Man's Wife Thought He Was Cheating After A Checkbook Belonging To A Mystery 'Jessica' Showed Up In His Car—So He Cleared His Name
His story didn't check out at all—until it did.
TikTok By now, most of us have fallen for a fake TikTok story or two in our day, but every now and then one of the app's wilder stories turns out to be true—and maybe even renews our faith in the power of social media to connect us in ways we never dreamed possible.
A recent story about a checkbook, a farmer named Jessica, and a guy everyone thought was cheating on his wife is one of them.
A married dad claimed he found a woman named 'Jessica's' checkbook in his car.
He has no idea how it got there or who the woman is, just that her name is Jessica. But after Googling her, the details had everyone thinking he was being unfaithful.
The dad posted a TikTok begging the checkbook's owner to get in touch because now everyone thought he was cheating—including his wife.
"Jessica, for the love of God check your voicemail," teacher and influencer Mr. Rupp, known as @hashtagjrupp on TikTok, desperately wrote in an all-caps onscreen text on his video.
In his TikTok, he explained that he and his wife were taking their kids to get passports for an upcoming vacation, and when they got ready to pay, his wife realized she didn't have their checkbook.
"Check in the center console," he told her as she went to the car to look. She found a checkbook, alright—just not the one she was looking for. Instead, it was the checkbook of a random woman named Jessica.
You can probably imagine the conclusions his wife immediately jumped to—and once they started Googling details about Jessica, it all got so much worse.
"We find out that you work in the same town I teach in, which is not the same town I live in. Do you see how bad this is looking for me?" Rupp said to Jessica in his TikTok. "Not only that but if you're the same person that I Googled and found, you're also my age. This is all terrible."
Yeah… pretty incriminating, to be honest!
"I need you to check your voicemail right away because I have your checkbook. My wife thinks we're having an affair, and I don't know how to fix this," Rupp pleaded. He added, "I need this to go away."
Unfortunately for Rupp, his wife was not the only one who found his story wholly unconvincing.
People on TikTok were not buying the husband's story, and soon everyone thought he was cheating.
People felt like Rupp's TikTok was a transparent attempt to cover his tracks. "This is how he is letting Jessica know they are caught," one commenter wrote. "It's giving damage control," another cracked.
And before long, the response to Rupp's video took on a mind of its own. Scores of stitches and duets showed up from people who thought he was having an affair, including influencer @jolly_good_ginger, who bills himself as the "Tea-EO of TeaTok," the nickname for the side of TikTok that is all about petty drama.
"Listen, we're not buying this," Jolly Good Ginger cackled after laying out all the seeming inconsistencies in Rupp's story.
Rupp later reported himself that he had received more than 15,000 responses to his video, most of which were people convinced he was cheating on his wife.
But then things took an unexpected turn.
Jessica, the woman to whom the checkbook belonged, saw the guy's TikTok, and it turns out he really wasn't cheating.
"So I'm scrolling TikTok late night, come across a video where the algorithm is getting way too close to home," Jessica said in her TikTok.
Suddenly Rupp's TikTok came up in her feed, and the details were just way too on point to ignore. She checked her voicemail and sure enough, there was Rupp's message about her checkbook. "I immediately thought I was hallucinating on my weed gummy," she joked.
She quickly got in touch with Rupp. "We still don't know how the checkbook got into the car," she said, but "we're going to meet up later today so I can get my checkbook back and hopefully try to figure out what happened."
"I knew it!" one commenter, who believed Rupp all along, wrote in response. "His vibe wasn't sketchy, he seemed sincere. This is hilarious!" he went on to say.
Jessica and the teacher and his family all met up on her farm, and have become friends over the mystery of her checkbook.
As Rupp explained in a follow-up video, the only theory they've been able to come up with is that since his kids and Jessica's kids go to the same school, they must have parked beside each other at some point and somehow her checkbook accidentally made its way into his car. "That's the best we got," he said.
Whatever the explanation, he went on to say that he and his family—wife included—were headed over to Jessica's farm to meet her and her goats. "Sorry to disappoint you guys," he joked to everyone "convinced I am the world's greatest infidelity mastermind."
Jessica reported on the meet-up in the comments of one of her TikToks, saying "the whole family was great when we met."
Okay, but how was Rupp's wife, you're probably wondering. "The wife was super cool," Jessica went on to say. Phew! She added, "now we have new friends at the kids' school!"
To go from a situation where everyone thought he was cheating, to a wholesome friendship between a goat farmer and a teacher's family is really quite a narrative arc! And one that, for his part, Rupp is glad to see reach its conclusion.
In a final follow-up video, he joked, "That concludes that! Buckle up for more generic teacher and basic dad content because that's really more my wheelhouse anyway." Who knew TikTok could serve up such a rollercoaster ride?
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.