Jennifer Hillier: Creep

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.

A familiar voice interrupted her reverie and she looked up into the handsome face of the man she was going to marry.

“This seat taken?”

The devilish glint in Morris Gardener’s blue eyes matched his grin. He gazed at her, taking in the details of her face. She loved the way he looked at her, as if she were the only woman in the room. She slipped off the barstool and kissed him, snuggling into the warmth of his thick arms.

Sheila’s knight in shining armor might be six foot four and 240 pounds with bad knees, but he was all hers.

And to think she’d almost thrown it all away.

She would never tell him she was a sex addict. The shame was too great. That part of her life would stay secret even if it meant handing Ethan Wolfe his master’s degree on a silver platter to keep him quiet about the affair. She’d be damned if she was going to lose her job, her reputation, and her fiancé because of a stupid mistake with a self-centered, arrogant grad student.

Morris’s large hand rested protectively on her lower back as they made their way through the restaurant. She caught a glimpse of the two of them in the decorative wall mirrors as the maître d’ led them to their table. They made a fine couple, she sleek in her black dress and heels, he in his custom suit and Armani tie. This should have been the happiest time of her life.

She’d never been so miserable.

E than entered the offices of Bindle Brothers at Fifth Avenue and Virginia, brand-new briefcase in hand, shoes polished to a spit-shine. Dressed in a navy pin-striped suit and paisley tie, he looked every inch the young, confident businessman he was pretending to be.

The dark blond wig he wore itched, as did the fake blond goatee, but he didn’t think the interview would take long. Colored contact lenses had changed his eyes from their natural light gray to hazel. A small amount of latex, carefully applied around his nose in thin layers and blended into his real skin with professional movie makeup, added width to his nostrils and bridge, transforming his face in a more dramatic way than anyone would ever expect. Slight changes to the nose could have a major impact on the look of the face-ask any one of the millions of people who’d had rhinoplasty.

Expertly applied bronzing powder completed the look-not too much, just enough to give him the illusion of a tan without looking powdery. He’d scrutinized himself under harsh lighting before he left home and knew he looked perfectly natural. This was one of his lighter disguises; anything heavier was unnecessary. He’d only met Morris for a few moments, and enough time had passed that he doubted the big man would remember.