The laughter

"I felt like I had been raped" she laughs.

I sit quiety and try not to react to her off hand remark. She laughs again. I revert. I remember.

The kitchen fills with laughter as everyone is listening to the apparently comitic story- everyone except me. I am stuck on that one comment. I hear her words echo in my head. I am staring at her, thinking she should be more careful with her words, thinking how toxic her comment would've been to me four years earlier. Her story comes to a close and the laughter is dying down. No one notices that I wasn't laughing.