This home, certainly, is theirs through and through. You may be a guest or a spy; either way, you are an intruder, an outsider whose evidence will be wiped away after you step back outside. You feel his eyes follow you around the room, feel his palms sweat as you tilt your head back and let the journalist whose byline you’ve read countless times tilt your head against her breast and slide her red lipstick over your lips, painting them as if she were making love to you. In a way, maybe she is, her fingers crushing your jaw, the not-quite-liquid, not-quite-solid of the waxy ruby pressing hard against your lips, hard the way he used to crush them, hard the way you like it.
She laughs an almost evil laugh that makes you wonder what else she could do with the lipstick, and you feel a frisson of static pass from her small, bony hands into your cheeks when she pinches them, inspecting her work. You wonder, of course, if he’s fucked her, even though it shouldn’t really matter. Lots of things that shouldn’t matter take up space in your mind, fragments of jealousy on permanent repeat. You pucker up just to give your lips something to do, someone to make contact with who is not him. Her tongue traces the red, teases, darts but doesn’t claim you as her wicked laugh did. You let her know, with your lips, that she could have you, but she simply pulls back and smiles, her nails digging into your upper arm. Suddenly you want to pull her bleached-blonde hair, tug hard until she can’t even make a sound, the feral domme inside of you flicking at your insides, aching to be let out for a moment. Instead you just smile widely and she slinks away to find another victim.
After, you think the lipstick will be smeared—that’s only right, isn’t it, after someone’s just fucked you with a tube from MAC?—but instead, it’s perfect. Redder than red, redder than you’d ever dare in your daily life. Fancy that. They should put that in an ad campaign. You go back to your spying-cum-ogling, your lips now signaling that you are the hussy you know yourself to be, the other woman come seeking vengeance, seeking something you will never have because it belongs to someone else.
Except that’s not really how it is at all; you don’t want what the woman in the slip has, the slip of a woman, the one whose body fits right up against his fleshy arm, whose presence you’ve felt like an erotic phantom from day one. You wouldn’t trade your life for hers if given the chance, yet you can’t help but hate her just a little and are surprised to find how quickly that hate snakes its way into your panties, ignites the chill that’s been coursing through you since you stepped inside.
You watch her from across the room, laughing softly, nuzzling up against some sweet young thing. You could be the sweet young thing, you’ve been told—or warned. She wants to kiss you, he’s let you know, a heads-up that only makes your head spin. You try to imagine what her body would feel like, what your fingers inside her would make her say, but you only get as far as her breasts in your mind. You already know what she tastes like, from that first date when he shoved his fingers into your mouth, fresh from the taxicab where he got his last feel of her until the morning. You watch her until it seems inappropriate to keep doing so, then look away, absorb the surroundings like you’ll be writing a report on them later. This is likely your only chance, so you might as well make the most of it.
The apartment is nothing special in its layout, location, design; it’s the decorations—the photo-booth strips, posters, mementos, bookshelves—that mark it indelibly as theirs. There’s no centerpiece, no stunning work of art everyone gathers around; none of the other guests seem to be having an epiphany as they take in their surroundings, no one else is clamoring for more champagne with quite the edge of hungry anger that consumes you. The bubbles work much like a bubble bath, simmering, soothing, smoothing over any rough edges that threaten to erupt. You’re glad you don’t wear eye makeup because already the tears are swimming up, demanding release. You blink them back and look around for something—anything—to latch on to that does not remind you of traveling on a bus with sex toys stuffed in your bag so he could steal an afternoon away from her to shove them inside you.
People are stripping down for the promised bubble baths, sneaking off to corners and closets for make-out sessions, while you forage for more champagne. You will leave if you don’t have it because you can only be here with those bubbles fizzing in your hand, snap crackle pop, like the cereal, before they provide a heat all their own to your insides. You find a bottle and clutch it to you, tuck it against your breasts, make people come to you for a fresh glass. He walks up, silently holds out his empty. You bite down, knowing that even MAC’s finest won’t withstand too many fresh, sharp bites, but not caring.