Addicted Read online

“Mischa. I like that name. How long you been in the program?”

  “Me? Uhh… pfft, on and off since I was fifteen, I guess.”

  “Wow!” His eyes opened wider. “That’s quite a thing to acknowledge at fifteen. Good on you.”

  He thought I was a fellow sex addict, clearly. I toyed with the idea of letting him believe it, too—that I was a reckless nympho, drifting about this crazy world in search of my next fuck, purposely attending this meeting to take advantage of the men’s compromised states. But I had never been a good liar. “I was at the wrong meeting, actually. I was supposed to be at OA.”

  “OA?”

  “Overeaters Anonymous. For people who binge eat and such.” I sounded nervous and winded, like I was in a rush to get somewhere, as I looked into green eyes that seemed to know their own power. “Sex isn’t a problem for me. Like at all. It’s mostly just ice cream, pizza, Ruffles, Cheetos, the usual suspects…”

  “Well, I wouldn’t know it by looking at you. You look great.” He winked again, and suddenly I figured out how this all made sense: This guy was not chatting me up because he and I were a likely match or because he really thought I looked great, but because he was in the middle of a sex binge, his mind a hazy blank in search of the next fix. I could have been anyone. My heart sank a little, as if I had already hung my hopes on this Liam person as a romantic prospect and those hopes had been dashed within a minute of speaking to him. It was my impossible fragility rearing its ugly head once again. I tried to wish it away, thinking, Would it be such a bad thing to have no-strings-attached sex with a guy who could pass for a Greek god?

  “All right, well, it’s time for me to go and try not to buy ice cream,” I said, flashing a polite smile as I pulled my car keys from my purse. “Thank you again, for the hubcap. You really restored my faith in humanity.”

  Liam winked at me, then glided in even closer and placed his hand on the hood of my car. It took everything in me not to gasp. Would it be wrong if I reached out and touched his arm? Just for a moment? “Listen, I don’t want to be a bad influence, but—”

  “You’re not,” I said, hardly able to concentrate in this stranger’s proximity but acutely aware of his gaze that was now, without question, directed down my shirt.

  “I have the most fantastic gelato at my restaurant. Caramel dark chocolate. Served with homemade whipped cream and an almond wafer.”

  My eyes closed at this description of the best sounding dessert I’d ever heard of. I felt like I was in one of those ironic commercials where an unbelievably hot guy makes all your mundane dreams come true without an ounce of judgment. Had Isabella sent me a strippergram as an early graduation present? It seemed like a plausible explanation, but when I opened my eyes, they registered his face again and I remembered that Liam was a sex addict whom I had accidentally stumbled upon through nobody’s fault but my own. And he was very real, and still standing within inches of me, his hand propped on my car as he slowly leaned into me, then backed away again. He smelled faintly of cigarettes and cologne and danger—not a combination I would have dreamed up before this but actually quite divine. I hadn’t been this close to a guy in ages, or felt my body straining to take over for my head. Every physical part of me wanted to press up against him, like I had with the sailing instructor in the crowded bar, but my mind was contradicting, urging me to run and hide.

  “Wow, gelato sounds amazing. I’ll have to take a rain check, though.” I flashed what I hoped was my most flirtatious smile and pointed an index finger into the air to signify the mental note I was making. Meanwhile, my heart was palpitating. Lucky thing I had a rib cage to conceal it.

  “Well, then.” Liam gave himself a final push off the hood of my car and drifted back, waving at me with cramped fingers. “Mischa, isn’t it?”

  “Yes! Liam.” I pointed to him, overly enthusiastic. “See you next time!” But he had already turned away, making it crystal clear that the likelihood of a “next time” was on par with alien abduction.

  * * *

  The first person I thought of on the car ride home was my feisty eighty-five-year-old friend Isabella. She would have killed me if she had been there. Her motto, oft repeated, was as follows: “Every man who comes into your life is an opportunity for adventure. Nothing more, nothing less.” She was of the mind-set that marrying was for money (she hadn’t married until her forties and, true to form, had picked a much older man with even older money), and everything else was pure pleasure principle. Of course, she had looked like a supermodel in her day and had run in circles with rich playboys whose lives closely resembled James Bond movies, so the philosophy felt a little less relevant to my particular case study. Still, I felt bad that I was a letdown to her; she was always begging for salacious tales about fraternity boys and surfers, incapable of grasping how low I was on the “men equal adventure” scale.

  This would have been the story to tell her, I thought as I drove home, unable to shake the feeling that I had lost out on something big. The questions running through my head were torture. When was a guy like Liam ever going to talk to someone like me again? Why would I pass up the chance to have a story about hot sex with an Australian restaurateur? I understood why he made me nervous, but why couldn’t I embrace it, just for one night? Did I think he was going to lure me back to his restaurant only so he could kill me, chop me into little pieces, and serve me to unknowing diners as part of a delicious bouillabaisse? Doubtful.

  The feeling of failure was almost too much to handle, but the thought of calling Gracie, whose approach to dating didn’t veer far from Isabella’s, was not so comforting either. My only choice was to go back home and wallow, which I did. Lying on the AeroBed I’d borrowed from Gracie after selling my mattress on Craigslist, I closed my eyes and imagined Liam with his hand on the hood of my car, leaning into me then pushing off, back and forth, back and forth, like the ocean at low tide. Then I imagined him naked, and my hand found its way down my body, slipping underneath the waistband of my boxer shorts. As I touched myself, I thought of Liam doing the same somewhere across town, still looking down my shirt in his mind, remembering the way my hair smelled just as I remembered the allure of his scent, his body heat, that gravelly Australian accent.

  Chapter Two

  Sugar. The bane and joy of my existence, the stuff of my dreams and nightmares. It was my first word, according to my mother: “Sugar, sugar, sugar!” I would command, my spoon dripping with pureed peas held spitefully in the air. I never specified when asking for it like other kids; I didn’t say, “May I have some candy?” or “When do I get ice cream?” I knew sugar was in a variety of products and was careful not to limit my requests in case someone had, say, nothing but cough drops in their purse (still sugar!). Eventually the obsession broadened to all types of food, and the salty-sweet cycle happily replaced my obsession with sweets. But still, in my deepest, darkest moments, it was sugar that offered the most comfort.

  So naturally it was a large bowl of Fruity Pebbles that managed to lure me out of bed after six hours of nightmares involving Liam the sex addict. In most of the dreams, he was laughing and taunting me as I ran away from him in various locales—his bedroom, my bedroom, a taxicab, the Baptist church parking lot. They were the kind of nightmares I used to have in high school, when I couldn’t stop thinking about a particular football player who would never have looked at me twice or the menacingly attractive Goth boy who lived in my apartment complex. The difference here, of course, was Liam had looked twice. For some inexplicable reason, he had tried to seduce me with sweet, sweet, sugary gelato, and I hadn’t allowed it.

  The whole thing made me want to self-flagellate. But I also knew that to focus on last night’s interaction would be a terrible mistake, given the current crisis that was my life, so I washed off the pink-tinted milk residue that had dribbled down my chin during my breakfast in bed, made a quick to-do list, and got dressed in a hurry, determined to mark off the first task (“Pick up cap and gown @ Plex”). As long as I wasn
’t naked at graduation or freshly knocked up by a stranger who’d offered me gelato in a parking lot, things couldn’t be so bad, right?

  * * *

  The tables set up for cap and gown distribution were lined against a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows in a vast, otherwise empty conference room at the Reid University Student Complex, aka “the Plex.” There were only three other students there when Gracie and I arrived, which added to the absurdist Waiting for Godot feeling of the cavernous room. The dazed, middle-aged woman manning the “J–N” table didn’t even ask for ID when I gave my name, leading me to the conclusion that I probably could have just skipped the four years of tuition and endless studying and claimed somebody else’s cap and gown for the same result: a diploma that I may or may not frame and mount on a wall, depending on how my future shakes out.

  “This is where I leave you, boo,” said Gracie in her scratchy, sleep-deprived voice as we left the room with our shrink-wrapped packages.

  “Where are you going? I thought you were gonna come over and watch me pack,” I whined.

  “As thrilling as that sounds, I gotta go turn in my last paper,” she said.

  “The day before graduation? Seriously?” I lagged behind a little as Gracie hurried toward the lobby.

  “Double extension, baby. You wanna know the title? I’ll give you two guesses.”

  Like me, Gracie was a nutrition major. We had met during orientation week and quickly discovered our near-telepathic connection and our ability to share clothes, even though she was an inch taller and not a binge eater like myself. Between the two of us, she was the healthy eater, so she loathed my ability to stuff my face without adding more than five or ten pounds. On the flip side, I envied her self-control and the fact that her thoughts weren’t constantly ruled by food. One thing we did have in common was our self-deprecating humor, something all fluffy girls must learn at a young age or risk becoming socially irrelevant.

  “I don’t know, ‘Food for Thought’?” I said.

  “Are you kidding? I used that one freshman year. Twice. You’re never gonna guess. It’s called ‘Obesity Cynicism.’ Isn’t that good? It’s catchy, right? I think it’s gonna be a thing. Like I’m coining it: Obesity Cynicism.”

  “It’s good.”

  “I think it’s definitely a meme.” She bounced down a set of stairs to the front entrance. “Is that what a meme is? Anyway, I don’t care. We need to go out and celebrate! I’m thinking many drinks are in order.”

  I rolled my eyes. Despite having zero tolerance for alcohol, Gracie liked to tie one on. “It’s not my fault I’m Korean!” she would argue, blaming her ethnic background for all instances of epic sloppiness.

  She playfully flicked me off, backing into one of the entrance doors, which thudded into someone or something. “Oh no!” Gracie’s eyes went wide as she scrambled outside, where a man was doubled over on the sidewalk, clutching his knee. “Professor Maxwell!” she cried out. “Are you okay?”

  I followed her outside as Julien Maxwell, the painfully debonair African-American studies professor who had taught our Intro to African-American Lit class this past semester, righted himself and greeted Gracie with a forgiving smile. “Gracie! Fancy meeting you here.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, her look of concern morphing into a shameless grin. This, I knew, was Gracie’s ultimate fantasy. She had always been professor-obsessed, and Julien Maxwell her last and ultimate professor crush. “Droolian Poundwell” she called him. I could see the appeal—his big brown eyes and square jaw were of the statuesque variety, and at thirty-five, he was the youngest professor we’d had—but I was always too reverent to see male professors as anything other than authority figures. And this one in particular was a tragic case: a widower of one year.

  “You excited about graduation?” he said.

  “No way! Nobody wants to be birthed into the real world. Am I right, Mischa?” Gracie turned to me, generously acknowledging my presence even though she probably wanted me to scram.

  I nodded and waved. “Hey, Professor Maxwell.”

  “Mischa! I guess all of my seniors are here, then,” he chuckled. “Imagine that.”

  The class we had taken, English 401, aka Intro to African-American Lit, was a freshman staple for English majors, but Gracie and I had masterminded our course schedule four years ago, leaving a bunch of easy requirements for senior year and making us the oldest, most competent people in the room more often than not.

  “So what are you all up to after this? Moving on to bigger and better things, I assume?”

  Beaming, Gracie told him about the organic lobbying internship she’d landed in Washington, D.C., carefully leaving out the details of how she had gotten the job through her well-connected parents, pulling strings all the way from Seoul.

  “Congratulations! That sounds tremendous,” he said, and patted her on the shoulder.

  “I actually have no plans for the future,” I answered when he pointed his gaze at me, pulling my to-do list from my back pocket, “as you can see from this number two action item on my list for the day.” I held it up so Professor Maxwell could see.

  “‘Find job slash place to live,’” he read out loud. “Does that mean you’re staying here for the summer?”

  “I’m not sure.” I grimaced. “I applied to some grad schools. Nutrition programs. Including the one here, actually, but they waitlisted me.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t believe it. You two were my best students, and not just because you had three years on everybody else,” he said with a wink. “Hey, listen, if you’re not sure what your next step is, I’m actually looking for an assistant for the summer. You’d be perfect.”

  “Uh…” My response was more of a grunt than anything else. Not believing what I’d just heard, I closed my eyes to run it back in my head. Is he offering me a job? “I don’t know what to say.”

  Gracie elbowed me. “Say yes,” she instructed.

  “It’s only a couple of months,” he explained. “I’m doing an annotated version of Through the Ivory Gate, which you’re familiar with from my class. All I need is someone to proofread, really, and keep me on track. Organize my research, that sort of thing.”

  My head slowly went from shaking to nodding, disbelief to utter elation. “I think that sounds great, if I’m qualified.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re overqualified. Listen, the pay won’t be great. Probably twelve an hour, if you can get by on it.”

  “Sounds good—”

  “Then when can you start? The sooner the better, actually.” Professor Maxwell glanced at his watch, as if he meant for me to follow him to his office right then and there.

  “A couple of days? I just need to move apartments. Well, first I need to find a sublet…” I squinted, trying not to crack up at the sight of Gracie doing a victory dance behind Professor Maxwell’s back.

  His eyes lit up. “Don’t worry, I got you covered. There’s a guesthouse in my backyard. Totally renovated, just sitting there empty.”

  Gracie’s jaw dropped mid-victory dance. She raised her hands as if thanking the gods.

  “Wow. This sounds perfect, Professor Maxwell. Thank you so much!”

  “You heard me say twelve an hour, right?” He chuckled again, an easy laugh that made him seem the polar opposite of the grief-stricken man who had lectured us on the plight of the black artist in America. “And call me Julien, please.” His smile revealed a straight set of teeth with a charming, tiny gap in between the front two.

  “Okay!” Gracie reemerged from behind his back. “Now that this deal is brokered, I guess my work is done here. Professor Maxwell—sorry, Julien,” she said, extending a coquettish hand.

  Playing along, Julien kissed Gracie’s hand. “I have to get going too,” he said. “Mischa? Give my office a call to work out details. Or drop by. Whatever works. I’m there too much.” He gave a quick wave and, with a barely detectable limp from the blow Gracie had dealt him, headed inside the Plex.
r />   “I ship you guys,” Gracie said, pointing in his direction, then back to me. “If I can’t have him, you can, right?”

  I shook my head. “Not my style, boo. But how amazing is that? I just got a job and a place to live!”

  “And you have my clumsy ass to thank for it,” she said, holding up her hand for a high five.

  “I know.” Ignoring her hand, I drew Gracie in for a hug. “What am I going to do without you?”

  As soon as I had thrown my arms around her, however, she wrestled away from me like an ornery child. “Ew, ew, ew! It’s too hot for this sentimental crap. Save it for graduation.” She waved me off and started down the asphalt path toward the Science Hall. “When is that again?” she called over her shoulder.

  “Tomorrow, dummy.”

  “Oh yeah, we’ll be the motherless children!”

  “That’s right,” I said, remembering Gracie’s recent announcement that her parents had canceled their plane tickets. Their excuse (general workaholism) was hardly as genuine as my mother’s: After a bout with pneumonia in the harshest Iowa winter in a decade, my hard-working single mom didn’t have any vacation days left. But I had assured her that having Gracie there was tantamount to having family with me; she was the closest thing to a sister I’d ever had. If it weren’t for her, in fact, the only real friend I’d have to show for myself after four years of college would be an octogenarian, and unlike Isabella, Gracie didn’t have eighty-odd years of life experience to hit me over the head with every time I did something stupid.

  As I made my way toward the parking lot, it dawned on me that I had forgotten to tell Gracie about Liam the sex addict. I must have subconsciously nixed it for fear of the terrible advice she would give, probably something along the lines of “Do him! Do him now! Find that man and seduce him!” As a collector of experiences, she believed in making bold decisions as opposed to holding back, which was my way. Our philosophies on boys and sex were as different as our study habits and just about everything else, and I could predict exactly what her response would be if she knew how much I had obsessed over him already: “Actions speak louder than words, my friend,” she would say. “Stop thinking, start doing.”