Chapter1
“Of course, it’s raining,” Jessica muttered to herself, feeling a mixture of amazement, disappointment, irritation, and joy at the sight that greeted her when she got out of bed in her new apartment, in her new city. Technically, she wasn’t living in Portland proper; she’d taken a place in St. Johns, just in the periphery of the downtown area--a place that had, at one point, been semi-farmed, like much of the satellite neighborhoods of the city were. It was, she’d thought, sort of a Brooklyn to Portland’s Manhattan--a Park Slope or Williamsburg.
But that was good. Being away from the more active, boozy city proper would be a good transition for her. Jessica closed her eyes and took a slow breath. Her “sponsor” had mixed feelings about her plan to move to the other side of the country, pointing out that while starting fresh somewhere that she didn’t know anyone was a good thing, being away from the support systems she’d relied on for a year to help her drag herself out of the hole she’d hit the bottom of was a scary prospect.
“Sometimes it works great for addicts,” Keevah had said. “But sometimes it makes them revert to bad habits because they’re scared and desperate to find a way to feel comfortable.” She’d promised to keep the woman updated on her progress and to find a support group in her new city as soon as possible.
It would have almost--Jessica thought--been easier if she’d been addicted to alcohol or hard drugs. Being a woman addicted to sex was humiliating on multiple levels; most people didn’t consider it a “real” addiction, instead insisting that she was just a slut. Others--mostly men--considered it a lucky break to meet a sex addict.
She had already made the decision that she wasn’t going to tell anyone she didn’t have to in Portland about her status as someone in recovery; she was going to start off clean, throw herself into her work, and focus on that. No dating, not even the attempt to meet any single men. There was too much risk of temptation.
Jessica left her bedroom and went into the kitchen, scrubbing at her face as she headed for the coffee maker. She’d purposely set her alarm two hours early so that she would have plenty of time to prepare for her new job, both mentally and physically. She would have a cup of coffee, a good breakfast, and then get in the shower, do her hair and makeup, get dressed, and maybe listen to a podcast while she got ready, and then she would head to her new boss’s office in the downtown area. She’d arrived in Portland a few days before, and her boxes had come the next day, her car finally arriving the day before she would need to be able to use it more regularly.
It was as different a place as she could imagine from where she’d lived before, in Atlanta. While Atlanta got cold in winter, Portland--in September, technically not even autumn yet--had a kind of damp chill that promised a much colder, more brutal December than Jessica had experienced in her life. She could only hope that she would be ready for it when it came. It was, according to her phone, going to get up into the 70s by midday, but it was still in the 50s l when she’d gotten out of bed, a temperature she associated with late fall, early winter weather.
As she waited for the coffee to brew, Jessica assembled her breakfast: yogurt with granola that she’d made after her first trip to Fred Meyer, once her belongings had arrived, pre-cooked hard-boiled eggs and toast. It was, she thought, enough to carry her through until her lunch break, whenever that would be. Jessica poured her coffee and added milk and sugar, and sat down, thinking about the job she would be starting in a matter of hours. She had done a phone interview with her new boss, but they hadn’t even met yet; he had even decided against the Skype interview he’d initially proposed as the second step of the hiring process.
It had been a hell of a stroke of luck that she’d landed the job under any circumstances; Bradley Holt, a billionaire in the tech industry, had put the word out that he needed a new personal assistant, and through the grapevine, Jessica had heard about it. One of her friends--one of the few remaining to her after she’d hit rock bottom--had passed on her resume to another friend who knew the HR manager at Holt’s corporate headquarters in Portland. It had been a long shot, and one that Jessica hadn’t expected to turn up anything like an opportunity in the real sense. At best, Jessica had assumed, she might hear from someone within the company who was also looking for an assistant. She’d sent her resume to companies across the country: in New York, in Los Angeles, in Miami, anywhere but her hometown of Atlanta. She’d wanted to get out of the town that had so many triggers for her troubled mind, more than almost anything in the world.
Then, after she’d already given up on the idea of hearing anything from Portland, she’d gotten a call. It had been Holt’s departing assistant, Jake; he’d asked her to be on standby for a call from his boss, who wanted to ask her a few questions to help narrow down his choice of assistant.
“He’ll probably call sometime in the next two days; I can’t really be more specific than that unfortunately,” Jake had said. “So, I will give you the number to expect him to call from, and if you don’t hear from him by next Monday, give me a call, and I’ll tweak his chain.”
The call from her new boss had been the most unexpectedly intense interview she’d ever had; Jessica had found herself scrambling to answer why she had a gap of one year on her resume, why she had a degree in Literature, and why she wanted to travel to almost literally the exact opposite corner of the country for a job.
She’d managed to hold her own--she had hoped--against the penetrating questions, keeping her composure and even managing to make a few jokes. She’d reminded herself more than once that it was far from the diciest situation she’d ever found herself in; that belonged to the dark trench her life had become two years before. But she had somehow--through a simple phone interview--been forced to examine her motivations and her own basic stability.
“I think Jake might have already clued you into the fact that I’m not exactly a regimented, organized person in the strictest sense,” Holt had said. “I rely on my assistant to have his or her shit together at all times; while I understand that you’re a human being, and will get sick have emergencies, or things like that, you need to be able to think on your feet and plan things at a moment’s notice.”
When the Skype interview that Holt had hinted at had never materialized, Jessica had considered that she obviously hadn’t made the grade against the dozens--probably hundreds--of other candidates that the billionaire had been considering. So, when Jake had called her again, asking how soon she could relocate to Portland and what kind of budget she would need to be able to do it within two weeks, Jessica had been stunned.
She hadn’t even really considered how much relocation would cost; fortunately, Jake had ballpark estimates based on where she was living and the movers that were rated as the most reliable, and he’d coached her through what she would need to do to set the machinery in motion.
Jessica had sold off half of the things she owned, and packed up the other half, loaded it onto a truck with the movers, and spent the last night of her old life at a going-away party thrown by her support group in her empty Atlanta apartment. The next morning, Keevah had dropped her off at the airport, and Jessica had--metaphorically at least--closed her eyes and plunged into her new life.
As she finished her breakfast and put the dishes in the sink, Jessica wondered just how her first day would go. She’d met with Jake the night before to get the keys, passwords, access codes, and everything else she would need to work for Bradley Holt, and had learned why the former assistant had left the billionaire: his wife, a trust fund kid and doctoral candidate, had gotten an invitation to study in Italy for a year, and he hadn’t been able to turn the idea down.
“Brad understands,” Jake had said. “He gave me as much time as possible to find my replacement, and he helped me out with the move.” The salary was going to be--by Jessica’s standards--decadent: $75,000 a year, with full health benefits including dental and vision and three weeks of vacation, provided she made sure to have everything pre-set before she went out of touch for any length of time. “I generally have just taken my vacations when Brad does,” Jake had explained. “Much easier that way.”
Jessica finished her shower as quickly as she could, resisting the temptation to stay in the hot water as long as possible and stepping out into the cooler air of the bathroom with a shiver. She wrapped a towel around her body and another around her thick, dark hair, and told herself that the chill would go away in a matter of moments. You have to learn to be uncomfortable and deal with it; all addicts suffer from the inability to manage their discomfort.
She took a deep breath and glanced at herself in the mirror. Certainly, she was looking much better than she had a year before, when she’d finally faced facts and gone into recovery: not as drawn or tired, some of the rosy plumpness back in her cheeks.
She’d gained about ten pounds in rehab but had managed to work off the excess weight once she’d been on her own once more--her chosen method for avoiding temptation had been the gym, late at night when there weren’t many people there. There was something about working out hard that had satisfied her physical need just enough to cut through the mental urge to go out and find someone who would fuck her senseless.
She’d managed to lose the weight without losing any of her full breasts, and her slimmer hips and high, tight butt had attracted attention, but Jessica had been able to resist it. She’d been on an outright sexual fast for the whole year, and the prospect of getting intimate with anyone still gave her a sensation like the remembered pain of putting her hand on a burning-hot stove. The idea of relapse was terrifying; better to just be abstinent, to not even open the opportunity up to have sex with anyone.
Jessica dressed quickly in the outfit she’d decided on for her first day: a demure, almost prudish-looking pair of dress pants and high-necked blouse, along with a heavy cardigan to block out some of the damp, chilly wind. A pair of sensible flats would--she hoped--keep her from looking like she was interested in attention from anybody.
She did her hair simply, pulling it back into a braid and then blowing the hair dryer over it to take away the lingering moisture so her head wouldn’t freeze on the way into the city proper. Her makeup she kept simple too: just enough to make her look clean, professional, and competent--a far cry from some of the tricks she’d engaged in when she’d been at the height of her addiction, to cover up how exhausted she was.
She gathered up the things she would need for the day’s work and checked her phone; she had--she thought--more than enough time to get to the office ten minutes before her official start-time, even if traffic was bad. “Start off on the right foot, and everything else will fall into place,” she murmured to herself.
Another aphorism from recovery. Sometimes--almost resentfully--she felt like the sayings, proverbs, bon mots and affirmations from recovery literature were meant to reduce those trying to get better into little more than parrots. But it was, she had to acknowledge, important; the phrases gave her something to hang onto when she got nervous or when temptation arose.
Jessica left her apartment, checking twice to make sure she’d locked the door behind her properly, and went down to the street where her car was parked. She shivered at the cold in the air; it had stopped raining by the time she stepped out, but she knew it would rain again during the day, and the air was not just cold but wet, like a washcloth someone hadn’t properly wrung out before placing in a refrigerator.
It would be fine, Jessica told herself. She would start her new job, dive into it, and eventually--when she was sure she could trust herself--she would start dating, getting to know people in Portland. She could, she thought, almost tell people that she was asexual; the city was accepting enough that people might at least respect that, even if it wasn’t true.
If she could make the benchmark of going on dates with people without having sex with them, she could try and come clean to someone she could trust, and eventually try and have sex. The counselors had told her that she could try going back to sex after 90 days of treatment, but Jessica hadn’t yet reached what Keevah had called “the level of trust” in herself to know that she could have normal sex with people without descending into her old habits.
Then, too, it was too easy--she’d learned from friends in recovery--to end up with someone who, finding out that their partner was a sex addict, thought it was a boon. It was more of a problem with women addicts, she’d noticed; men tended to think that having a girlfriend who was addicted to sex acts--whatever they might be--was carte blanche to have as much sex as possible, which only fueled the fire. It was important to find an understanding partner, and Jessica hadn’t had any faith that she would find one in Atlanta.
She pushed thoughts about her old life and its old struggles out of her mind and turned her attention onto the road to her new job. She would finally meet her boss, and that would be the real start of her new life in a new city, and she could put all of what had happened in the past behind her for good.