ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5) (107 page)

              I laughed in his face. “Aren’t we supposed to have this conversation over drinks?”

              “Meagan, how many?”

              “A lady never tells, and a gentleman never asks.” The truth was that I’d lost count long ago, just like Levi had lost track of how many times we’d had sex. I imagined some belt in my mind with dozens and dozens of notches nicked in its leather, dreaded the number of times I’d thrown myself away to a man whose face I couldn’t even remember.

              “If you’re not going to be honest with me, then we can’t do this,” Levi said. “We’re not going to work if we can’t trust each other.”

              “It’s not complicated, what we have,” I raged at him. I wrapped anger around me like a protective blanket. If not anger, despair would drown me. “You have more money than you know what to do with. I’m a convenient distraction—a housewife who doesn’t nag, a trophy wife who doesn’t ask for money, a whore you don’t have to pay. What’s wrong with enjoying sex? What’s wrong with enjoying lots of sex? I’m good at it, it makes me feel good, and I know it makes you feel good. What’s the big goddamn deal, Levi?”

              “What we have is the most complicated thing in the world,” he argued. “This, right now, doesn’t feel good. It’s not feeling good to not understand what’s going on in your mind when you react to every different provocation the same way—with sex. I’m afraid for you. If we’re being perfectly honest, which I encourage, I’d say that I’m afraid of you, sometimes.”

              “That’s ridiculous,” I scoffed. “Who’s afraid of a little sex?”

              “It’s not about the sex,” he said. “Not really. There’s nothing wrong with sex, however often or not a person engages in it. But Meagan, when I told you your brother had died, you jumped my bones right in a public space. And when I was trying to talk to you about a threat I’d received that could very well be linked to Matt’s murder, you threw yourself at me again. What am I supposed to do with that? It’s not an appropriate coping mechanism.”

              Too close. Levi was too close. My entire body clamped down on a gag of panic, and I glowered at him, trying to hang on to that anger. It was draining quickly out of my body, and I needed it now more than ever.

              “If you don’t want to have sex with me, then just be a man and admit it,” I said hotly. Good—that was good. I had to stay angry. “Don’t accuse me of having an addiction just to cover up for yourself.”

              “That’s the thing, Meagan,” Levi said. “I do want to have sex with you. I love having sex with you. I look forward to the next time even if we’ve just had sex. But I don’t know if you’re all there some of the time when we do have sex. Like right now. I don’t think what we did right now was healthy sex.”

              Too close. Too close. My brain fought my body and it was all I could do to try and stay quiet and still.

              “There are places you can go to get help for this,” he continued, looking at me, those blue eyes seeing more than they probably realized. “You can talk to someone. There are therapy groups, completely anonymous, free and easy to go to. We can probably look them up online. You could go to a meeting—I could go with you, if you wanted—and you can just sit and observe for the first time, see if there’s anything there, see if you want to stick around.”

              Self-righteous anger warred with a strange longing, which coupled itself with fear. I couldn’t pick which emotion to feel. I hated the idea of group therapy, of sitting down with a bunch of strangers and weeping about how I couldn’t keep my dick in my pants, so to speak. There was nothing appealing about that.

              But there was that small chance that I’d be given the key to getting better, to becoming normal, to closing that fucking hole inside of me that sometimes seemed like all it wanted to do was gobble me down, and it would wreak havoc until it got its wishes.

              Normal was what I wanted, but sex had seen me through so much. It had been the root of all my problems, sure, but it had also helped me survive through them. It terrified me to admit that sex was a problem to anyone, least of all to myself. I couldn’t lose it. It was my identity, my most personal and profound offering.

              It was the only thing that I could rely on in times of crisis. It was the only thing I had.

              “Don’t push me out,” I told Levi again, and then I got up, put my clothes on, and walked out on him.

I didn’t have a single person in this city except for myself. There was Levi, but he had convinced himself that I was crazy, in need of behavioral adjustment and psychological help.

              He was probably spot on, but I refused to admit it, refused to give him the pleasure of being right.

              Admitting it would mean I’d have to do something about it, and I wasn’t prepared for that.

              I walked aimlessly, not a place in the world I had to be or could be, realizing that this was really the first time I’d communed with New York City without Levi by my side.

              I thought I’d be more excited about it. I’d wanted this city to solve all of my problems for me. I’d wanted to leave my past in my hometown and strike out on a future free from guilt and drama and strife, but all of those bad feelings still welled inside of me, always present, woven into the fabric of my very being.

              How could I get away from something that was so clearly a part of me?

              If Levi was right, then what did I have to do to find myself again?

              I walked until I was lost, which wasn’t hard. I hadn’t done much exploring of this city on my own. If I was beyond a radius of a few blocks from the townhouse, I was generally lost. It was a phenomenon that usually delighted me. It had been impossible for me to get lost in my hometown. I’d known every intersection, every street corner, every crack in every sidewalk. I was even well acquainted with the trees that dotted the sides of the roadways. Here, though, everything was new, including the sense of being lost. I didn’t know if I liked it yet or not.

              I sank down onto a bus stop bench and rested my chin on my fists, crossing my legs and jiggling them impatiently. A bus would show up soon. I could get on it, and get good and lost in a part of the city I hadn’t seen, not even with Levi. I could just keep getting on and getting off buses until I was somewhere completely new. Somewhere different.

              If New York City couldn’t save me, I’d have to go somewhere else. I didn’t need to stay here and be beholden to Levi, letting him make all kinds of assumptions about me and what was wrong with me. I didn’t want him knowing all of that, or even suspecting it. It would be so much sweeter if I would just disappear without a trace, leaving him with only fond memories. The last thing I wanted to do was to leave him with only the taste of my crazy in his mouth.

              Was I addicted to sex, like he’d said? He had recommended a meeting that I could attend—like those cheesy ones for alcoholics I’d seen in overwrought movies and TV shows. I always hated watching those scenes, like the characters were giving up on some essential part of them and reaching out for redemption, for validation.

              When a person gave up on themselves, that’s what I felt those meetings were for. For failures. I’d come too far to fail now. I wasn’t ready to give up yet.

              I sighed and looked across the street at a lone phone booth. I didn’t know why they even kept those around. Everyone had a cell phone these days, even kids. Maybe it was cheaper to keep them planted in their posts around the city than it was to dig them up and dispose of them. I wondered how many people had even used that phone in the last week. Anyone? I wouldn’t have guessed more than ten.

              Curious, I pushed myself up from the bench and crossed the street. People passed the phone booth as if they didn’t see it, and maybe they actually didn’t. If you got used to something, it faded into the background. I approached it slowly, as if it might shimmer and disappear suddenly, the product of my imagination, a mirage of useless things.

              But it was just as solid as the sidewalk beneath my sneakers, the glass windows marred with graffiti scribbles and stickers from promoters of nearby clubs and the musical acts that played there.

              I lifted the black receiver from its cradle and rested it against my ear—a dial tone! It excited me so much that I had to stop and shake my head. Had I expected it just to not work? That really would’ve been a waste of money.

              Even more of a novelty than the phone booth itself was the fat yellow phonebook attached to the receiver with a chain, as if someone would want to steal it. I picked it up as I sat the receiver back down on the cradle, noticing that, as people passed, more and more looked at me with interest than the phone booth. Maybe the novelty for them wasn’t the phone booth, itself, but the poor soul who still had to use it.

              I flipped through the phonebook, wondering just who thought it was still important to include their contact information in here. Did it really enable people to find other people, the services they wanted? What could the phonebook offer that Google didn’t?

              I got my answer at the next flip of the page: serendipity.

              There, in thick black letters that contrasted with the flimsy yellow paper behind it, was the message this phonebook had to offer me.

              “ADDICTED?” it inquired. “HELP IS HERE.” Below, it listed a host of addictions, along with corresponding meeting places, times, and phone numbers those interested could call. There were no less than three meetings for sex addiction included, though the majority of the listings were for alcohol addictions.

              My mother hadn’t raised Matt and me religiously, but even I couldn’t discount this as just a simple coincidence. I’d stormed out on Levi for suggesting that I might be addicted to sex, found myself on that park bench, noticed the phone booth, and flipped to this very page without thinking about it.

              It was a sign that had smacked me right upside the head.

              I still didn’t agree that I was addicted to sex. The very thought made me sick. But I decided I was going to settle this—at least show Levi that I cared about his opinion, had tested it myself, and found it to be incorrect. It would be as easy as that, and all I had to do was show up to the next meeting.

              I checked the time on my phone and searched the location of the next meeting. It was in a section of the city I’d never even heard of, but the map feature on my phone assured me that I could make it if I followed its directions that included…getting on the bus that just pulled up to the stop I’d been sitting at.

              I dashed across the street, nearly killing myself, and boarded the bus, panting. The signs were just too obvious for me to ignore this. I rode the bus across town, watching as the brownstones and storefronts gave way to bodegas and projects. Levi probably wouldn’t have wanted me to attend a meeting all the way out here if he’d known just where it was, but that didn’t concern me.

              I got off the bus when the phone told me to, walked a couple of blocks, made another turn, and found myself in front of a dilapidated old church. I shook my head. I really didn’t want to do this or be here. I would’ve been able to deal with it if it had just been in some old classroom or something, but a church was just too much. I dawdled out front until the time of the meeting passed, and my phone squawked at me in protest.

              “You have reached your destination,” the voice prompted me as I paced back and forth. I shut it off and stashed it in my pocket, finally forcing myself up the path and into the church.

              It was quiet and dark inside the entryway, and I procrastinated further, telling myself I was only pausing so my eyes could adjust. A few red wax candles burned in a bank of unlit ones—prayers bright in rows of silence. Should I light a candle for myself? For my brother? For my mother? For Levi? I didn’t know if those would work for me. I’d spent my entire life ignoring the possibility of the presence of God.

              If I acknowledged it now, it would be too painful. If I tried to accept religion, I’d have too many hard questions. I’d probably be turned away at the door, too broken to try to be fixed again.

              I heard faint voices as my eyes got used to the dimness in the vestibule that extended to the main chamber, arched ceilings capturing and projecting sound that was coming from somewhere else in the building. My shoulders sagged with relief that I wasn’t going to have to sit inside the room for worship in that church, that I wouldn’t have to approach the vaguely foreboding altar at the front of the room.

              I followed my ears, which led me down a hallway and into a smaller chapel. Whatever religious items that had been displayed in here were locked away, hidden from our collective secular woes.

              I slipped into one of the pews that wasn’t populated yet, looking around, taking stock of just what I’d gotten myself into.

              I was one of the few women dotting the pews of the hall that was sparsely attended, mostly by men. For the most part, people stared straight ahead, straight through the moderator at the front of the room, droning on and on about accountability. I stole a couple of sidelong glances at my peers, trying to judge what kind of crowd I was in and how I fit in. There were lots of nervous guys, joggling their knees, hands shoved in jacket pockets. My gaze bored holes into the back of the woman’s head seated in front of me, trying to glean her story from her messy ponytail. Could I identify with her? Did I really belong here, as Levi had suggested? Would I have something to gain by listening in on what was discussed in this room?

              “There are several new faces here,” the moderator was saying just as I inadvertently locked eyes with a dark-haired guy sitting directly across the row from me. I lowered my gaze quickly. “Would any of these individuals care to share today?”

              There was no way I was going to open up right now. Not until I figured out what the game was here.

              A long silence stretched until the woman in front of me raised her hand halfway up.

              “I was fired from my job,” she said, her voice hushed in the quiet hall. “I recognized that I needed to go to my job, but I just couldn’t make myself do it. I would just have sex with my neighbor whenever I wanted, even though I needed to go to work. Even though I needed to earn money to pay my rent. I got three months behind on my rent, after I got fired. It’s still being sorted out. And I couldn’t even make myself care about money for food. I just wanted to have sex.”

              Another person raised his hand. The moderator nodded.

              “I was in a similar situation,” he said. “I sought out prostitutes, even though I know it’s against the law. I sneaked around to do it, withdrew thousands and thousands of dollars out of my bank account, refused to explain to my wife what was happening. She divorced me, and took everything. She was right to. She didn’t deserve to be treated the way I treated her. My secret ruined my marriage. I spoke with a doctor, who recommended this group, and now I just wonder what would be different if my depression had been diagnosed sooner, if I had realized that I was trying to cope through sex. Maybe I wouldn’t have lost my marriage…the idea tortures me.”

              Still another person raised his hand, eager to cast his cares onto the growing pile among us.

              “I had anxiety about my performance, anxiety about pleasing my wife,” he said, beginning even before the moderator looked his way. “I started watching porn just to get some tips, but I couldn’t look away. I wanted to watch it all the time. It was so much more fulfilling than the relationship I had with my wife in the real world. I started ignoring her. I started ignoring everything. And then one day, my credit card bounced, my checks bounced, and I realized I’d thrown everything away on porn, spending everything I’d earned, the money my wife and I were saving, on a couple of people having sex in front of a camera and putting it online. I was sobering. I felt awful. I still feel awful. I promised my wife I was going to get through this, and I’m doing it for her.”

              “I want to caution anyone against feeling like they’re participating in this program for someone else,” the moderator said. “This is only effective if you come at it from the perspective that you’re doing it for yourself. You have to want to get better because you want to take care of yourself. Not for your wife. Not for your husband. Not for your court order, even. You have to want to get better for yourself. That’s the only person you should be focusing on right now. It’s the only person you can focus on.”

              The dark-haired man was looking at me. I could see him in the corner of my eye, turning his head and looking at me. I didn’t like it, realizing that, for the first time, I didn’t want anyone to look at me at all. It was a completely different version of me than the Meagan who’d worked at the bar in my hometown. That Meagan had wanted everyone to look at her, had bent down and pirouetted and stretched to ensure every eye in the establishment was locked on her. I’d wanted them all to see me, to see what I was offering, so that I could take from them something they thought they would be taking from me, if I let them.

              I’d wanted that sex compulsively, just like the people who continued to retell snippets of their stories, but I hated the idea of being lumped in with them. I was already a victim of so many other areas of my life. Did my sex life have to suffer, too?

              I imagined going home to Levi after tearfully pouring out my heart to strangers in a strange place, as one near the front of the hall was currently doing. I imagined telling him that I was, indeed, a sex addict. What then? We’d never have sex again. He would pity me and coddle me and maybe even let me continue to stay in his house, rent free. He’d stop having sex with me, of course, because it wasn’t healthy. It was an addiction. He wouldn’t want to enable me.