Sweet Romance14 min read
He Knew I Was Lying—And Smiled Anyway
ButterPicks14 views
I told my childhood partner, "I like your best friend. Don't tell him."
He laughed without moving his lips.
"Say that again and I'll punch you," he said.
I prodded his throat anyway.
"You're so strict about secrets," I muttered.
"We're done with comments, Claire." Carter Johnson's voice was flat. He leaned back against the doorway like he owned the frame. "Don't say anything more."
"I wasn't even trying," I complained.
"Good. Keep it that way."
1
Finn Castillo was getting married.
When I saw the announcement in the old class chat, my phone buzzed like it had been shoved. I bit into my apple like it might steady me.
"They're getting married right after graduation," Dani Donnelly said, and the group went wild.
"That means we have to give money," I said, very practical and very broke.
That made everything worse. I called Carter before I cried.
"Hello?" he answered, like he was annoyed by the sound of a crying penny.
"Hey," I choked. "Finn's getting married."
"He's my groomsman," Carter said.
"Then you don't have to pay me back!" I practically shouted into the phone.
There was a sound of water in the background from his apartment, and his voice grew shorter. "Claire, don't still have feelings for Finn, okay?"
"I—what?"
"People get married, you don't be the big saint crying," he snapped, and hung up.
I squeezed the phone hard. Then I called him back.
"What now?"
"You owe me," I said. "Five hundred for a wedding gift. Send it."
He was as bad as ever. "You still like Finn?"
"No," I said too fast. "I don't. Stop. Please."
He made a sound that could have been a sigh, or a smile.
2
I liked Finn, once. In middle school he switched to our school and sat next to Carter. Two handsome boys sat together and the class exploded.
I wrote a lot of letters. Soft pink paper, my handwriting that I thought was neat. I never gave them to Finn, but I wrote them anyway.
Carter used to help me throw them away.
"What are you doing?" he asked once, eyebrows high.
"Keeping the peace," I lied.
To be safe, I tried a different tactic. One afternoon after classes I bought Carter a popsicle—expensive just for him.
"Why?" he asked.
"For neighborhood harmony," I said, smiling like a dog who had smelled something delicious.
"Say it," he pushed, playful, "Do you want me to do something for you?"
I lowered my voice and leaned toward him, heart bouncing. "I like Finn. But don't tell him, okay?"
He blinked, then smiled. I waited for the betrayal—I had a feeling it would come, like it always did from people who couldn't keep secrets.
Three days. Seven days. Nothing. Not a whisper from Carter, not a rumor from the class. Finn didn't know. Carter didn't say a thing.
I called him stealthy keeper of secrets from then on: "Silent Carter."
3
On the wedding day I was late. The ceremony was almost done when I slipped into the back pew, hair a mess.
"Why are you late? And did you do something to your hair?" Dani hissed.
"I went to a place called Stone Street Barber," I lied. "They gave me the latest look."
They gave me a nest on my head instead of a style. Carter came over in a suit and smoothed the top of my head like I was a stray cat.
"Who did this?" he tutted.
"I'll make the person pay you back five hundred," I said.
He pretended to scold the stylist out loud and offered to cover a small debt. He was ridiculous, and I was grateful.
I watched Finn kiss Emiko Brady at the altar on video Dani sent me. I watched it once, then again. Finn looked like a sun; Emiko looked like silk. I felt cheap, like I had spent my love on free samples.
4
Late that night Dani and I went to drink and laugh and pretend I wasn't the emotional mess I felt like. A small secret I didn't tell anyone: earlier that day I had crashed into a fortune-teller on the sidewalk. He told me—calm, odd-lipped, wearing round sunglasses—that I'd be single until thirty unless I changed my hair.
Thirty sounded like forever.
After one drink too many, I found Carter's door and knocked like a fool. When he opened I spilled my arms around him. I clutched his lip with fingers that felt like cold tofu.
"You keep every secret," I slurred. "You promised. You promised... don't tell."
He squinted. "If you say another name, I will punch you."
I banged my head on his door on purpose. The last fuzzy thing I remembered felt soft and cool.
5
Afternoon sunlight woke me. The room was darker than mine, but it had Carter posted in thumbprint places: a navy duvet, a poster of a game, a couch with a rumpled blanket. I was wearing a single camisole and shorts.
"Where's my coat?" I asked, reaching.
Carter leaned in the doorway with that half-smile of his. "You're up. I thought you'd sleep longer."
"You were…"
He cut the question off. "Even if I had moved, I wouldn't touch you," he said. "Get up. Breakfast will be ready soon."
I left with more questions than answers. But I had to eat, and Carter was there like something steady that knew how to make toast.
6
At breakfast Carter's phone buzzed non-stop with a pink rabbit avatar. I couldn't help glancing at it.
"Who is that?" I asked.
"A girl," he said.
"Girl?" I pushed. "Is she your girlfriend?"
"Nope," he said, eyes level. "If I had one I'd make sure you didn't walk in."
The message kept buzzing. I felt oddly possessive and more than a little jealous. Carter, who had always been code and algorithms and games, had a soft buoy in his messages. Unlike me, he rarely let emotions coast.
"Is she after you?" I asked.
"Probably," he shrugged.
I might have waved him off with jokes and acted like I didn't care. But I cared more than I wanted to admit.
7
We sat in his compact, clean kitchen later. I decided to act on impulse and texted one of the girls flirting with him, fingering the phone like a thorn.
He handed me the screen. "Type," he said.
"Type what?"
"Tell her to go eat. It's an order." He zipped a panda sticker into the chat.
The girl didn't reply. I grinned. Carter laughed a little. "Is that your method?" he asked.
"Be bossy," I said. "It works."
Once we left his apartment I went to my small bakery. I had started Claire's Sweets after graduation. It was modest and I barely paid rent. Cakes lived beneath glass domes and my heart lived in the recipes. Carter sometimes tasted my experiments until the eight-pack of abs he once kept turned into a nicer one-piece shape and he stopped eating my cake.
A young man with soft eyes—Tatum Bradshaw—started coming often. He liked lemon vanilla cake and a certain shy manner that left my staff giggling. Elizabeth Acevedo, my assistant, kept nudging me to flirt. I was older than him, supposedly. Still, he was kind.
8
Rain and misfortune: my ground-floor apartment flooded one week. The landlord knocked, apologetic. "Water pipes burst," she said, so I moved two suitcases into the hall and called Carter.
"Claire, it's late," he said when I called.
"Please. I need a place."
He huffed. "You always show up when it's late."
"Help me," I begged. "Please."
In ten minutes he was there. When he opened his door I barged in with wet shoes and damp hair and a lot of big moves on purpose. I made sure my coat still had its tag.
"Help me," I said again.
He rolled his eyes but helped me. "You dragged yourself here on purpose, didn't you?"
"Maybe," I admitted.
9
He watched as I changed and hung my wet clothing. "If you leave your coats in here I'll give you rules," he warned, smiling.
I hopped into the shower massively grateful for hot water that didn't belong to me. When I came out he was on the couch in sweatpants, the warm lights low. He looked small and at home all at once. I sat beside him and accidentally brushed his arm.
"Don't move," he murmured, warm-sounded and a little quiet. He reached for my wrist and guided it as if to show me something, then grabbed the tag of my coat like it was an instruction. He peeled it off slowly.
"Why'd you keep the tag?" he asked, hand casual but his eyes not casual at all.
"I wanted you to cut it off for me," I lied. "To make you do something."
He did laugh then, and there was a softness in his laugh that felt like being let in.
10
One night at the grocery we bumped into a man in a plain old robe and round sunglasses who whistled to himself. He had been the fortune-teller who had told me I'd be single until thirty. I told Carter and went over to him on purpose.
"Draven Ziegler," I said, like I knew the name he'd put on a business card.
He curtsied without a smile. "Claire," he said. "Long time, long time."
I grabbed his collar before he could bolt. "You ruined my hair. You told me I'd be single forever."
He tried to slip away. I chased. Running didn't feel heroic until I found him cornered in a narrow alley.
"You think this is funny?" I said, face hot, words like concrete. "You told me garbage for money. You gave me fear and a haircut."
He looked smaller without the sunglasses. "I didn't—"
"You can't run."
He didn't want people to hear. He tried to explain with words that smoothed and tried to charm. I didn't listen. I pushed him in front of the market where customers were still choosing grapes and the night felt like thick sugar.
"Stop!" someone shouted from the grocery doorway.
"Claire," Carter said, voice low but steady, behind me.
I took a breath. "You scammed me," I told Draven. I dragged him from the alley into the square with the bakery lights and the grocery carts. "You told a woman she'd be alone forever unless she changed her hair. That she had no chance until thirty. People listened to you, Draven."
The crowd swelled like a tide. A few teenagers filmed with their phones. An older woman folded her arms.
"People are listening," I continued. "And you're taking something that isn't yours—their fear—and selling it back to them."
Draven tried to step away, glancing at the phones. He went pale. "I wasn't—"
"You told people you saw their futures," one man snapped. "You told them lies."
I pulled his hands up so his sunglasses fell. The crowd gasped. The stranger's round-frame glasses were cheap and scratched.
"Is this true?" a woman asked.
He tried to lie again. "I read things. Sometimes I'm wrong."
"You prey on people's pain," I said. "You told me I'd find love at thirty and I cut my hair because of you."
"You cut your hair? For me? I'm sorry—"
"You should be," I said. "You should be ashamed."
11
I didn't plan the punishment. The crowd did. Phones raised, small lights blinking. The woman from the market said, "Call the proper people."
"No," the teenagers said, "we can teach him a lesson."
They weren't going to start a mob. They wanted truth. Draven tried to shake off his collar and we shoved him to a table in the market square. A line grew. People wanted to talk. I wanted them to hear the details.
"Tell them what you told my friend," I demanded.
He started with the soft voice again: "It was a joke. I got carried away. I didn't mean to—"
A man in a delivery jacket laughed loud. "So this is how you make money?" he mocked. The crowd's mood shifted from curious to angry.
"People wasted money to hear you," said an older vendor, voice like a bell. "They gave you coins. They gave you hope. You sold them pieces of paper and then left."
A chorus of voices agreed. More phones recorded. Draven's cheeks flushed.
I asked one of the teenagers, a girl named Lily, "Did he tell you anything?"
She nodded, eyes bright in the phone screen light. "He promised a promotion if you dyed your hair,claimed your life would change."
"That's it," said the woman who had had the fortune told the week before, clutching a paper bag of vegetables. "I cried."
Another man stepped forward. "He told my cousin we'd break up next year. She bought everything he told her, now she's afraid."
Draven's face changed. He went from bewildered to defensive to angry in less than a moment. "You don't understand economics," he said, defensiveness trembling. "People come to me for comfort. I give them narratives. Enough."
"He took our comfort and sold it," I said. "And he told me I'd be single forever unless I cut my hair."
"That's an ugly thing to say," a woman said. "Who says such things to a person?"
The crowd's mood turned harder. You could see the gears turning in the onlookers' faces: anger, betrayal. "You can't just say that," someone said. "You can't hurt people."
Draven took off his round sunglasses and tried to plead. "Please, I didn't mean to hurt—"
"Then give back the money," the older vendor said. "Apologize. Admit you lied."
His voice trembled as the phones recorded. He started slow: "I am sorry." It sounded like a child.
"Out with it," someone demanded.
He looked at me with a scrape of anger, then shame. He promised to return the money, to stop, to tell the people the truth. He tried to explain why he had done it: rent, fear, vanity. The crowd's reaction shifted from fury to something like pity for a bad person who had been cornered.
But the punishment had to feel like more than words. I wanted him to feel the weight of the room. I wasn't angry for myself anymore. I was angry for everyone he'd lied to.
"Sing," someone joked, and the crowd laughed nervously. It lightened the tension.
Draven's voice dropped until he was whispering. "I will stop. I will return the money. I will—"
"Stand on that bench," said an old man who ran a newsstand. "Tell them what you told them was false."
He climbed up like a man stepping into a small unfair trial. Phones were higher now. Draven told each small story. He told how he made the words sound right. He told the jokes he'd used and how the words had worked. As he confessed, the crowd's faces changed—some were amused, some were angry, some were relieved to have truth at last.
He tried to keep control, then failed. When he said, "I am sorry," it sounded like a cracked bell. Some people clapped. Some hissed.
Then something else happened. A woman from the grocery, red-faced and steady, walked up and slapped his hand.
"Return the money," she said.
He flinched. He reached hands out. He promised. Phones recorded every second as he signed small slips—money returned, apologies given, names written down. The teenagers shouted the obvious: "Go home. Don't do this again."
By the time the market's security told him to leave, Draven's cardboard sign and round sunglasses were in tatters. He walked out with people whispering: "He must be stopped," "What a weasel," "Thank you for catching him."
Draven's reaction through the punishment changed: at first false calm, then panic, then a mask of bravado, then pleading, then brokenness. He had tried to charm his way free; charm didn't work in a square full of witnesses.
12
The crowd's reactions were a map of the town. Some filmed, some whispered, some clapped when he promised never to return. A few took photos holding up his sign as proof. A man who sold flowers told him, "You are banned in the market."
He left embarrassed, then a little stunned. That night, dozens of messages appeared on the community board complaining about the fortune-teller. His name was blacklisted from two café noticeboards. Word spread; he lost clients overnight.
And in the weeks after, stories came back in small echoes: he had to shutter a small tent, he struggled to find new customers, people in the market muttered when he passed. He sought a place to hide from the lights which had felt so enticing before.
It was not the worst punishment in the world, but it was public and thorough. He would remember.
13
After that, life slipped back into routines. Carter and I fell into strange patterns: he would fix my washing machine; I would bake him blueberry cakes and insist he take them to his late-night meetings. A new man, Tatum, still came by for cake. He was gentle and quiet and reminded me of fresh mornings.
Carter teased me about the man in sunglasses. "You chased a fraud," he said, smiling.
"I did," I said. "I felt like a hero."
"You are," he said, but his face settled into that look he reserved for hard things. "You can be bold. That's one of your weapons."
14
The thing about having a best friend who knows everything is that he can see through you. Carter had known my little betrayals and my letters. He had known—years ago—that I had written a report to stop his other relationship. I had been petty; I'd used a teacher's rule and the pink envelope to make a scandal. It had been shameful.
I learned later that he had known I was the one who did it. He had found the confession in my diary and read it because he needed to know why I changed. He had seen my guilt.
"You told her I didn't do anything?" I asked, one night when the two of us sat on his couch and watched an old movie.
"I didn't have to," he said. "I could see how you looked at me."
"You forgave me," I whispered.
He looked at me like someone waiting to cross a street. "You made a mistake," he said. "We all did stupid things."
15
One winter night, we walked around after a dinner I had made. Snow drifted down like a soft fall of laundry. I posted a picture of the snow and said, "Watching the first snow alone," which was dramatic and also half-true. He texted: "I'll come."
"You will?"
"Yes," he said.
We were quiet together. When we passed a street vendor selling little LED lanterns he bought one and handed it to me. "Keep it," he said. "For later."
Later came faster than I expected. New Year's snuck up, and with the clock almost at midnight he came in smelling like city and office and a plan I didn't know. I had a small cake ready. He walked in and asked about the cake and then, as if confessing, told me quietly he wouldn't let me go.
I knew then both our hearts had practiced this for years. We kissed like people who had rehearsed for an exam and forgot to study.
16
We were both crooked in ways that fit. I liked drama; he liked quiet. I wanted to provoke; he wanted to watch and choose his moments. That night we let ourselves slip into something that had been waiting in the threadbare spaces between our lives.
"I have kissed other people," he said once, late and warm and a little shy.
"I did stuff too," I admitted. "I wrote letters. I made trouble."
He smoothed my hair and kissed the scar near my ear. "I know."
17
I am not the kind of person who believes in neat endings. We did not march to success carrying banners. We stumbled. Carter's job was noisy and sometimes he was late. I was broke sometimes and proud. But we fit in the small ways: a hand on the kitchen counter, an argument over which brand of coffee was better, the way he would use a panda sticker as a joke in our messages.
There were small heart-stopping moments we learned to treasure:
- He, who hardly smiled, smiled at me in sunlight once; it cracked his lean face like a safe opening. "You look like trouble," he said, and ran a thumb across my cheek.
- One evening I complained about being cold and he took his jacket off without thinking and threw it over my shoulders. "You can't let me freeze," he said, and zipped the sleeves so they didn't hang.
- We had a fight once and he came to the bakery with a blueberry cake and a note that said: "Forgive me," with my name misspelled. He looked vulnerable and proud. "I can't always get it right," he said, "but I want to try."
Those moments stacked and grew weight. They weren't flashy, but they had a slow burn.
18
There was still sometimes the shadow of Finn—after all, I had loved him early, and Carter had sat beside him in school. When I saw Finn on social media with Emiko, my chest tightened. But the pinch was gentler now. I had my own life, my own man who knew how I disliked cilantro because I once planted it in his apartment just to annoy him.
We didn't tell our parents at first. We were the kind of children who wanted stolen romances behind closed doors. We preferred secret dinners, inadvertent kisses, and the thrill of a closed door.
On New Year's I slapped Carter's hand when he made a move to steal a kiss in front of my parents. Mom and Dad, who were supposed to be away, walked in with chips and confusion. I pretended to be surprised and then ran to hide my face against Carter's shoulder. We were found out. My mother called the man she considered a son-in-law by accident, and soon everyone in the kitchen knew.
19
I had been a liar and a prankster in youth. I'd told on a girl named Mila once. I'd been jealous and petty and used anonymity as armor. Years later I found her at a show and she told me she had known. She had found my stash of chocolates in her desk and read the note. She told me Carter had told her to let things be.
"You really liked him," Mila said with surprise. "You did strange things."
"I tried to hide it," I said.
"So did he," she said. "But he forgave you."
I carried that forgiveness like a small stone. Our history was messy, but it didn't break everything. Things knit together if you let them.
20
We built a life of small rules. He would never let me drink crazy amounts of vodka and then sleep on his couch. I would always keep a spare key. He would fix the shower even when it was an excuse to see me in a towel.
We had silly battles and big understandings. We learned how to read each other's silence.
21
The fortune-teller's punishment became a story people told sometimes when new customers came into the bakery. They liked to hear how I had marched up, found him and given him a proper market-stand exposure. It didn't solve everything for me. It taught me that small public truths matter.
Carter and I moved slow. He helped me re-hang a shelf when it tilted. I taught him how to frost a cake without destroying it. He learned to say "Scarlett Johansson" like the joke it started as, and it became one of our private names: a silly stolen thing that was ours.
22
Months later, I took the coat I had kept with its tag ages ago and put it in a drawer. The torn paper label was folded into my palm like a map. Carter laughed when he saw it.
"You kept it?" he asked.
"I wanted you to take it off," I said.
He took my hand, thumbed the torn edge and traced the tiny hole where he'd ripped it free months before. "You were trying to make me touch you," he said, and his face went soft. He leaned down and kissed the spot between my jaw and neck, where he had once called me Scarlett for a laugh. It felt like belonging.
I keep the blueberry cake tin in my kitchen, slightly bent, with a chip on one side. When I pack our little lunches and slip a panda sticker on his bag, I think of the day the fortune-teller was put on a bench and told the truth. I think of the day Carter untied my hair tag like a promise.
"Claire," he said once, holding my face, "did you ever really need the magic man?"
"No," I said, fingers against his chin. "I just needed you to notice."
He smiled that softened smile he rarely offered. "Finally," he said, like an answer and a challenge.
I laughed and threw my arm around him. The torn tag was still in my pocket, a tiny relic that smelled faintly of bread and new beginnings.
We stayed there on our tiny kitchen island with rain at the window, with a blueberry cake on the counter and a torn label in my hand. The way he looked at me was a small public miracle I could always believe.
The End
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