I Took My Wife To A Party. She Left With Another Man Because He’s Rich. He Threw A Dollar Bill On…

The table erupted in laughter. Miranda’s colleagues, these people I’d never met and would probably never see again, laughed like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. Miranda herself had the decency to look embarrassed for about half a second before she joined in, her laugh mixing with everyone else’s, creating this chorus of mockery that made my ears ring.

Someone said, “Oh my god, Gavin,” in that tone people use when they think something is inappropriate but hilarious. Another person, some guy in a suit that probably cost what I make in a month, slapped the table and wheezed like he was dying.

I sat there for what felt like an hour but was probably three seconds, watching my wife laugh at a joke about another man taking care of her, watching her coworkers treat me like I was the punchline to a story they’d all been in on except me. The dollar bill sat there on the table, crumpled and insulting, a physical representation of what this man thought I was worth. The rational part of my brain was screaming at me to stay calm, to not make a scene, to remember that assault charges are expensive and my kids need their college funds.

But there’s a limit to what a man can take before something inside him just snaps like a tension wire pulled too tight. I picked up that dollar bill, folded it neatly into quarters with hands that were surprisingly steady considering the rage currently remodeling my internal organs, and looked Gavin directly in his smug, punchable face.

“Thanks,” I said, my voice calm and clear enough that nearby tables went quiet. “That’s the down payment for your upcoming hospital bills.”

The laughter died faster than my respect for my wife. Gavin’s smile faltered for just a second before he recovered, trying to play it off like I’d made a joke instead of a promise. Miranda’s face went pale, then red, cycling through colors like a traffic light having an identity crisis.

I could feel every eye in our section of the room locked on me, could practically hear the gossip engines revving up for Monday morning water cooler talk. I stood up, buttoned my suit jacket with the kind of deliberate calm that probably looked more threatening than any outburst could have been, and walked out of that ballroom before I started a second career in aggravated assault. Behind me I heard Miranda calling my name, but her voice sounded distant and unimportant, like a radio station fading out as you drive away from the city.

The Scent of Italian Wool and Guilt

I handed my valet ticket to the kid at the front, tipped him 20 bucks because he looked nervous about my energy, and sat in my truck with the engine running for a solid five minutes before I trusted myself to drive. That dollar bill was still in my pocket, and it felt like it was burning a hole through my suit. Miranda didn’t come home that night.

I know this because I stayed awake, watching the driveway like a psychopath in a stalker movie, except instead of being creepy, I was just a guy slowly realizing his marriage was circling the drain like hair in a shower that nobody bothered to clean. I sat in my workshop at 3:00 in the morning, wearing the same suit pants from the party, but with an old Metallica T-shirt replacing the fancy button-down. I was welding steel together with the kind of focused aggression that probably should have concerned me.

There’s something therapeutic about welding when you’re pissed off—the shower of sparks, the smell of hot metal, the fact that you’re creating something instead of destroying something, which is what every fiber of my being wanted to do to Gavin Cross’s face. My phone sat on the workbench, stubbornly silent—no calls, no texts, not even one of those “don’t wait up” messages that at least acknowledge you’re married to another human being who might wonder where you are. I tried calling her twice around midnight, and both times it went straight to voicemail, which meant she’d either turned her phone off or let the battery die.

Neither option was particularly reassuring given the circumstances. I left one message and kept it simple.

“Where are you?”

I didn’t yell, didn’t accuse, didn’t give her ammunition to later claim I was being controlling or paranoid—just three words: calm and reasonable. It was the kind of question a husband should be able to ask his wife at midnight without it being considered a federal offense. The workshop was freezing because December in Tennessee doesn’t care about your emotional crisis, but I kept working anyway, finishing a custom smoker for a client in Memphis who’d paid extra for hand-engraved details.

My hands knew what to do, even when my brain was spinning like a hamster wheel powered by rage and disbelief. I kept replaying the party in my head, watching that scene over and over like a bad movie I couldn’t turn off. The way she laughed at Gavin’s joke; the way she’d looked at him with something in her eyes that she used to reserve for me back when we were young and stupid and thought love was enough to build a life on.

I thought about the casual cruelty of that dollar bill and the fact that she hadn’t defended me, hadn’t said a single word to shut down that disrespect. I thought about calling one of my buddies, maybe Rick who lived three streets over and was always good for a beer and some solid advice, but it was 3:00 in the morning. Also, there’s something deeply humiliating about admitting to another man that your wife might be cheating on you.

It feels like a failure, like you couldn’t keep your own house in order, couldn’t hold on to the woman you promised forever to. Pride’s a funny thing; it’ll keep you silent even when you’re drowning, make you smile and wave from underwater while your lungs are screaming for air. Around 4:30 I finally gave up on the welding before I accidentally set something on fire or lost a finger to inattention.

I made coffee in the workshop’s ancient pot that probably violated several health codes and watched the sky slowly change from black to that weird purple-gray color that means morning’s coming whether you’re ready for it or not. Birds started making noise—those annoying chirpy sounds that seem way too cheerful for the end of the world. My phone buzzed once, a notification from my bank app about a transaction.

I checked it out of habit and felt my blood pressure spike into the stratosphere. Miranda had used our joint credit card at the Belgrave Grand Hotel for a room at 1:47 a.m. The charge was $387, which meant she’d gotten one of the fancy suites because, apparently, when you’re cheating on your husband, you might as well do it in luxury.

I took a screenshot, saved it to three different folders, and emailed it to myself because I’m not an idiot and divorce court loves documentation. Then I sat there staring at my phone, wondering what percentage of marriages end because of a hotel charge and a dollar bill, and whether I was overreacting or underreacting or reacting exactly the right amount for a man whose wife just spent the night in a hotel with her smug coworker. At dawn, just as the sun was turning the sky into something pretty that I was too angry to appreciate, I heard her car—that distinctive sound of her white BMW purring into our driveway.

It was a car I’d helped her pick out three years ago when she got promoted and wanted something that reflected her success. I stayed in the workshop, forcing myself to keep my hands busy organizing tools that didn’t need organizing because I didn’t trust what I might say or do if I met her at the door like some anxious puppy waiting for its owner. She crept into the house like a teenager sneaking in past curfew, and I watched through the workshop window as she fumbled with her keys and slipped inside.

I waited five minutes, then ten, letting her think maybe I was still asleep, maybe I hadn’t noticed, maybe she’d gotten away with it. Then I walked across the yard in the cold morning air, still wearing my welding gloves like armor, and went inside through the back door that leads into the kitchen. She was standing by the coffee maker, wearing yesterday’s makeup and Gavin’s suit jacket.

His monogrammed suit jacket, because of course, he was the type to get his initials embroidered on his clothes like he was European royalty instead of a middle-management douchebag. The jacket was expensive—you could tell—some kind of Italian wool blend that probably cost more than my monthly utility bill. Right there on the left breast pocket, clear as day, were the initials “GC” in fancy script that looked like it required a second mortgage to afford.

“Oh,” she said when she saw me, her voice doing this weird squeaky thing that might have been cute 20 years ago but now just sounded guilty as hell. “You’re up early.”

“Never went to sleep,” I said, my voice flat and dead like roadkill. “Where were you?”

She laughed, actually laughed, this nervous titter that made me want to put my fist through the drywall I’d installed myself five summers ago.