The Lie I Carried in My Mouth

Content warning: This story contains sexual content and strong language

I stared at the crowd and told the biggest lie of my life.

“He’s just on his way,” I said, with a smile so sweet it cracked something in the back of my throat. “Got a bit lost with his friend. You know him.”

They laughed. Raised glasses. One of his cousins called out that he was probably sneaking a joint. I nodded, even threw my head back like it was funny. Like I hadn’t just heard him say he felt sick kissing me.

The cake was sweating on the table, icing melting into the velvet surface like a slow bleed. Candles stood waiting, proud little lies of their own, and everyone stood around me, phones half-raised, tipsy, eager. They were waiting to sing.

But he wasn’t coming. Not yet.

I had heard him. Down the hall, near the bathroom, voices echoed off cheap rental walls. I hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, just meant to find him so we could do the candle thing before the DJ started his set. I should’ve walked faster. Should’ve clapped louder. But something in me wanted to hear him before I saw him.

He was laughing, the way he only did when he thought no one else was listening. Warm. Unfiltered. That part of him I used to feel under my ribs when he touched me.

“Man, I fucked up,” he was saying. “I should’ve never let her go. If I’d just tried a little harder, maybe I’d be the one she’s marrying. Not that finance dickhead she’s with now.”

“You’ve been with Amanda for eight years,” his best friend reminded him, trying for something like logic. “You love her.”

“I don’t,” he said, too quickly. “I mean, I don’t hate her. But I wake up next to her and feel—fuck, I feel stuck. Like I’m playing a part I didn’t audition for.”

His friend sighed.

“Amanda’s not her,” he added. “She’s not the one I wanted. She never was.”

That was when I told myself. Amanda, turn around! No drama. No gasp. And then I just turned and walked back into the room like I hadn’t just heard my boyfriend of eight years say he felt disgusted when he held me. That I’d been his consolation prize. And now, here I was. Holding a plastic knife, blinking too slowly, cheeks aching from the strain of pretending.

I waved toward the speakers. “DJ, maybe just give us ten more minutes, yeah?”

He gave me a thumbs-up. Someone handed me a glass of Prosecco, and I downed it too fast. I felt the bubbles claw up my chest. I didn’t even flinch.

When he finally reappeared—ten minutes later, lips pink like he’d been smoking or laughing too hard, I handed him the knife like a hostess. He kissed my head. Told me he loved me in front of everyone.

And I smiled again, because I knew something he didn’t.

I wasn’t going to ruin the night.

I was going to let it rot from the inside.

We met when I was still figuring out who I was. I was nineteen. Hadn’t learned how to speak with my body yet, only how to shrink it politely. He’d just moved to town for uni, older, sharper, carrying the kind of confidence you couldn’t fake. People naturally looked at him longer. Especially her.

Of course, it was her.

She was the girl everyone wrote poems about and pretended they didn’t. Hair like something from a shampoo ad, and that voice, smoky, light, always on the edge of laughter. She and I were friends in the way pretty girls let you orbit them when you’re too awkward to be a threat. I never hated her. I just knew I’d never win if she were in the room.

He was in love with her for two years. I watched it from the corner of every party. The way he’d pretend not to notice her and then stare like she was a drug. He only looked at me when she wasn’t around.And then one day, she got engaged to a man with better shoes and a better future. And just like that, I became visible.

He kissed me for the first time at my apartment after helping me move a bookshelf I didn’t need. It was soft. Hesitant. But then he kissed me again, like he was starving and I was made of salt and butter. He made me feel like I had always been Plan A, like he’d just needed time to realise it. I was stupid enough to believe that was romantic.We’d been together ever since.I built my twenties around him. Bought wine I didn’t like because he said it was better. Learned to cook the way his mother did. Said yes when I wanted to say I’m tired. Let him pick the films, the restaurants, the weekend trips. It didn’t feel like giving up parts of myself. It felt like becoming a woman who knew how to love.Until Saturday.

His birthday was a test I’d set for myself. He had once mentioned, drunkenly, casually, that he’d never had a surprise party. That no one had ever gone all-out for him. I filed it away like an oath. This was going to be the year. I took days off work. Booked the private room in his favourite bar, ordered the cake he liked from that expensive bakery he always pretended was overpriced. I messaged people he hadn’t seen in years. Dug through Facebook messages and awkward contacts to find them.

I made it perfect.

He didn’t suspect a thing. I even got his best friend to take him to a massage in the morning and keep him out until 9 pm so I could hang the fairy lights myself.

It’s funny. When I saw him walk in, his eyes widened, and he smiled at me like I was the sun itself. I believed it. I forgot the hallway. I let myself pretend.

That moment before everything falls apart?

It tastes like sugar. Like icing melting on your tongue before the bitter hits.

“I feel stuck,” he had said. “Like I’m playing a part I didn’t audition for.”It echoed. Not like a slap. Slaps are sudden. This was slower. Like drowning in someone else’s bathwater. I remember thinking, Did he rehearse that line? Did he say it before, to someone else?

“She’s not her,” he went on. “She never was.”

That was the part I couldn’t forget. Not the disgust, not the regret, not even the I-should’ve-been-the-fiancé bullshit.

We cut the cake. He made a speech. Thanked me. Called me his rock. Said he didn’t know what he’d do without me.

I let him hold my waist while he said it.I let him believe I was still his. And then I leaned in, close enough for only him to hear.

“Come with me.”

He blinked. “Now?”

I have a present for you.”

The hallway was quieter. Not as quiet as before, not confession-quiet, but quieter. The bass still thumped underfoot like a second heartbeat. The crowd behind us laughed as the music swelled. No one noticed we were gone.

I pulled him toward the bathroom and locked the door behind us.He looked curious, maybe even excited. “Seriously? Here?”

“Why not?”

I leaned against the sink, crossed one leg over the other. My dress slid up just enough to make his breath catch.

“You said you wanted a surprise,” I said.

“I thought the party was the surprise.”

“That was for them.” I stepped forward. Let my fingers trail the edge of his belt. “This is for you.”He kissed me.

I let him.

Tongue, hands, heat—he pressed me against the wall like he still believed in us. Mouth sloppy, eager. His hands were everywhere, like he couldn’t decide what to worship first. I kissed him back harder, my teeth catching his lower lip.

Not because I wanted him.

Because I could.

Because I could still make him desperate, even when he wished I was someone else.

His fingers found the slit in my dress, pushing it aside like a curtain. He groaned when he felt I wasn’t wearing underwear.

“You planned this?” he breathed.

I didn’t answer. I leaned my head back against the wall and let him touch me. Let him slide two fingers inside, as if I were already his gift.

But I wasn’t gasping for him. I was gasping for the power. The filth. The perversion of letting him worship the wrong altar with such blind devotion. His forehead was pressed to my shoulder, breath hot, needy.

“Say it,” I whispered.

He looked up.

“Say who you see when you close your eyes.”

He stilled. Just slightly. Just enough.

I turned his wrist, kept his fingers inside me, tighter now.

“Come on, birthday boy,” I said against his ear. “You fantasise about her when you fuck me, don’t you?”

“Amanda…”

“Picture her. Picture her sweet little mouth around your cock. The one you think got away. I know you do. I want you to.”

He should’ve pulled away. Should’ve stopped. But he didn’t. That was the sickness. That was the fucking truth.

He was hard, painfully so, pressing against his jeans like shame trying to escape.

I slid the zipper down like I was undressing a sin.

His cock pressed into my palm, hot and eager, stupidly loyal to his worst impulse.

I stroked him slowly, reverently. Like maybe if I touched him right, he’d forget her.

“You want her?” I asked. My voice didn’t even shake.

He nodded before he could stop himself.

I smiled. “Good. Then fuck me like I’m her.”

I turned around, bracing my hands on the sink, pulling the dress up over my hips. I didn’t even look back to see if he was watching. I knew he was. Breathing hard. Disgusted and enthralled.

When he pushed into me, it wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t loving.

It was frantic. Ugly.

He fucked me like he was stealing something.

Like he wasn’t allowed to want it, but couldn’t help himself.

He gripped my waist so hard I’d bruise. His teeth found my shoulder, but I didn’t flinch. I was too busy watching our reflection in the mirror, his eyes half-closed, mine wide open. He was somewhere else entirely.

I stayed right here.

Inside my body. Inside the lie.

“You like that?” I whispered, watching his face. “You like pretending?”He moaned. He said my name, but it sounded like an apology.

“I’m not her,” I said, hips grinding back against him. “You know that, right?”

“Yes—fuck—Amanda—”

“If pretending gets you off, then use me.”

I clenched around him. He lost it.

Came hard with a strangled gasp against my back, teeth dragging down my spine like he was trying to hold on to something that was already gone.

And I just stood there. Watching. Letting him finish inside me, a woman he didn’t love.

When he pulled out, I smoothed my dress down, slow and quiet.

He slumped against the wall, flushed and dazed, jeans around his ankles, breath catching like he’d just survived something.“Jesus,” he muttered. “That was…”

I wiped between my thighs with a paper towel and tossed it into the bin without looking at him.

He cracked one eye open. “That was fucking hot.”

I fixed my lipstick in the mirror. Calm. Composed. Like I hadn’t just used his body as a confession booth.

“Unexpected?” I offered.

He grinned. “Yeah.”

I smiled back, kissed my reflection.

Then I opened the bathroom door, stepped into the hallway, and left it wide.

Let him figure out how to zip himself back up.

Let him walk back out to his party smelling like sex and secrets.

Let him feel the rot between his legs.

I didn’t look back.

Didn’t need to.

He’d be watching me all night, wondering if I was still his.

And he’d never be sure again.