“You’re going to get caught.” 

Her voice startled me. I was at the bar getting a drink, doing the usual pre-game for Friday night out with the girls. There were five of us that night; there had been a sixth, but she had already found what she was looking for before we even got to the club, a tall blonde stud that oozed sex appeal. We all knew we wouldn’t be seeing her again until Monday morning at the office.

Turning slightly to my left, I saw an attractive and well-dressed older woman. The word that immediately sprung to mind was “elegant.” Her black dress was sexy without being sleazy, her jewelry expensive but not showy. The woman’s blonde hair was done in a style that suited her face and age, an attractive pixie cut that made her look younger. 

Truthfully, I found it hard to pinpoint her age. It didn’t look like she’d had any work done, but the laugh lines on her face were one of the few indicators of a life lived. I hoped I looked half that good at her age, which I made a wild-ass guess at somewhere in her fifties. What I couldn’t guess was what the hell she wanted with me.

“Excuse me?” I didn’t bother to hide the annoyance in my voice.

“I said, ‘You’re going to get caught.’ I’ve been watching your friends since they came in the door. Getting ready for a big night?”

“Yes, I- wait, what? Watching us? And caught at what? Who are you, anyways?”

She chuckled. “My name is Amanda, and you know exactly what I mean. You and your friends are going to go out to a club? Probably? And you’re all here for a little liquid courage first. Am I right so far, ah… what is your name, dear?”

“Erin. And, yeah. What are you supposed to be, some kind of psychic?”

Amanda laughed, a pleasant, if slightly superior sound. “No, not at all. Just someone who… well, who’s been in your place, or something like it, before.”

The bartender put my drink down in front of me. I tipped him generously, as I usually did on these nights. He was going to have to put up with women like my friends all night long, and he deserved it. I eyed Amanda as I took a sip. While I was inclined to rejoin my friends, this was one of the most interesting conversations I’d had in some time. It sure as hell beat listening to Darlene and Cindy trying to one-up each other.

“Oh? And where is that?”

She smiled, but it felt more predatory than friendly. “You’re planning to cheat on your husband.”

I sputtered, “No, that’s- How dare you! I love my husband!”

The smile changed to one just a little sadder, her tone to a placatory one. “I’m not judging you, Erin. I’m trying to help. And I didn’t say that you don’t love your husband; I believe you. I did, too. But I still cheated on him.”

“Well, I’m not going to cheat on mine! I… Fuck you! You don’t even know me! You don’t know any of us!” I started to move, but Amanda laid a hand on my wrist. She didn’t grab me, though, instead applying only the lightest touch.

“Please. Stop. Just listen. There were six of you when your group came in; one, wearing a ring, already left with a guy, to the catcalls and applause of the rest of your group. Two of the remaining girls, including you, are also wearing rings. Three are not. If I had to guess, one of them is married and put her ring away, and one or two of the others is divorced.”

I stopped in my tracks. “Are you… What is this? Are you a detective? Following us? Who the fuck–”

“No, I’m just a woman, like I said, who’s been where you are. I had friends like that once, and I’ve seen groups like yours dozens of times over the years. You may have not cheated yet. In fact, I’d give odds you haven’t. There are…” She waved her free hand.  “... tells. The way you keep looking at your ring. Your expression when your married friends speak; by how raucous the group becomes, I assume about how they’re planning to get laid, or about how the hubby will never be the wiser?” I looked away, uncomfortable. “Like I said, dear, I’m not judging. Not really.”

Without looking back, I said, “Not really? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Everyone cheats for a reason. Some of them are good and some of them are bad, but it can be hard to tell which is which in the moment.” She shuffled slightly so that she stood fully in my view. “I’m trying to help you, Erin.”

With a snort, I asked, “Help me how? Tell me not to cheat? Darlene said–”

“Your married friend? The profligate cheater?”

“... Yeah. She said that it hasn’t hurt her marriage at all. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, and–”

A loud, condescending laugh from Amanda interrupted me. “Oh, no, my dear. That’s definitely true. But I guarantee you, her husband’s going to find out. Your divorced friend–what was her name?–found that out, didn’t she?”

“Cindy.” I said it quietly, but then I rallied. “But she knows how she messed up. She said–”

“–That she knows what she did wrong, and she can keep any of you from getting caught, and anyways, things turned out fine for her, right?” I just stared. “Like I said, Erin, I’ve seen many groups like yours. And, while I haven’t always seen the aftermath, I do know what they’re doing–and what they intend to get you to do–is going to end up with one of your group caught, and then it’s going to end up with all of you caught. 

“‘Three can keep a secret if two are dead,’ and there are six of you. And that’s before the possibility that one of them is hoping you’ll fall so that your husband will fall with you; and then she can pick him up again afterwards. Or perhaps he’s already cheating on you, and this is revenge?”

I growled, “Stan’s not like that!”

With a placid voice, she asked, “Are you?”

“I- I don’t–”

Her hand gently squeezed my wrist. “People cheat for many reasons, Erin. Boredom, or anger, or revenge, or unhappiness. Because they want out. Because they want to get caught. Because they think they need a thrill. Why are you planning to?”

“I’m not, I’m–”

Amanda shook her head. “How long until you’re supposed to go with your friends to… dance, I assume?”

“Uh, maybe an hour?”

“And have you already cheated on your husband?”

I looked at my feet. “I… no. Danced a little too close, when I got drunk. Um, let one of them kiss me. Got groped, but stopped him. But… but nothing more than that.”

Her finger went to my chin and tipped it up. “But tonight, you were going to?”

“... Maybe. It all… Darlene and Cindy made it sound so harmless, like it was just another… like it had nothing to do with him and me, just like going to the spa or the gym, except he wouldn’t understand because of his ego. That if–”

Amanda finished the sentence with a sigh, “–‘That if he really loved you, he’d let you do this.’” With a shake of her head, she said, “Idiots.”

“Hey!”

“Not you, Erin. Well, maybe. But not as stupid as them, at least. You haven’t done anything irrevocable yet. There’s still time for you.”

Laughing, I said, “Oh, so the repentant cheater is trying to keep me from breaking my vows? You got yours, and it ruined your marriage, so now you go around helping young women to not fall from grace like you did?”

The grin on Amanda’s face seemed almost demonic in its glee. “Oh, no, not at all. I mean, perhaps; but I cheated on my husband hundreds of times over twenty-three years of marriage. I’d still probably be cheating on him now if my beloved Donald hadn’t passed away. And I never, not once, got caught. 

“That’s how I’ll help you, Erin. If you want to cheat, I’ll teach you everything I can. And if you follow in my footsteps, you’ll never get caught unless you’re exceptionally unlucky.”

“... What?”

Amanda took her purse from the stool next to her. “There’s an all-night diner just across the street. I’m in the mood for some coffee and perhaps a light snack. If you’ll join me–after telling your friends you’ll be back in about an hour–I’ll tell you my story. In it, you'll learn all you need to successfully prosecute as many affairs as you choose to have.”

“Are you serious?”

“Oh, quite serious. A magician never reveals her tricks, but perhaps it’s time I took on an apprentice.” She could tell I was still hesitant. “Look, I’m not asking you to get into a car with me; we’re going to go to a public place, have coffee and share some fries–which I’ll pay for–and talk. Then, when we’re done, you can do whatever you want with what you learn. Worst case scenario, you get to tell your friends all about the crazy broad you met tonight.” She said the last with a self-deprecating chuckle.

“I, ah, I- “

Amanda turned to leave. “I’m going over there either way. This place is dead this early, and your friend walked out with the only guy I had my eye on. If you come over? Great! If not, well, I guess I’ll have to put some more time in on the stairclimber, because I’m sure as hell going to finish that basket of fries.” And with that, she left.

What the hell had just happened?

On the one hand, she was right; everything the girls were doing was risky. Even I could see that. Maybe it took someone who really knew what they were doing to get me to listen to what I’d already been telling myself.

I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to cheat, my behavior the last couple of weeks to the contrary. I really did love Stan a lot; my growing urge to fuck other guys didn’t change that, at least to me. After all, I’m sure he fantasized about other women, and I hadn’t gone all that much further than fantasy. That’s what Darlene and Cindy and the others told me anyways, even if deep down I knew that I’d be pissed as hell if I caught Stan doing what I’d been doing with another woman.

But if I decided to pull the trigger, why wouldn’t I want to be good at it? If Amanda was telling the truth, and she got away with it for two decades and hundreds of guys without her husband figuring it out, why wouldn’t I want to hear what she had to say? And if she was lying, then, like she said, it would still make for a funny story later.

I told the girls that I wanted to get some fresh air before we headed out, and that I’d be back soon. They were already inebriated, so Darlene just yelled, “Better get back before we go without you and take all the good ones!” Then they returned to the group’s game of marry/fuck/kill, this time about the guys in the office. Yeah, I definitely needed to get a different point of view before one of these idiots got me fired as well as divorced.

The diner was one of those places that only had DINER in big neon letters over the entrance, without an actual name. It could have been built any time from the 40s onwards, and its decor reflected that. It had a weirdly timeless quality. All the stuff–the tables, chairs, bar, and so on– seemed cheap, but sturdy as hell, too. After a night out dancing, the girls and I had found ourselves here more than once; the ones that hadn’t hooked up, that is. The food was nothing to write home about, but it was cheap, greasy, and abundant.

Amanda was staring off into the middle distance when I came in, hands around a mug. As I approached the table, she shook off her reverie and smiled broadly. “Hey! I wasn’t sure if you were going to come or not. I’m glad you did.”

I slid into the booth opposite her. “Maybe I should have my head examined, but I figure this has to be more interesting than listening to Darlene and the girls hype themselves up for the rest of the night.”

She laughed, “That doesn’t seem like a very high bar to clear.”

I shrugged. “It’s not. But if you can tell me what you say you can…”

The older woman nodded, maybe a little wistful. “I can. But… I’m sorry, would you mind telling me about yourself first? Not your whole life story, but what you do for a living, how long you’ve been married, that kind of stuff? I want to be sure that what I can tell you… well, I think it’s all interesting, but I want to make sure it’s useful for you, too. I don’t want to waste your time or mine.”

“Okay. Um, I’m twenty-seven. Met my husband near the end of our junior year in college; I majored in history, but decided later I didn’t want to teach, so now I’m an administrative assistant. Stan and I started dating exclusively around the beginning of senior year; we’ve been married a little over five years now.”

“Is it a happy marriage? On balance, I mean?”

I slowly nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d say so. I’ve got no real complaints. He makes me happy, for the most part. I mean, I’d like him to pick up his socks instead of dropping them off the side of the bed at night, but he’d like me to stop watching so much reality TV.”

Amanda chuckled. “Fair enough. What about your sex life?”

I felt myself blush slightly. “I, ah, it’s good.”

“Good?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah. Great, a lot of the time, although not as great as it was at the beginning. You know how it is. That rush early on. We’re kind of settling into married life now. Talking about kids. But he still, um…” I chuckled. “He still more than gets the job done. And he tells me I’m the best he’s ever had, which is nice.”

“Is he? The best you’ve ever had, I mean.”

“Ah… sort of? Now, yeah. Or, I guess, even two or three years ago he was. I had more experience than him, and I kind of had to teach him what I liked, but he picked it up well. Once he got to that point, yeah. But, like I said, well, things lately have gotten a little…”

“Stale?” That damned raised eyebrow again.

“That’s… no, I wouldn’t go that far.” I searched for the right word for a moment, then found, “Comfortable, I guess? I love him, and it’s still good, but I can’t remember the last time we did something new in bed.”

Amanda sagely nodded. “Okay. No real complaints, happy marriage, better sex would be good. So, why are you thinking about cheating on Stan?”

Before I could answer, thankfully, the waitress dropped off the fries and poured me a cup of coffee. I used the time to think about how to phrase my answer; I didn’t come here to get grilled by her, I came here for her story.

“I’m not. I mean… Yes, I’m putting myself in the way of temptation. But I’ve never… I don’t want to cheat on him. I’m not going out with them thinking, ‘I’m going to find a guy and get laid tonight,’ I just… I miss the excitement.” A fry went into my mouth, followed by some hastily chugged water when I realized it was way too hot.

“Of single life?” She took a sip of her coffee, lipstick leaving a pale outline on the rim of the cup.

“Ow. Ow.” I fanned my mouth. “Yeah, of… I guess of being free? And desired? It’s not that I want to cheat on Stan, but when we started talking about kids and buying a house and…” I sighed. “I just wonder if I got married too young. If I should have played the field longer.”

“To see if there was someone better out there?”

“No!” I smartly dragged the next french fry through some ketchup and let it cool this time. “No, I love him. I really do. He’s such a nice guy, and I want to spend the rest of my life with him. And I sure as hell don’t want to hurt him. But… I dunno, I just feel like…” I chewed on the ketchup-soaked spud while I thought. 

Amanda stared at me expectantly until I finished. “I wish there was some way I could put a pin in my marriage and come back to it, you know? Not hurt Stan, and not… if there was a way I could do it without cheating, that would be ideal. That’s kind of what I’ve been doing, at least a little. But…” I shrugged.

Her stare cut through all of my bullshit. “But the temptation to cheat is getting stronger, especially given the company you keep?”

“... Yeah. I hate to say it, but yeah. I don’t want to, but knowing… I know I’m still desirable. There have been plenty of opportunities to go further with guys at the club, and I haven’t.” My gaze shifted to my hands. “And I like that feeling of being desired, so I go back, but I’m worried that eventually… eventually being desired won’t be enough.”

She smiled kindly and put her hand on mine. “I understand. Believe me, I understand. And I think I can help you.”

My head snapped back up. “To cheat? I don’t know if–”

Amanda patted my hand and withdrew hers again, leaning back in her booth. “Not necessarily. I’ll tell you my story. I’ll tell you why I did it and how I got away with it. And if you want more detail, I’ll stay here and talk with you as long as you want. It’s so rare I get to tell anyone my secrets, and you seem an ideal candidate.”

She laughed at the look on my face. “I’m not saying you will cheat, or that you’ve got the Mark of the Beast on you, or whatever you’re afraid of.” She took a nibble of one of the fries and spoke around it; how the hell did she make talking with her mouth full look elegant? “You’re young, beautiful, and smart enough to know that what you’re doing right now isn’t working. 

“By that I mean whatever’s going on in your marriage, and your friendship with… Darlene, was it? And Cindy?” I nodded. “You’ve got a yearning you can’t quite define, and it’s leading you in a direction you may or may not want to go. And…” 

Amanda sighed a little sadly. “Frankly, you don’t have kids, and your marriage hasn’t gone on that long. You have more room to change course than you might think. I don’t mean to sound grim, but leaving your marriage is a possibility, one that… Well, that I wasn’t brave enough to do.” Another bite and a brighter disposition. “But let’s not worry about that just yet. Still want to hear my story?”

I nodded. Listening couldn’t hurt, right? “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

The distinguished older woman flashed me a brilliant smile. I had no doubt I was in for a tale. “Then I’ll begin at the beginning. Well, perhaps a little later than that; you don’t need to hear about my earliest days, except that my home life was very… normal. Average, in just about every way. Middle class, middle America, middling happiness. If my parents could have actually had 2.5 children, they probably would have.

“But I wasn’t an average girl; I grew from a goofy, big-headed child to a gawky ugly duckling. Always smart, though; probably too smart for my own good. I was a bookish and sharp-tongued little thing. Then, in my senior year, I changed. The ugly duckling became a swan; it wasn’t just my appearance, although puberty did finally bestow bounteous gifts on me.

“No, it was my intellect that truly allowed me to flourish. An expensive gift is merely a pleasant thing without proper packaging. But wrapped correctly? Presented only in teasing and tempting glimpses to hint at what’s inside? Now that’s where desire manifests. 

“Think about it: on Christmas Day a child opens their gifts, plays with the toys for a few hours, maybe a day or two, then puts them aside. But in the month they’re under the tree? How often do they shake them, poke at them, try to guess based on size and shape and weight what lies within? A month of delicious anticipation, followed by a few hours of rhapsodic pleasure. Which is more fun, looking back?”

Another nod from me, although I’ll admit I was a little disappointed so far. “So, you figured out how to present yourself. You got pretty, and then you learned makeup and fashion. Okay?”

She laughed. “I know, it doesn’t sound like much, but you have to understand. I… Let me ask you, have you always been the gorgeous young woman sitting across from me?”

I blushed. “Uh, I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I’m… I’ve never been ‘ugly.’ I had a little bit of an awkward phase, I guess.”

“But you don’t know what it’s like to be invisible or even repulsive to your peers, then suddenly be the object of desire for one half and scorn for the other.”

“Uh, no. Not really.”

Amanda popped a fry into her mouth, apparently relishing the flavor as much as the storytelling. “I did. And that’s when I found my first and longest love: being desired. For me, that’s what it’s always been about, that rush of being pursued. Sex is fun, but it’s like opening the present on Christmas: a culmination of an experience. The burst of joy that justifies the longing.”

I took a sip of water. “Okay, yeah, I can see that. But that doesn’t explain…”

“Hold your horses, apprentice. I’m just setting the stage.” She chuckled. “Building the desire, if you will. So I started dating in my senior year, lost my virginity on prom night–after having a half-dozen of the most eligible boys at school ask me to it–then went on a tear in college. That’s actually where I first tried to be monogamous; utterly disastrous.” 

Amanda sighed, the energy that had animated her seeming to dissipate as the breath left her lips. “I hurt some good young men then. Messed up my reputation, too. There was one boy that I know absolutely loved me, and I loved him, too. I mean that, I really did. But I…” 

She took a drink of her coffee, seemingly lost in thought. That was the first time I’d seen her showman mask slip that night. “My husband was the love of my life. But I think Jeremy could have been, if I hadn’t treated him so shabbily. I didn’t even…” The older woman chuckled ruefully. “I wasn’t good at cheating then. Flat out bad at it, actually. Jeremy didn’t catch me; he didn’t have to. He just needed to not be completely blind, and he wasn’t.”

“Why did you cheat on him?”

Amanda looked at the table. “That’s the question, isn’t it? Why did I cheat on him, and my husband, and all the wonderful men in between?” When she raised her gaze to mine again, pain lay behind her eyes and in the tight smile on her lips. “Because I’m an addict.”

“Like… a sex addict?”

She laughed, “No. No, not a sex addict. Although I did try to…” Amanda sighed. “I’m getting ahead of myself.” After a deep breath, she continued. “The thing about addiction is that you don’t want to believe it’s addiction. No one does. It doesn’t matter if it’s booze or food or heroin or gambling. 

“The excuses are different, but they’re cousins to each other. ‘It’s just one drink’ is very close to ‘All I did was dance with him.’ For someone that’s not an addict, they can have a beer or dance a little too closely and have that be all, at least if nothing else is going on. But for an addict? It’s opening themselves up to disaster.

“And then they… we turn to rationalization when disaster does strike. ‘I had a hard day, and that’s why I downed a bottle of vodka.’ ‘It’s my birthday, and I’m allowed to have as much cake as I want.’” Amanda’s face twisted into a little grimace. “‘The relationship was already going to end, and I just hadn’t told him yet.’ All ways to justify excesses that we don’t want to admit are excesses.”

She smiled brightly, returning to center stage. “I didn’t know it was an addiction then. I thought I was just a slut. I went back and forth between being intentionally single and being sure, absolutely sure, that this time it was going to be different, that this time I’d found the perfect guy, and what had happened before was stupid college girl shit. Eventually, I stopped pretending, though. I decided I was inherently fucked up–although not yet recognizing it as an addiction–and decided I was just going to be single. That lasted until I was twenty-eight.”

Amanda’s smile wasn’t in any way performative then. It was blissful. Loving. Her eyes seemed to sparkle as she spoke. “Then I met Donald. I was working as a pharmaceutical sales rep. Still am, for that matter. He was a doctor. God, that man was amazing. 

“It wasn’t even how handsome he was–and he was absolutely gorgeous–it was just… him. His presence. The kindness in his voice, the way he carried himself, how he could be effortlessly, expansively intelligent, and then turn around and tell the absolute dumbest jokes. Easily the best lover I’ve ever had, almost from the beginning. Top ten, maybe top five all-time best fucks, too. I was smitten in a way I’d never been, even with poor Jeremy.

“I fell in love with him so easily. That’s… that’s why I pushed him away for so long. He pursued me and pursued me, though, and eventually, he wore me down. But he didn’t stop pursuing me, either. In retrospect, I think that’s why I was able to convince myself that this time it was going to be okay, that he and I could work. 

“No man, before or since, has ever wooed me the way Donald did, and it didn’t stop even once we were steady, or engaged, or married. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel the need to be pursued by anyone else.”

“But you cheated on him.”

“But I cheated on him.” She held up her glass, and the waitress came to refill it. “Although not until a couple of years after we were married. He stopped pursuing me the way he had. I’m not blaming him; it’s impossible to keep up that kind of intensity forever. And I loved him so much. I tried to hold out as long as I could. But I felt this little… itch. Right there in the back of my head, and I couldn’t scratch it. He would kiss me or take me to dinner or dancing, and it would be like…”

Amanda looked up at the ceiling. “Do you know what methadone is?”

“It’s, uh, it’s for heroin addicts, right? To help them quit.”

“That’s right. It’s a weak opioid that mimics some effects of heroin without being as addictive or dangerous. It’s effective, but…” She chuckled. “You’d be amazed how many heroin addicts hate it, recovered or not. It’s so close to being what their body is telling them it needs, but not nearly enough. 

“After people get off of methadone, unless they make some other major changes in their life, there’s a pretty high chance they’ll relapse. Some people just stay on it for the rest of their lives, replacing one addiction with another. That’s what most recovering addicts do, truth be told: replace one habit for another. It’s part of why there are so many chainsmokers and coffee drinkers at AA meetings. 

“Even celebrities, with all their resources, do it. Johnny Cash threw himself into religion. Robert Downey Jr. became a fitness fanatic. Have you ever seen the movie Trainspotting? No? Great movie. Starred a very young Ewan McGregor. His friends and him–all junkies in Edinburgh– play soccer or football, whatever, against a group of guys early on in the film. All of those guys were real former junkies that had helped the writer with his research. They turned into football fanatics after kicking the habit. It was another obsession, but one that probably wouldn’t kill them.”

I held up a hand. “I’m sorry, but what is your point? I thought this was about–”

Amanda made a ‘yeah, yeah, I’m getting there’ motion. “It IS about how I cheated and got away with it. But you need to understand why I did it first; that informed how I did it. Understand?” My blank expression showed that I did not, in fact, understand. 

She sighed. “You will. So, methadone. Donald’s affection, after we were married for a couple of years, was like my methadone. It was enough to keep me clean, but not nearly as much as I wanted. It scratched the itch without actually making it go away. And that was… God, it was so much worse in some ways.”

Another deep breath. “It was just under three years into our marriage when I cheated on him the first time. I was out at a bar in another city, visiting an old girlfriend. And, suddenly, I was desired by strangers again, and free, and…” She shook her head. “And it was like giving a recovered alcoholic a bottle of vodka. I danced and I flirted, knowing, for sure, what a bad idea it was.

“This one guy wanted me SO badly. Just so so badly. I could almost smell it on him. I let him pursue me, knowing how dangerous it was, knowing where this was going to end up, and hating myself while I did it. He groped me on the dance floor, and I let him. We found a dark corner, and he shoved his tongue down my throat. 

“And then I went into the restroom and bought a cheap pack of condoms from a machine. We snuck out the back of the club to his apartment, and he took me in just about every single way a man could take a woman. The only stipulation I made–the sole nod of loyalty to my husband–was that rubber had to separate us.

“A few hours later, I stumbled back to my hotel room, sore and tired and euphoric and…” She frowned and sighed. “And feeling about the lowest I ever have. I got into the shower with my dress still on and cried under the water for probably an hour, wishing I was dead. Wishing that I died before Donald had ever met me.”

Amanda sat quietly for a while, staring into her cup as though she might find answers there. She didn’t look up as she resumed her story. “I thought about telling him, but I knew my husband. It would kill him. He loved me so fully, even though I’d told him about my past. 

“I didn’t understand the… the depths of my need then. I still thought I was just an asshole when I was younger, and that I’d finally found someone to make me into an honest woman. A good one.” A sad smile. “And he did. He really did. Just not good enough.”

She looked up at me. “I drowned Donald in affection when I got back; I always did, though, because I loved him so much. That made it easier. He didn’t suspect anything, and I did everything I could to never act guilty around him. 

“After that, I stayed on the straight and narrow for a while. Lasted a few months, but the itch came back. I eventually had to travel for work, and…” Amanda shrugged. “It was nice to believe that I could be a good person, at least for a little while. That I had just made a mistake.

“That was the pattern for most of the rest of my life. I traveled for work a lot, so when I felt the itch, I’d find someone to hook up with. Never the same person twice–hell, not even the same bar twice if I could avoid it–always using protection, and taking whatever precautions I could to not get caught. And I never did.”

“Ever?” I couldn’t hide the doubt from my voice.

“It was a narrow thing a few times, I’ll admit. Early on, I made the mistake of hooking up with a  jackass that tried to fuck me while I was talking to my husband. I hung up, threw him out, and then claimed that the hotel phone had a bad connection when I called Donald back. I’d never liked when they talked shit about him, but from then on, guys that disrespected him were a no-go.” 

She chuckled when she saw the look on my face. “Disrespected him more than… well, you know. It was always disrespectful. I accept that; I know that he deserved a better wife. I just couldn’t give him up.” Amanda looked out the window. “I guess I was an addict in more ways than one.”

“You keep saying that you’re an addict. Honestly, though, that…” I struggled to find words that wouldn’t piss her off.

“... Sounds like a pile of shit? Yeah, I know. And when it comes to something like this, it often is. When I was trying to fix myself, in between all the cheating, I went to a sex addiction group. You know, like AA, but for…” She waved her hand. “And while I found that I didn’t fit the criteria exactly, I also found there were a LOT of people there that… 

“Mmm, let’s just say they were going there because someone had caught them fucking someone they shouldn’t have and ‘sex addiction’ was an effective dodge for them. ‘Oh, honey, I know I fucked your sister, but I, ah, I found out that I have a sex addiction!’ Assholes. 

“But I know that I do have an addiction, or a compulsion, and I can prove it. For now, though, let me tell you the rest of my story.” She took another bite of a fry, then frowned and pushed the basket towards me. “I need to stop.” A sudden laugh erupted from her lips. “Says the addict.”

Amanda leaned forward. “So that was one time I almost got caught. And then there was the time…” She swallowed. “Then there was the time some asshole attacked me.”

“Oh, my god!”

The older woman shrugged, which surprised me. “Yeah, it was awful. But... Look, I’m not making excuses for the guy; if I saw him today, I’d shoot the bastard. I got my concealed carry license because of him. But I was going to bars, inviting strange men back to my room, then telling them they could only fuck me with a condom, and that I wouldn’t give them a blowjob. Eventually, I ran into an asshole that didn’t want to accept that.”

I reached out to touch her hand. She smiled, then waved me off. “It happened a long time ago. Before the kids, so twenty-odd years. I remember, at the time, being most upset that I was going to have to hide all the evidence from Donald and keep him at arm’s length until I could get tested. How fucked up is that?

“But my husband… I had a ‘yeast infection’ until my period came, and by then there had been plenty of time to get tested for pretty much everything. He didn’t even bat an eye, just wanted to make sure I was okay. There was a tiny chance I’d contracted one of the diseases with a longer gestation time, but those aren’t transmissible until they’re active. I just had to get tested constantly, like a fucking porn star. But we dodged a bullet. I dodged a bullet.”

A thought suddenly struck. “You said you had kids? Is- is there any chance–”

“No!” Amanda’s voice was louder than she apparently intended, and several people looked towards us. It dropped again. “No. No, there’s no chance of that. When we decided to have kids, I… topped myself off on the trip just before we wanted to get started, then went off the pill when I got back. Thank God that Donald was virile as hell, and it only took us a month each time.”

She bit her lip. “I did worry, though. I knew… The math for the kids, when they were born and all, they had to be Donald’s. But I was paranoid about it. I would absolutely have to confess if one of them hadn’t been his. I couldn’t have done that to him. So, I got us all tested as part of a ‘work-related genetics testing program’ that wasn’t in any way work-related. Thankfully, the paranoia was just paranoia, and everything was correct.”

“Did you cheat while you were pregnant?”

“Nope!” False gaiety tinged the word. “Donald doted on me extra hard during that time, which made it easier. Not easy, but easier. I was horny as hell, but that never… Like I said before, it wasn’t really about the sex, it was about the pursuit. The sex was just the capper.” She chuckled. “I think Donald had a bit of a pregnancy fetish because he fucked me absolutely senseless whenever he could.” 

Her dreamy, faraway smile was clearly a product of fond reminiscence. “Those were such good times, when I was pregnant and then when the kids were so little. I don’t know why, but something about the babies… 

“Maybe it was the exhaustion, or maybe it was the way they just needed me constantly, but it was an even stronger substitute than Donald’s love. I thought, for a while after my oldest was born, that… I don’t know, that maybe having something bigger than just myself or my marriage had finally fixed me. That this was finally the thing that would make me a decent person.”

Amanda looked down into her half-empty cup for a while. Her voice cracked slightly when she spoke again. “But it wasn’t.” She raised her gaze to mine, the increasingly insincere smile no longer hiding her pain. “I felt the itch start to come back once my son was in daycare. And, while it went away again after my daughter was born, that was it. For six years of my twenty-three-year marriage, I was a faithful wife. For the rest? I was…” She shook her head.

“You said you tried to stop?”

She nodded, taking a deep breath and trying to force the mask more firmly in place. “Yeah. I tried a bunch of things. Therapy, of course. Sex addiction counseling. Religion. Athletics; God, was that a mistake. Have you seen the way gymrats look at even a moderately attractive woman? I even tried getting fat for a while, hoping that if I was less desirable that I’d be chased less. I thought maybe it was a supply problem rather than a demand one. It wasn’t. I just had less interesting men pursuing me, so I was unsatisfied in yet another way.”

I snorted at that; I couldn’t help it. That little bit of mirth seemed to lift her spirits. “Anyways. I decided a few things, maybe ten years into my marriage. First, it was an addiction, even if the DSM didn’t have an entry for it; that’s true of a lot of disorders, for various reasons. Second, I couldn’t control it, or at least I couldn’t find a way to control it. And third, I had to find a way to keep it from destroying my life.

“I started to read a bunch about harm reduction as a strategy. That is, not trying to go cold turkey, but limiting the addiction’s impact. I saw this news article I remember about a woman who was a successful business owner and mother but had lived with a heroin addiction for over twenty years. She managed to handle her highs, and the only reason she got caught was because of a random drug bust when she was meeting with her dealer.”

She chuckled. “Not exactly a hero for the ages, but I figured that if she managed it for decades, I could too. And I did. Donald never found out. I don’t think he even suspected. I was so careful.”

“Did you have… I dunno, some kind of endgame planned? Like, what if you were still like this when you retired and couldn’t travel as much?”

“Not really. I just kept dancing and hoped the music never stopped. I had a distant hope that menopause might change my brain chemistry enough to fix me, but it didn’t. That’s what addiction is, after all, just a matter of brain chemistry. There’s a reason that for almost all of them–smoking, heroin, alcohol, whatever– the success rate for people that quit is around five percent. It’s not that people don’t want to quit, it’s that they can’t.”

She quirked up an eyebrow at my dubious expression. “Don’t believe me?”

“No, it’s not that, I just–”

Amanda nodded her head to someone on the other side of the diner and quietly said,. “That guy over there, he probably weighs 400, maybe 500 pounds. Do you think he wants to? Or that he doesn’t know how to lose weight? I guarantee you, he knows more about dieting than you or I ever will. And he’s eating a slice of pie that I doubt he’s even really enjoying. 

“He’s sitting alone in a diner, eating food he doesn’t really want, to cope with a hunger he can’t understand and probably hates with a passion. Not a real hunger, not one born of starvation, but because some little trickle of molecules in his brain just isn’t enough for him to stop. That’s everyone that’s trying to stop smoking or drinking or shooting up. That’s me. Or was me, at least.”

“Was?”

She looked out the diner’s window again, eyes moist. “After Donald died, I really went off the rails for a while. The itch got so much worse without him in my life. I hadn’t understood how much his love and devotion helped me just… function like a normal human being. Within a month of his funeral, I was in a bar waiting to be hit on. And every night for the next, oh, six months, I brought someone new home with me. Sometimes more than one.

“Never to our bed, though.” She sniffled and wiped a tear away. “I couldn’t do that. It was still our bed. Even with him gone, I couldn’t do that. I let myself go in other ways, too: stopped taking care of my health like I should, drank more, got careless about safe sex, all these self-destructive behaviors. I wanted to die and be with him again.

“Finally, though, a friend got me to go see a doctor. A couple of them, actually. A therapist, of course, but also my GP for my annual checkup. She found I was pre-diabetic from my weight gain and lack of exercise. Prescribed a medication that had gotten FDA approval a few years before, something called semaglutide. The brand name is Ozempic. Have you heard of it?”

“Yeah, it’s an injection? For diabetes, I think. And it causes weight loss, right?”

“Mmm-hmm. And it did. Got my weight back under control and got me out of the danger zone for diabetes.” She took a sip of her coffee. “Oh, and it also cured my addiction.”

“What?!”

“Yeah. I didn’t realize it at first. I mean, it didn’t fix it immediately; it took a few weeks to really kick in, but even after the first injection, the itch was less present. And after those first couple of weeks? It was just gone. Like, gone gone. I still had needs, sexual ones, but I didn’t feel that unthinking hunger. The bottomless pit had been filled.

“At first, I put it down to a mix of the intervention by my friend, coming to grips with Donald’s death, therapy, just a mix of a bunch of stuff. But when I finally got a clean bill of health from the doctor and stopped the injections? Jesus.” She sighed. “I was out there slutting it up again as hard as ever.”

“What did you do?”

“I’m in pharmaceutical sales, like I mentioned. I know all of the tricks to get cheap medicine and easy prescriptions, so I started back up on my own once I realized what had happened. And just like before, the itch went away. A couple months later, I started seeing things in the trade journals about how semaglutide was cutting down on all sorts of addictive and compulsive behaviors among the test groups: drinking, smoking, compulsive eating. Fuck, even nailbiting. Nailbiting, for God’s sake!” 

Her cheeks glistened with tears. “Do you have any idea how much that hurt? My love for my husband wasn’t enough. My love for my kids barely mattered. Fuck, even my own sense of self-preservation didn’t do shit. Nope, I needed a weekly dose of medicine to get me to shut my legs. And it was too late to matter! My Donald was gone, and I’d never see him again. I almost chucked the fucking medicine. I wanted to die, really wanted to this time. ‘Death by sluttiness.’ That would be a helluva thing to see on a death certificate.”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t do that to my kids. They’d already lost one parent, and then… then my first grandbaby was born. I hadn’t been the wife that my husband deserved, and I even fell down as a parent. But I was going to be the best goddamned Gramma the world had ever seen.”

I laughed at that, and so did she, but only for a moment. Then she turned deadly serious. “So that’s my story. If you want, I can tell you how to cheat on your husband. It’s trivial to do it; any idiot can. It’s not that much harder to avoid getting caught, especially if you’re only going to do it once: travel somewhere else, hook up in a bar that isn’t your hotel bar, take them to a seedy hourly motel, and get laid.

“If you want to keep it up, get a job that requires travel. Follow those same rules I just said, but also get a second phone. Make sure you keep it on a separate credit card that your husband never sees. Be ready to lie to his face; always, always have a lie ready. Use condoms every time. Get a gun, like I did, in case some asshole tries to take what you don't want to give. 

“Never confide in anyone. Build a whole second life that isolates you from the people you love. Avoid real friendships. Never get drunk unless you’re by yourself, because God knows what you might give away. There’s more, but you get the idea, right?”

I nodded, feeling vaguely sick. “Yeah.”

“‘Once a cheater, always a cheater’ is half bullshit and half true. Which one do you think applies to you? Maybe you’ll go fuck some random stud in a bar, and it’ll be a happy memory when you’re older. And maybe you’ll only ever do it once; most people that try heroin or coke a few times walk away with no problems. But some of them don’t. Do you want to gamble on which one you are?”

“No.” I sighed. “What should I do? I mean, about my friends and Stan and everything?”

She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I can’t tell you. Clearly something’s not quite right, and you need to work that out with him. Go to counseling, take a trip, buy some whips and chains.” I laughed. 

“But whatever you do, throw those fucking friends of yours under the bus, at least with him. How much you tell him is up to you–although I think you should be completely honest–but blame it on them. I guarantee he’d rather blame it on them than believe you came this close on your own. Then stay the fuck away from them. Change jobs if you have to.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. You’re right. Thank you”

“You’re welcome, Erin. And good luck.” Amanda stood, smiling, and threw a twenty on the table. “Now, if you don’t mind, I am going to go back to the bar, fix my makeup, and see if the pickings have gotten any better since we left. It’s been months, and I do still have needs!” With a laugh, she turned and walked out the door, then waved in the window as she passed by outside.

I sat there for a while longer, eating cold french fries and thinking. Jesus. Jesus! How close had I come to being Amanda? I’m not a cheater! I love my husband! What the fuck was I thinking?

Before long, I stood up and almost ran to my car. I needed to get home to my husband and confess everything. My vision blurred from the tears as I drove, crying for myself and for the remarkable, broken woman that had saved me from myself and from the so-called friends that wanted to drag me down with them.

At home, Stan stood up from his chair when he saw the state I was in. God, how could I have ever thought of hurting him? Of hurting us? He swept me up into his arms and listened to my babbling accounts of what I’d done, of what I’d almost done, and of the older woman who had intervened. His face grew increasingly grim, but when he finally spoke, my husband’s first words were, “I love you. Thank you for telling me. I’m angry, but we’ll get past this together.” 

I sobbed in his arms as he carried me to our bed. We laid together as we had when we first fell in love, alternating between tender lovemaking and frenzied, desperate coupling. I needed him. I needed him more than anything else in the world, and he showed me that same passion. I would never let either of us forget it, ever again. 

Afterwards, as the love of my life slept beside me, I lay awake for a long time. I’m not a religious person, but that night I needed to believe that there was some reason for Amanda’s pain. I needed to give thanks to someone that her voice in that bar had saved my marriage. I silently prayed for her, thanking God for sending her my way. I asked him to watch over her and her family, ending with a plea for him to take mercy on her when the time came. May we all receive mercies we don’t deserve; I’d received mine that night.

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FYI, the bit about semaglutide is real. It's been shown to reduce or eliminate addictive and compulsive behaviors in the people that take it. Neuroscience is wild, y'all. Drug research is, too; Viagra was created when trying to develop a new blood pressure drug, and Benadryl was first synthesized while attempting to find a non-addictive form of heroin.