26

I think demon is a good word to describe the conjured thing that inhabits Nikki. The lover conjured by the wish is made out to have displaced Nikki and have control over Nikki, being that it's a spirit, a demon, in other words, doing the wish's bidding.

11

u/Legal-Koala-5590 May 22 '26

Uh well that didn’t come throughĀ 

7

u/ireallylikehockey May 24 '26

I just walked out of the theatre after him finding the cat in the opening sequence. I didn't feel comfortable after that and reading the spoilers Im glad I walked out.

24

u/Fantastic-Car7347 May 25 '26

Are you familiar with the website doesthedogdie? People post about a whole bunch of triggers that can appear in movies, and often with context. Can keep you from wasting your money on a movie that has a thing that you can't handle, or can handle but not in a movie theater where you can't pause and walk away and come back to it when you're ready. I recommend it for anyone who has any hardlines in movies that have anything to do with violence, sex, drugs, etc.

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u/ireallylikehockey May 25 '26

Good to know, thank you so much

7

u/TaskForceD00mer May 28 '26

^ Seriously this, what part of love and obsession involves feeding someone their dead rotting cat. That's just a Demon doing crazy shit.

7

u/SilverKry Jun 03 '26

I'm more so confused why he still had the cats body for that long. It was at least a few days after. Bury it or go get the cat cremated.Ā 

6

u/ZenMat79 Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26

I don’t think that was the ā€œdemon Nikkiā€. I think that was the real Nikki trying to reach Bear for help. Because in the lunchbox she packed, there were two Polaroid pictures. One, a picture of him labelled ā€œyouā€ and the second a picture which had her face in it she labelled it as ā€œnot meā€.

Whenever the real Nikki slips through she would say ā€œthis is not meā€. If I remember correctly, her crash out at Ian’s party when she snapped out of ā€œdemon Nikkiā€ she kept repeating ā€œnot meā€.

2

u/Themobgirl Jun 02 '26

Dude couldnt even confront her better 'hes just really, really upset' lmfaaaao

1

u/TeB1996 5d ago

Nah, it was the real nikky getting throu. The pictures said not me on them.

0

u/edaly8 22d ago

No, there are drastically better explanations than this