🔴 THE CAKE WASN’T FOR ME, AND HE CALLED ME “MOMMY”
I screamed, right there in the bakery, watching him point and smile.
It was vanilla, his favorite, I know that much, and covered in little plastic dinosaurs, but the card… the card read “Happy Birthday, Mommy.” He never calls me that. He smells like stale cigarettes and cheap cologne – how can he stand next to those kids?
“It’s just a term of endearment,” he said, his voice smooth like oil, but his eyes were darting around, avoiding mine. I could feel the heat rising in my face, burning. The bakery was so bright, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, everything too cheerful.
My hands are still shaking. I just don’t get it. Is he… is this real? I thought we were happy. Seven years. Seven years, and this is what he does? I can’t breathe.
I turned to leave, and that’s when I saw the little girl, maybe five, tugging on his sleeve, saying, “Daddy, can we get balloons too?”
👇 Full story continued in the comments…
My heart plummeted into my stomach. The air in the bakery felt suddenly thick, suffocating. He flinched, his eyes snapping towards the little girl, his face a mask of pure panic. He quickly knelt down, trying to block her from my view, mumbling something about balloons later, his voice strained.
“Who…?” I started, but the words caught in my throat. The little girl, oblivious to the tension, peeked around his leg, her bright, curious eyes landing on me. She had his smile.
He stood up abruptly, his hand firm on the girl’s shoulder, trying to steer her towards the counter again. “It’s… it’s not what you think,” he stammered, finally looking at me, his usual charm replaced by a desperate plea.
“Not what I think?” I echoed, my voice trembling but rising. “You’re buying a cake for ‘Mommy’ and this little girl calls you ‘Daddy’! What *else* could I possibly think?” My voice broke on the last word.
He sighed, a defeated, heavy sound that cut through the forced cheerfulness of the bakery. “Okay. Okay, you caught me,” he muttered, glancing around nervously at the other customers. “This is… this is Lily. And yes, I’m her father. The cake is for her mother. My… my wife.”
The word ‘wife’ hit me like a physical blow. My knees felt weak. Seven years. Seven years I’d spent loving this man, building a life with him, dreaming of a future, and he had a whole other life. A wife. A daughter. The stale cigarette smell, the cheap cologne – was that her? The hints I’d dismissed, the late nights, the weekends away he’d vaguely explained. It all clicked into place with brutal, sickening clarity.
“Your wife?” I whispered, the pain in my chest so sharp it stole my breath. “Seven years, Daniel. Seven years! And you have a wife? And a child?”
He shuffled his feet, avoiding my gaze again. “It’s complicated,” he started, the oil-smooth voice back, but it just sounded slimy now.
“Complicated?” I laughed, a harsh, broken sound that drew the attention of a woman buying cupcakes. “There’s nothing complicated about it, Daniel! You’re a liar. A cheat! You’ve been living a double life! For seven years!”
Lily started to whimper, sensing the conflict, and buried her face in his leg. He stroked her hair awkwardly. Looking at them, a family unit I never knew existed, the vanilla cake with its cheerful dinosaurs suddenly seemed like a monument to my own foolishness.
The shaking in my hands intensified, but a cold resolve was beginning to settle over the burning humiliation. There was nothing more to say, nothing more to understand. The man I loved wasn’t real. He was a carefully constructed lie.
“Don’t call me. Don’t ever contact me again,” I said, my voice surprisingly steady now, devoid of emotion, just ice. I didn’t wait for his response, didn’t look back at him, or Lily, or the stupid dinosaur cake. I just turned and walked out of the bright, cheerful bakery into the indifferent world outside, leaving behind the ruins of the past seven years and the man who had shattered them with a single word: “Mommy.”