by Amelia Betts
I found myself nodding along and considered the similarity between falling for a fellow binger and falling for a sex addict. I was reminded again that my attraction to Liam wasn’t just physical, even though it seemed like it on the surface. Things went deeper with him because I knew he had vices like mine. There was a humanity there because of his addiction to sex, and although I didn’t fully understand Liam’s fixation on it, I could certainly relate. Not to mention I was becoming more and more fixated on sex myself, after he had entered the picture. Well, that and food. Food and sex, sex and food.
Straightening up in my chair, I forced myself to listen to the rest of Meghan’s share with rapt attention but became distracted, as usual, for the remainder of the meeting, drifting in and out of thoughts about Liam and my concerns about how mad Gracie was. Luckily there was no gratitude share with this group, so I was able to coast through without saying a word—besides the serenity prayer, of course.
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference,” we all recited, holding hands in a crooked circle. Then the die-hards, as they always did, jostled the hands of their neighbors and raised their voices with the coda “Keep coming back! It works if you work it!” I never joined in on the last part, mainly because it would have been disingenuous. If I was going to be falling off the wagon more than once a day, I certainly wasn’t going to be shouting about how well the program was working for me.
Chapter Ten
Certain meetings sent me straight to the drive-thru, depending on how happy and together the night’s speakers had seemed in contrast to myself. Tonight’s meeting, however, had made me want to see Liam more than ever. For some reason, when Meghan had described her relationship with her overeating, football-playing high school sweetheart, it had stoked my infatuation with him to the point where I found myself driving to his restaurant without even noticing what I was doing. My car had seemed to steer itself, and before I knew it I was coasting in to the employee parking lot behind Trio, headlights turned off preemptively like I was planning to rob the place.
As I parked, I heard my phone ringing in my purse and scrambled to answer it, hoping whoever had called would talk me out of what I was doing. Then I saw that it was Isabella—no such luck.
“Darling, how long do I heat up these potatoes?” she greeted me, sounding frustrated.
“In the oven or in the microwave?” I said.
“The microwave, you silly rabbit! You think I have time for the oven? It’s ten o’clock!”
“Why are you eating so late?”
“I fell asleep at six. Don’t ask.”
“Try two minutes on medium power,” I instructed, checking my rearview mirror for any signs of life in the parking lot.
“Okeydokey, and how are you?”
“Oh, I’m okay. I’m just sitting in the parking lot of Liam’s restaurant, wondering how I got here.”
“Oh, well I’ll let you get back to it, then!”
“No, wait! Isabella—what do I do?”
“About what? You’re having a nighttime rendezvous. It sounds very romantic. I am brimming with envy.”
“But he doesn’t even know I’m here. Am I gonna look crazy barging in on him here?”
“Darling, nothing is crazy. And don’t you want to have a story for me next time you see me, other than”—for this she employed her best whiny voice—“‘Oh no, I’m such a schlappschwanz, I drove home and cried into my pillow. Woe is me.’”
“Okay, okay. Enjoy your potatoes.”
“Thank you.”
“And don’t forget the horseradish sauce!”
“I would never. Auf wiedersehen,” she said, and hung up.
Isabella’s counsel had left me feeling no more prepared for what I was about to do. For a few minutes I just sat there in the darkened car, noticing my pulse as blood hummed through my veins at a faster and faster clip. No option sounded like a good one. Knocking on the door at the tail end of the dinner rush? Calling the hostess and faking another family emergency? Walking in and asking for a table when I could barely afford an appetizer?
No. Answer D: None of the above. While the tiny speck of rationality left inside my brain was urging me to heed Julien’s good advice and drive home, that speck had nothing on a head full of delusion. I got out of the car and paced the parking lot. A minute later, I was rapping on the back door that led to the kitchen, lightly at first, then harder, to no avail. The bustle inside the kitchen was probably drowning out anything on a lower register than human shouting, so I was going to have to get more creative. This meant turning the knob and pulling on the heavy door, only to find it locked. Now what? March through the restaurant to the kitchen and get tackled by security guards along the way? Of course, I knew that wasn’t going to happen—there were no security guards. However, there were some very territorial-seeming waitresses, and who did I think I was to go up against them? Wonder Woman?
And then, boom! Something just short of a Biblical miracle happened. The door slammed into me and I stumbled backward as a rubber-gloved, apron-clad dishwasher busted outside with a large bag of trash. He didn’t see me as he kicked the stopper behind him so the door stayed ajar. Eyes on his back, I bent my knees in a slight crouch, thinking that, in this moment, all that separated me from an action movie starlet was a black catsuit. Then thinking, Thank God I’m not wearing a black catsuit.
Frantic and unprepared, I bolted into the kitchen, where the steely bright lights seemed to amplify how ridiculous and disturbing my entrance must have looked. Everyone—not just some of the kitchen staff but everyone—turned to look after the first head whipped around at the sight of me standing in the doorway, head down, eyes scanning the room, arms outstretched as if I were surfing. Ignoring them as best I could, I surveyed the room in search of Liam, hurrying down the middle aisle in my billowing tent of a maxi dress until I spotted him in a cramped corner, concentrating over a large sauté pan. Catching him unawares, I took a split second to appreciate his classic profile, the strong, tanned forearms exposed under the rolled up sleeves of his chef’s coat, the pert little bump of his ass just visible in his loose black pants.
“Excuse me? Can I help you?” I heard an annoyed line cook bark at me from behind.
Ignoring my pursuer, I called out Liam’s name. He glanced up from a sauté pan in a blasé manner, but when our eyes met his tripled in size. “What the hell?” he said.
“Can I speak with you outside for a second?” I was short of breath from the bolting around and the general panic.
“Uhh…” He looked around, not sure how to react to the onslaught of me. “Give me a minute. I’ll meet you out there.”
Retreating, I waited by the door for a couple of minutes that felt more like hours, my sanity slowly returning to tell me what a fool I was for doing this. I became convinced that he was never going to come and started back to my car, stopping only when I heard the swing of the kitchen door. I turned to find him standing there like a vision in his white chef’s coat, his furrowed brow indicating that my intrusion was just that—an intrusion.
“You got the wrong night, Mischa. Shoulda been here yesterday, same time. I was standing here like an idiot.” He moved toward me, and I met him halfway until there were only inches between us in the middle of the parking lot. There was a hint of a smile detectable on his face, but I couldn’t tell if he was actually happy to see me or just vaguely amused. I, on the other hand, felt like I was finally scratching an itch just being near him again. My hands wanted to grab his waist to make sure he was really there.
“I know, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing.” I stumbled over my words; my head was swimming. “I just had to see you. I know that sounds stupid.”
Liam studied me with a straight face. There seemed to be a glint of sympathy in his eyes. “That doesn’t sound stupid. Not to me.”
I smiled. His words were reassuring, but not his acti
ons. He hadn’t reached out to touch me. In fact, he seemed to have taken a tiny step backward. Was he just telling me what I wanted to hear? “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come,” I said.
Liam shut his eyes and shook his head. “No. It’s… you’re fine. I wanted to see you too.” Again words only but they sounded heartfelt. Also, his accent was particularly sexy when spoken in hushed tones. He had been whispering, probably out of concern that one of his workers could interrupt at any minute, but it lent our interaction a conspiratorial air, like we were two people with a secret. I closed my eyes for a moment and clung to that feeling.
“It’s just not a good time for me to be doing any of this.” His words snapped me back into dismal reality. “I didn’t mean to sound harsh on the phone last night. It’s just that I’m supposed to be avoiding sex, Mischa. It’s not that I don’t want to; it’s that I can’t… in my right mind.”
“Oh.” I knew this already, so why did it hit me like the worst bit of bad news I’d heard in all my life?
“Why are you looking at me that way?” he said.
“What way?” I straightened my posture, remembering some TED Talk I had seen about mimicking superhero stances in moments of self-doubt.
“Like that. Like a lost puppy or something.”
“Lost puppy? Ha.” Whatever look I had had on my face turned into one of defiance: curled lip, one eye winking shut. I suddenly felt angry and embarrassed, indignant at the way Liam had torn through my world like a tornado, touching ground only a couple of times before leaving behind his trail of destruction, then calling me a “lost puppy” when I had a perfectly viable emotional reaction. The push-pull reminded me of the way Bradley had treated me; one day I was his favorite person, the next a pariah. I had no response for Liam—all I could do was shake my head and slowly back away. As usual, my actions betrayed my lack of experience in this life. I was behaving like a scorned teenager, but I didn’t know any other way.
“Mischa, wait,” Liam called after me, but stayed planted in the middle of the parking lot.
“Forget it! Forget I was here. Please.” I fumbled with my keys. Finding the right one, I swung my driver’s side door open so forcefully that it knocked the car beside mine. Flustered, I checked the other car’s door to make sure it was fine, then fell into the driver’s seat.
Starting the car, I shifted into reverse when suddenly Liam appeared outside my passenger door and swung it open, plopping himself onto the seat. “All right, where are we going?” he asked, loud and a little manic.
“What? Nowhere. Don’t you have food to cook?”
“Nah, they got it under control. Let’s get outta here.” Like a thief in a getaway car, he glanced in the side mirror.
“And go where? I thought you were avoiding—”
“I am. That doesn’t mean we can’t go for a joyride, keep each other out of trouble, right?” He found the reclining knob on the side of his seat and tried to lean his seat back to no avail.
I laughed at the sight of Liam the Mercedes driver in my crappy little car. “That doesn’t work,” I said.
“Even better,” he said, and patted his knees eagerly, like he’d been waiting all his life to ride around in a decades-old, half-broken Honda.
* * *
We drove aimlessly for a while, Liam floating his hand in the warm breeze outside the passenger window, me trying to figure out what was actually happening here. Were we buddies now that he had sworn off sex? Would I be able to handle that?
“So where’s your spot?” he asked.
“I don’t know, what do you mean?”
“Like where do you go for fun? What would be on the agenda if you were out on the town with your girlfriends?”
I shook my head. “I hate to disappoint, but I’m not that exciting. I mean, I go to the same two bars everybody else goes to, but I don’t even like them really.”
“Let’s not go to a bar. Alcohol lowers the inhibitions. Where else? C’mon, there’s gotta be something.”
I searched my brain, wishing I had a “spot” as Liam had suggested. Then I realized I did—I had mentioned it to him the other night. “There is one place,” I said.
“Terrific. Surprise me.” Liam placed his hands over his eyes and stayed that way as I made an abrupt U-turn and drove the short distance to Oceanside Plaza, a vast outdoor shopping mall by the beach where Sasha Myers’s spa was located in a three-story building separate from the others. The only other time I had snuck in after hours was on Gracie’s birthday when she had insisted I take her after a night of bar hopping.
“If I were you, I’d do this all the damn time,” she had said, arms outstretched on the marble ledge as she had drunkenly luxuriated in the hot tub.
“She doesn’t even know I kept the key,” I had told her, guilt-ridden.
“Exactly, Holmes!” Gracie had rolled her eyes at me, infuriated as ever by my squareness. She was the kind of person who got her thrills from breaking the rules, whereas I had spent that entire night checking the clock on my phone and peering into the parking lot for security guards.
When I took Liam there, the parking lot attached to the mall was closed. They had recently started charging for parking and the ticket machine shut down at nine, so we parked on the street outside and hopped the measly two-foot stucco barrier that surrounded the place.
“Oh, fantastic, are we getting the couple’s massage?” Liam feigned a snobby accent as I unlocked the front door and disarmed the alarm system, using the code that Sasha had never changed from the manufacturer-provided 1-2-3-4. I slipped in and waved him inside, noticing my hands slightly shaking as I fumbled for the key and locked the door behind us. There had been too much silence between us since we had gotten out of the car, and the awkwardness persisted as we rode the elevator to the rooftop.
In fact, I was still auditioning various conversation starters as the elevator door opened and I led him out onto Sasha’s “splashy sundeck.” This was the pride and joy of the spa and probably my favorite place in all of Oceanside—there was a saline pool and a hot tub, and every inch of the roof was marble tiled. The minimalist deck chairs were all oriented toward the ocean, which was visible from three sides, and the waist-high railings were made of glass so as not to obstruct the view.
Slipping behind the elevator structure, I switched on the pool lights.
“Wow.” Liam walked around the periphery and stopped to lean over the railing. “This is some spot.”
“I know, right?” I sidled up next to him, fighting the urge to touch his shoulder or grasp his hand. There was a slight breeze but the air was still warm, left over from earlier when the temperature had reached 100 degrees in the middle of the day. The bright, silvery moon hung low in the sky. “This night is perfect,” I said.
Liam grasped the railing with both hands. “I fucking love the ocean, man. It reminds me of home.”
“Not me.”
“Where you from?”
“Iowa.”
“Yikes. I was there once.”
“With your band?” I asked the question even though I already knew the answer from my extensive online “research.”
“Yeah, with my band—” For a second it seemed like he was going to say more, but he stopped himself. Something had come over him at the mention of his past. I glanced at the side of his face to see how he looked, which seemed like a combination of sad and angry. Careful not to stare, I peered down at the ocean and followed the sleepy little waves with my eyes as they snuck onto the shore and quietly receded.
“Hey! Last one in the pool’s a rotten egg!” Liam shouted, tearing away from the railing and ripping his jacket and shirt off on the way to the pool. At the edge, ready to jump in, he dropped his pants and boxers, and I saw the entire back of his body, naked, just before he dove. Now that’s just unfair, I thought.
“C’mon! This feels great!” Treading water, he ran his hands through his wet hair and nodded backward, beckoning me.
I shook my head as I
approached the pool, kicking off my flip-flops to dip my feet in. From there, I stared at his body, illuminated by the lights in the pool, but the water moved too much for me to get a clear picture.
“Stop staring and get in already,” he teased.
“I’m not getting naked in front of you. We’re supposed to be keeping each other out of trouble, remember?”
“Who said skinny-dipping was sexual? I find it quite chaste, actually. Back to nature, and all that.” He smirked and held up an index finger, curling it toward him in the same sexy come-hither maneuver he had used the first time he tried to seduce me.
Sticking to my guns, I sat down on the pool ledge, pulled my dress up to my knees, and dropped my legs into the tepid water. I couldn’t tell what was more refreshing, the saline pool water coursing around my legs or the fact that I’d denied Liam’s request. Maybe I could handle being “just friends” after all.
He waded up to me and grabbed my ankles, pretending to yank me into the pool.
“You’d better not!” I warned, half of me wanting him to pull me in, the other half envisioning him climbing out of the pool and on top of me, smothering me with his slick, wet, naked body.
“Hey, thanks for bringing me here,” he said. Stretching his arms out wide, he fell backward into the water and swam a lap of backstroke while inadvertently presenting his muscled torso and legs for me to peruse. By the time he reached the other end of the pool, I’d unwittingly let my mouth fall open, something I only realized after he had flipped around to face me and mimicked my expression.
Oh God. “I used to work here,” I said, averting my eyes to avoid any further humiliation. “It’s probably my favorite place in Oceanside, up here on the roof.”
“I can see that.”
“What’s yours?” I glanced back at him as he waded toward me, slicking back his hair again.
“I don’t know, I’ve never thought about it…”