“What was that about?” Morris said, closing the door firmly. “Why do I get the distinct impression you just got lassoed?”
Sheila waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. He’s a bit of a spoiled brat.”
“Oh, I got that.” Morris leaned forward, scrutinizing her face. It took every ounce of strength Sheila had not to look away. “Listen, darlin’, it ain’t my place to tell you how to do your job. Lord knows I wouldn’t want you telling me how to do mine. But I think a little well-meaning advice is called for here, and trust me when I say that you need to rein that boy in. He works for you, remember. It ain’t his place to tell you what his schedule’s gonna be next week. You’d be smart to call him tomorrow and tell him he’d better be where he’s supposed to be or he ain’t gonna do so well on his next performance review.”
“You’re absolutely right, babe.” Sheila’s face was tight. “It isn’t your place.” She attempted a smile to soften her words. “Don’t worry, I can handle my students.”
It was a lie, of course, but she delivered it with ease.
CHAPTER : 3
Nothing was showing up on CampusAnonymous.com, or anywhere else on the Internet.
Sheila had been googling herself obsessively for almost two weeks, and she was now positive Ethan was bluffing. There was no video. If Ethan were really determined to destroy her life, certainly he’d have done it by now.
Thank God she hadn’t said a word to Morris. What if she’d told him for nothing?
As far as she was concerned, it was over.
She picked at the seasoned nuts in front of her as she worked her way through her second cranberry lime. Her barstool seat at the Seafood Grille had a nice view of the waterfront, but her attention was focused on the young bartender serving her. Dark skin, dark eyes, tight black T-shirt, gold-plated name tag that read LUKE. Just good-looking enough for her to feel flattered every time he smiled at her, which was often. Bartenders had to make a living, too.
Sheila enjoyed the attention anyway, feeling rather celebratory, and watched as Luke deftly poured another martini for the sixtysomething man sitting three seats away. The older gentleman—a silver fox, as her students might have described him—was wearing a wedding band, but that hadn’t stopped him from trying to catch Sheila’s eye. He was appealing in a James Brolin kind of way, with maybe twenty extra pounds and a ruddiness to the cheeks. Not that she was interested. Those days were behind her, once and for all.
The new engagement ring flashed fire on her left hand. Sheila stared at it in that pretentious way women do when they’re looking at their diamonds or their manicures. She couldn’t help herself; it was a work of art. Morris had discreetly left the certificate of appraisal in the car when they’d stopped for gas the other day, and she’d peeked—a four-carat solitaire on a platinum, pavé-set diamond band, worth lots of zeros. She thought back to the night of the proposal and his earnest face when he handed her the blue Tiffany box. She’d stared at the ring in shock, and Morris had laughed and said, “You know me. Go big or go home.” That was Morris, always a Texan at heart.
“Is it real?” Silver Fox from three barstools down finally said, interrupting her thoughts. She looked over to see him grinning at her. He was chewing an olive, a toothpick dangling out the side of his mouth. “Or do you just wear it to keep the guys from hounding you?”
His voice was nasal and higher than Sheila expected. She didn’t answer.
“He must think the world of you to get you a rock that size,” the man said, trying again. “It’s blinding me from here.”
Sheila relented. “Thanks. We just got engaged.”
“Congratulations. Buy you a drink to celebrate?” Silver Fox’s body language told her he was ready to slide over at the slightest hint of interest. He downed the last of his martini and winked at her, his lips still working the toothpick.
Sheila glanced at his wedding ring. “Won’t your wife mind?”
“Not if you don’t tell her.”
“My fiancé would.”
“Not if you don’t tell him.” He grinned, the toothpick bobbing up and down between his unnaturally white teeth.
Sheila smiled sweetly. “Why don’t you tell him yourself. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“Ah. I assumed you were in town on business.” Silver Fox’s tone was polite but his face had turned a shade ruddier. “Enjoy your evening.” He eased up from his barstool and strolled away, leaving a twenty for the bartender.
“Ouch,” Luke said, stuffing the bill into the pocket of his apron. “Guess he doesn’t take rejection well.”
“I thought I was pretty nice about it.” Sheila’s laugh was sheepish. “I feel sorry for his wife, wherever she may be. Tacky guy.”
“You’d be amazed how many tacky people come into this place. And God bless ’em,” Luke said with a grin. “I wouldn’t be able to pay my rent otherwise.”
He was polishing the inside of a wineglass with a clean white cloth, his biceps flexing as he turned the glass back and forth in a rhythmic motion. He was close enough for her to smell his musky cologne, and she suddenly imagined what Luke’s lips would feel like on her nipples.
She mentally slapped herself. “You must see everything working here.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Nothing surprises me anymore. What about you?”
Luke laughed, and something about it sounded forced, reminding her of Ethan. Her thoughts sobered instantly. He tapped her glass. “Another?”
He fixed her drink, then left to tend to a couple at the end of the bar who’d just arrived but already looked bored with each other. Not even Frank Sinatra over the loudspeakers could seem to cheer them up, and Sheila wondered how long they’d been married. As she watched Luke work, her thoughts turned to Ethan once again.
Three good years in Sex Addicts Anonymous and she’d slipped. With one of her students, no less. Christ. And not only that, she’d let it continue for three months. Father’s death or no, she’d fucked up, plain and simple.
She would never have thought she could treat someone as badly as her first husband had treated her, but here she was, scrambling to cover up her infidelity so Morris would never find out. He deserved better. He was a kind and decent man—unlike Bill, who had been cruel and distant for most of their marriage. And it had taken her years to figure out why.
Bill Chancellor was a prominent heart surgeon, two decades her senior. The age difference had never bothered her, and she knew it had everything to do with her father.
They had met at a university benefit. Bill was handsome and charismatic, and it hadn’t taken long for Sheila to fall in love with him. He made it easy, courting her with a single-mindedness that swept her off her feet. After only a few months of dating, they were married. Shortly after the wedding, he was appointed chief of surgery at Seattle Pacific, one of the best teaching hospitals in the Northwest. The early months of their marriage were blissful, a happy whirlwind of late mornings in bed, fund-raising dinners, and weekends spent at Bill’s family’s lake house.
But after their first anniversary, things began to sour. Bill worked all the time and was spending less and less time at home. Early-morning rounds of golf replaced their lazy weekends, and poker nights with the guys kept him out late. When he was home, he was distant, impatient, and often distracted.
Much the way her strict Chinese father used to be. And just as with her father, Sheila had to work diligently to get Bill’s attention. She cooked romantic dinners, planned weekend getaways, couple’s nights out, day trips to quirky places she read about in travel magazines. Despite her best efforts, he continued to withdraw. And the less interest he showed in her, the harder she tried.
She knew the marriage was in trouble. She was working on her Ph.D. in social psychology by this time, and it wasn’t hard to identify the basic problems. Still, she didn’t have the courage to leave him. Not even when she began to suspect Bill was cheating on her.
Instead, she threw
herself into her work. Made full professor. Her work gave her so much joy and fulfillment, she could almost convince herself it was enough.
Almost.
Her marriage came to an end one weekend in April, nearly a decade after her wedding day. She came home two days early from a psychology conference because her pesky cold had turned into bronchitis.
Bill’s Jaguar was in the driveway when she pulled up to the house in her taxi, exhausted and dizzy from the long flight and too much cold medication. At 3:00 p.m. on a Wednesday, this was unheard of. She’d never known him to blow off a weekday afternoon. Beside the Jag sat a cute little Toyota hybrid, a car she’d never seen before. It was then she knew.
She paid the driver and stood at her front door, light-headed and sweaty, wondering if she was ready for this. Leaving her suitcase on the front steps in case she had to spend the night at a hotel, she let herself into her house. She tiptoed up the staircase, taking care to avoid the steps she knew would creak.
The door to their bedroom was closed. She paused, ear cocked. Somewhere behind the door, Bill groaned in ecstasy. It was a sound she hadn’t personally heard in over four years, and it stabbed her.
Finally, she was going to come face-to-face with her husband and his mistress, a woman who’d been stealing his heart away, piece by piece, for God only knew how long.
She opened the door in a trance. If she thought she was prepared, she was wrong.
That Bill was doing it doggy-style with his favorite surgical scrub nurse was not surprising.
That the scrub nurse was a forty-two-year-old man named Norm floored her.
In all the years they’d been married—despite all of Sheila’s work in social behavior and perception—it had never once occurred to her that her domineering, bullying, brilliant heart-surgeon husband was gay.
A full minute passed before either man noticed she was there. Then all hell broke loose.
Yelping in surprise, the two men jumped off the bed, penises still hard but wilting fast. They knocked into each other in their search for pants, shirts, anything to throw over their naked bodies, cursing and red-faced, watching her with furtive eyes, wanting to slam the bedroom door in her face. Neither did.
She watched them for a few more seconds before she turned and walked slowly back down the stairs. She was seated on the sofa as Norm the surgical scrub nurse flew by, missing the last step and almost wiping out on the hardwood floors. He was out the front door and into his little car with scarcely a backward glance. Through the window she watched as he pulled away, flattening the recycling bin from next door, which their ornery old neighbor Mr. Zeminski never brought in on time.
Bill didn’t come downstairs for another ten minutes. When he did, shirt buttoned haphazardly, hair in messy tufts, he was shaking, his face a mask of shame and self-loathing. She had never seen him look anything but confident, and it was almost as unsettling to her as the gay sex act she’d just caught him in.
The silence between them was like dead space. She waited for him to speak, having no clue how to begin this conversation.
“Promise you won’t tell,” he finally said, his voice choked.
She watched as her man-of-steel husband burst into tears. He dropped onto their sofa, sobbing like a child in the pale afternoon light.
“Oh, Bill.” At that moment, her genuine pity for him outweighed his betrayal. It didn’t make up for the years of emotional neglect and abandonment she’d suffered for most of their marriage, but she couldn’t deny there was relief.
The story tumbled out. He had known since before they met. He’d had a long string of affairs before their marriage, most anonymous and taking place in the basements of gay clubs that Sheila had never heard of. When rumors began to swirl, he’d married Sheila quickly to secure his appointment as Seattle Pacific’s chief of surgery. The longer they stayed married, though, the more he’d come to resent her. She reminded him every day of the man he only pretended to be.
He was at the height of his career and didn’t want to be labeled a gay man. Sure, Seattle was a progressive city, but the hospital still ran on a good old boys’ network and nobody wanted a homosexual as their chief. He’d found love with Norm, and Norm wanted them to come out, but Bill would rather have died.
The divorce was quick. The settlement was exceptionally generous once Sheila agreed to sign the confidentiality agreement. She bought a brownstone townhouse in cash in the prestigious Harvard-Belmont area of Seattle. Shortly after, she was granted tenure at the university. It was time to make a fresh start, but surprisingly, there were no feelings of liberation. Just a broken heart. She had loved a man who had never truly loved her back.
At thirty-five, she was divorced, childless, too tired to start over with someone new, but much too young not to. It was a shitty, weird, in-between place to be.
Luke the bartender interrupted her thoughts. “Your man’s late, huh?”
Sheila smiled. “If it’s his worst habit, I’m a lucky woman.”
“I’m pretty sure he’s the lucky one,” Luke said with a grin.
Three years ago his smile would have been a proposition. She would have invited him home in a heartbeat.
It had started off with a couple of glasses of wine late at night to help her sleep and, when that stopped working, late-night Internet games to replace the social life she’d once had. Bill had not been much of a husband, but being married did have its perks—there were dinner parties to go to, work functions, couple’s nights out. As a divorcée, the invites dried up. She realized that most of her friends were actually Bill’s friends, and they’d chosen sides.
The loneliness ate her up.
On a lark, she joined a dating website, and within a few months she had profiles posted on half a dozen sites. The thrill of meeting new men was exhilarating. Finally, she was getting the attention she’d craved her entire life. She felt beautiful. Wanted. Sex made her feel powerful and in control, something she’d never felt before around men. Every man she met presented an opportunity to erase the insecurity and unworthiness she’d felt during her marriage. Before long, she was sleeping with just about everyone she met.
It didn’t occur to Sheila then that she had a problem. Sure, she met a lot of guys. Sure, she ended up in bed with most of them (or in the backseats of their cars, or in the bathrooms of the bars, or in the bushes behind the nightclubs). So the hell what? How was it any different from the women on Sex and the City, who drank Cosmopolitans every night and screwed every cute guy they saw? She was a liberated woman, completely in charge of her sexuality. Wasn’t she?
Wasn’t she?
Never mind that she sometimes mixed Ecstasy with her wine and that sometimes it led to blackouts. Never mind that sometimes she’d wake up in a strange room, unable to remember where she was or why she was there.
She couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t seem to stop it. She couldn’t temper her need for the warmth of another man’s body on top of her, beside her, inside her. The excitement of meeting someone new, the rush she felt when she saw the desire in his eyes, the adrenaline pumping through her veins as they had sex—it all seemed to be a perfectly satisfactory replacement for love. Even if he didn’t remember her name.
Even if it didn’t last.
She finally hit rock bottom when she woke up in her car early one Sunday morning, scared and alone, wearing nothing but her skirt, shoes, and someone else’s leather jacket. Her forehead was cut and she ached all over. She reeked of sweat and men’s cologne and was so bruised she could barely drive herself home.
It was one hell of a wake-up call.
That night, after a hot bath and a long sleep, Sheila went online and found a Sex Addicts Anonymous group in Renton, a city south of Seattle where she hoped she wouldn’t run into anyone from the university. Luckily, she never did. She started meeting with an old colleague, Marianne Chang, for therapy shortly after. Though she didn’t join AA, Sheila gave up drinking along with sex.
A year later she was
twelve months sober, nobody the wiser, and thriving. And that’s when she met a tall, strapping investment banker named Morris Gardener.
They’d ordered the same drink at Starbucks, Grande caramel lattes. Though he’d paid for his first, he let her take his coffee, and a witty banter ensued. He gave her his card. She discussed phoning him with Marianne, and the therapist gave her approval. Dating was fine, so long as they built a solid foundation of friendship first. And definitely no sex, not until the relationship was serious.
It wasn’t long before she recognized that he was an alcoholic, but it didn’t turn her off. If anything, she made it her mission to help him get clean. She got him into AA, helped him through the same twelve steps she’d been through in SAA, and was there for him the many times he was tempted to slip. It was rewarding to be part of the reason he pulled his life back together, and they became genuinely good friends. Close to a year after they met, they started dating.
The early days of their courtship were a fairy tale. Morris was kind, sweet, generous, funny. Sheila’s life was finally on an upswing, and it stayed that way for the better part of a year.
Until she found out her father was dying of cancer.
The news was devastating. Though they hadn’t talked in years, Sheila had gone to her father’s bedside, only to have her heart broken when he demanded she leave.
When he died, Ethan Wolfe provided the perfect distraction. One indiscretion with him led to another, then another. It was almost chilling how quickly she fell back into her old ways. But this time there was guilt, lots and lots of guilt, because Morris was a good man who deserved better.
That Ethan had pursued Sheila relentlessly for months didn’t matter—she’d known it was wrong from the beginning. But the problem with addicts is not that they don’t know the difference between right and wrong. The problem with addicts is that they do it anyway.
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