This is a long post, and most of it is going to be in the form of discord screenshots because I’d already told the story on there before. If you find that format annoying to read that’s fair, maybe sit this one out lol
Context:
- I was trying to surprise my husband for his birthday, by getting him concert tickets to his favourite band
- I am a bad liar
- My husband has trust issues (dw tho, this tale is mostly quite wholesome, despite my stupidity)
- The agency that I booked the plane tickets through, which I’d never had problems with before, fucked me over this time - they gave me an addon that I DID not add - which is a whole other story but basically the site glitched out and overcharged me, and then I was in an annoying situation where I wanted to fix the issue or get a refund for it or smth, but the online chat thing wasn’t helpful at all and I couldn’t find a working phone number so I figured I’d have to go to the bank, but that was going to require coming up with some excuse to leave the house by myself while my husband was home ALL WEEK and see point 2
- Despite all this, I managed to pretend I had a student I had to tutor but that I could walk to and my husband didn’t need to take me (the idiot offered to take me anyway and some fumbling happened on my part because see point 2 again but it was mostly fine as he was distracted playing a video game so he didn’t notice)
- On my way to the bank, I managed to find a working number for the booking agency and ultimately I was able to sort everything out on the phone without having to go to the bank at all. With nothing else to do I ended up hiding in Starbucks for the rest of the hour until I could go home from my “tutoring lesson”
- Also unrelated to all this but because it’s gonna come up as mentions, my husband and I also had a cruise trip planned for October (which was going to be after his surprise birthday concert trip)
Anyway, while hiding in Starbucks, I vented to several friends about how everything was going and here is how the conversation between me and one of my friends ended: (this is important)
(Green = my husband, red = my friend)
Anyway, all seemed well. I arrived home from my “tutoring lesson”, husband was still playing his video game and did not suspect a thing, Operation “Hide in Starbucks after Obtaining Plane Ticket Partial Refund” was a complete success!
Until the next morning, when I made the mistake of opening that exact chat on my phone to tell my friend smth unrelated… while my husband was lying next to me in bed.
(I initiated plan B anyway.)
Did I mention yet that I’m a terrible liar?
Long story short, he hadn’t actually seen anything incriminating to begin with - he saw the word “cruise” while sleepily glancing at my phone and was only ever mildly curious. But apparently I reacted so strangely to the question that it made him think something else was going on - which, to be fair, something else was going on.
Aside from some well-deserved roasting on the subject from my other friends e.g. -
You’ll be pleased to know that the “surprise” worked out fairly well in the end. The day of the concert came and [Husband] made a conscious effort the entire time to not guess out loud where we were going, because he knew that if he said what it was I wouldn’t be able to not give it away with my face 
Not until we finally got to the venue and he basically was like “I fuckin’ knew it” 
Anyway we had a blast, we managed to get good spots not too far back, he told me it was one of the best birthdays ever, imperfect surprise notwithstanding Hooray!!