“Come again?”

Lips are moving around the room and the words flow easy from laughing faces to my deaf ears. Giving them what they want, I show my white teeth, nod, and stare attentively, pretending I care about what they have to say, while my distant eyes can only focus on his every move. The way he swirls his Jack Daniels on ice, caressing the top of the glass, extending his pinky in a salute, gesturing his arousal. Leaning in, as if the background music is somehow at fault, it is just a lame excuse for him to move closer, when he says to her the words he once said to me, "come again?" I know he did, even though I can't read his lips from where I stand, paralyzed.

Lifting the glass slowly, taking a long sip, his head moves seductively with the music, courtingly. The song ends and he licks a drop of invisible poison from his lower lip, then curling it in, he bites, his upper teeth caressing the skin of his chin, back and forth, a baby in its rocker. Her arms are crossed in front of her slinky black dress, partially covering her ample bosom only because she has no idea what to do with them when he moves his forefinger onto one of her arms, landing like a spider blown out of its web. The finger travels her bare skin, uninvited, and she releases her arms, surrendering.

One voice alone, my own constant companion, speaks and listens. The only one I hear. It tells me to scream, "Get your hands off of her," but I don't. I stay with them on the other side of the room, pretending, with the bald boss whose breath smells, I know because he is too close, and his fat wife who doesn't watch, doesn't care, holds onto her Birkin bag. The only voice I know wants to ask her. How? How can you be just you? You and your Birkin bag, able to turn your back while your husband betrays you, in the same way, right in front of your face.

I want to erase it all. Rewind. Not back to our drive over to his office Christmas party. Further back. Way back to when my mother's door was closed and I didn't know what was going on on the other side and I was all alone out there to fend for myself and if only I could rewrite it all. But it is my story. Me and my story. Me, alone with the voice in my head telling me I'm worthless, I deserve to be cheated on, but he, and she, just a number, will never know I watch. My mind will watch long after it's over and on our drive back, he will sense my anger. He always does, but he will have no idea why. When he calls me crazy, he doesn't have to because the voice has already made that clear. I see them, the touch, their bite. It bites me so many times I lose count.