Dirty Seduction

I followed him into the living room, sitting next to him on the sofa. He placed his orange juice on the coffee table but took a whisky bottle from down the side. He swigged a shot back before offering it to me. I shook my head.

“I’m still married, Rosie. On paper, anyway. I have, had, a family, back in Oxford.”

The thought was surprisingly weird like it punched me. I felt bizarrely jealous.

“You’re married?”

“Indeed, yes. My wedding ring is in the bedside drawer. I’m surprised you haven’t found it yet, considering you managed to locate the stash of filth in my wardrobe.”

The heat bloomed on my face.

“No. I haven’t looked in your bedside drawer.”

“Ah, ok,” he told me. “Well, as I said. You’d find my wedding ring in there if you did.”

Sometimes it’s the weirdest questions that come into your head.

“What’s her name?”

“Sorry?”

“Your wife. What’s her name?”

He half shrugged. “Katreya.”

“How old is she?”

He didn’t hesitate in answering this time.

“Forty-seven. There are just shy of two years between us. We got married when she was twenty-one.”

I got another pang. There were twenty-nine years between us. Me and his wife.

“Want some more of my history?” Julian asked, with a scoff. Not malicious. “My daughter, Grace, is twenty-five years old, and my son, Ryan, is twenty-two. Ryan still lives at home with Katreya. Or he did the last time I saw him.”

That pang hit even harder. Two kids, both older than me. It put things into perspective.

“I have a granddaughter, too,” he continued, to slam it home further. “Emily is two. She’s a little sweetheart.”

He watched me watching him before he continued.

“How are you feeling now? Do you want me to keep going?”

“I don’t know.”

He laughed in sad humor.

“This is quite a downturn in conversation, isn’t it? We should be flying high.”

I had to laugh at that. “Maybe I should have some of that whisky.”

He flashed me a grin as he handed the bottle over. I’d only been half-serious, but I took a tiny gulp anyway. It was horrible. I pulled a face.

“Not much of a drinker?” he asked and I shook my head, handing him the bottle back.

“No. My mum was when I was younger. Kind of put me off.”

“I can imagine. I hid my addiction for many years. I used to bury my whisky in my desk drawer, behind a load of curriculum paperwork. Nasty.” Addiction.

“Yes, I’m an alcoholic,” Julian said, reading my eyes. “Sometimes I fool myself that I’m over it, other times I’m not so deluded. I’ve heard many opinions as to the cause, whether it’s some kind of repressed trauma or a genetic predisposition. An illness. An effect the substance has on the body. Escapism.” He paused. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t make any difference. I’m an alcoholic.”

I felt like I was looking straight into his soul, but I didn’t see weakness there. I saw honesty.

My next question was so stupid I should’ve cringed.

“Have you tried to give it up?”

He didn’t look at me like I was an idiot for asking.

“Yes. Many times. Not least at the points when I had Katreya screaming and crying in my face, blaming everything in the world on the fact that I’d been downing shots. Some of it is likely true, of course, but it becomes an easy scapegoat. She found it a lot easier to point fingers at my drinking problems than she ever did to try a little bit of self-reflection as to her part in our difficulties. As I said, I’m sure a lot of her arguments were very true, but not every single one of them. Still, that’s no longer a relevant concern.”

I plucked up the confidence to keep digging.

“Is that why you split up? Is that why your family broke down? Because of the drinking?”

“We didn’t split up, and that isn’t what broke the family down,” he said. “I packed up and moved away because I was cast aside and disowned, and rightly so.”

Again, I was surprised at his honesty.

“Say it.” He laughed a sad laugh. “Ask the question. I know you want to ask it. The infamous three-letter word. Why. Keep on digging, Rosie.”

“OK, cool. So, why did you pack up and move away? Why were you disowned?”

His eyes bored deep into mine.

“Because of the pictures you saw in the wardrobe drawer. Alcohol addiction isn’t the only one I have. I’m addicted to sex, too.”

I reeled at that, struggling to comprehend it. My mind was whirring, and he nodded as he saw.

“The girl in the photos is one of my daughter’s friends. Her name is Maisie. She was the first girl I fucked outside of my marriage. She was nineteen years old.”

I didn’t know what to say, just listened as he kept on talking.

“The shock and the thrill of fucking her kept my urges at bay for a considerable amount of time after that. I’d say maybe six months. The next girl was Serena. A friend of Grace’s from gym class. Grace was doing gym right the way up until university. Her friend Serena was very… flexible.”

My skin was still prickling with want for him, despite his words. If he was trying to shock me into revulsion, it wouldn’t work. I was far too caught up in him.

“Serena opened up a new perspective for me,” he said. “I began to notice the flirtatious glances I was getting during my lectures. A lot of girls like professors. It gave me an unfair advantage when it came to fucking them.”

I reached back over for the whisky, braving another shot, despite the fact it tasted gross.

“I have fucked an awful lot of girls,” Julian said. “It was only a matter of time before Katreya found out. Secrets can’t stay hidden forever.”

“A lot of guys cheat,” I said, as a ridiculous attempt at playing it down.

“I’m an adulterer. I committed to my wife in holy matrimony, and that deserves the honor I promised her.”

“So, you cheated on her? Just like that? Because your daughter had a hot friend? And then what? You became addicted to it?”

“That’s one angle,” he said. “In truth, I should have left my wife a lot sooner. She would have said the same if she hadn’t felt so betrayed. I once overheard her talking to friends about it in our living room, when she thought I was downing whisky upstairs in the office. She was laughing about it. About how it would never have lasted if she hadn’t been pregnant so young. She called me a filthy pervert and said she’d not been finding me attractive for a long, long time. It shouldn’t have surprised me. We were only fucking as a token gesture very occasionally at that point.”

“That must have hurt.”

“It did, yes. But on the hurt scale, I think Katreya’s hurt surpasses mine. I don’t think she’ll be sending me a sorry card.” He stared at the window. “If she knew where to send one, that is.”

“She doesn’t know where you are?”

He shook his head. “No. Nobody does. And they wouldn’t want to.” I pulled my legs up under me on the sofa, feeling shit for digging.

“Like I told you,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d want to go there.”

In some ways, I wished I hadn’t. I could have been cocooned in his arms, riding high on bliss.

His eyes met mine again.

“Katreya was cheating before I was. A guy at Grace’s gym club when she was fourteen. An ex-Olympian. I don’t blame her, in all fairness. He was quite an athlete.”

He put his whisky bottle back down on the floor, opting for the orange juice from the coffee table instead.

“There is a reason divorce rates are so high,” he said. “Katreya and I got married under the tension of a positive pregnancy test, and our relationship ended in the shambles of a dead, sexless cohabitation. That with the addition of my role as a sex-addicted alcoholic, who has a craving for barely legal girls.”Property belongs to Nôvel(D)r/ama.Org.

I stared mutely. Unsure what the hell to say.

He smirked at that, pointing over at the door.

“I’ll understand if you would prefer to stay at Trisha’s. Don’t worry, either way. I’ll still help you resolve the Scottie situation. Just make sure you don’t go back to the apartment.”

“No!” I said, right off the mark. “I want to stay here.”

“Even though you’ve just had my seedy mouth all over you? I’m not a good man, as you now well know.”

He was trying to put me off, but it wouldn’t work. His conscience could eat him up all he wanted, but it wouldn’t push me away. I was already in deep with him, a sex addict alcoholic or not. Something was brewing in me to match his honesty. My tales wanted to show their faces and get a hearing from someone interested enough to listen. Not like the token school counselors I’d had when I was thirteen, pretending they gave a shit in my lunch hour for six weeks running the allotted time. I couldn’t talk to Mum because she always took anything I ever wanted to say personally. She’d blame herself and cry over everything possible, and I’d feel like I’d hurt her. So, I kept it to myself. It was easier that way. Or so I thought until I was right here with Julian.

It put the state of my hidden soul into perspective. I wanted someone who I could be myself with. Who I could speak the truth with. I didn’t want to move from Julian’s apartment. Ever. All I wanted was to be at his side.

At his side and in his bed.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I told him, and took my orange juice, downing it in one. “I’ll stay here as long as you’ll have me.”

“Really? As long as I’ll have you? That’s quite a statement, Rosie.” “Really,” I said. “I feel safer here than I’ve ever felt in my life.”

He took a cigarette from a pack on the coffee table. “That’s an even greater statement.”

“I don’t care,” I told him. “It’s true. We can both do honesty. You’ve given me some of yours, so how about I give you some of mine?”

He didn’t flinch or look away. He met my eyes with a calmness that soothed my soul, giving me a glimpse of true, unbiased companionship for once in my life.

“I’m all ears,” he said.