Hooked #2 (The Hooked Romance Series - Book 2) Read online

  HOOKED #2

  Book 2

  By Claire Adams

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 Claire Adams

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  CHAPTER ONE

  The next morning I woke up, feeling nearly hung-over with the terrible news of the dance studio. I walked toward my kitchen table, where small scraps of paper outlined my entire would-be week ahead; the older ladies class on Tuesday, the younger girls every day at seven in the morning. I looked at the clock on the wall and noted it was still five in the morning. I could get out of it. What was the point, anyway? I would ultimately have to tell them the studio was going to close; they would find other, better places to learn to dance. Perhaps they would even make it in the wicked world without me.

  I sent a short, succinct text message to all of their mothers and fathers, hoping they would receive it before sending their daughters off with toe shoes into the brimming late-September cold of the morning. “No Dance Today. Love, Ms. Molly.”

  I nodded at it, satisfied. What was I going to do?

  I called my dance assistant, Melanie. I listened to the phone buzz over the city as the sun began to cast long shadows through the Wicker Park buildings. I longed to see Lake Michigan in that moment, to see how the morning cold was manipulating it, changing it. The coffee bubbled into the pot behind me.

  Finally, Melanie answered her phone. Her voice was chipper, as if she had been awake for hours.

  “Mel?” I whispered, finally hearing my voice for the first time. I poured myself a cup of coffee and allowed the steam to waft up over my face.

  “Molly!” Melanie called to me. Her voice was high-pitched, strained. “I’ve been awake for hours. Little Jackson has a cold. Don’t you, Jackson?” She was cooing to her small baby; the bundle of joy that had been her acceptance of her failed dance career.

  “Poor baby,” I whispered, hanging my head. “Listen. Mel. I need to talk to you.”

  “What is it?” she asked. Her voice was still raspy. “I can make it for the second class today, by the way. Probably not the first. I need to drop Jack off at the babysitter. Second one at ten, yeah?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Mel,” I whispered again. My heart was beating so fast. “I think I’m going to just close the studio right away.”

  Mel sputtered. “What?”

  “I already canceled the first class today, the young high school girls.”

  “Don’t cancel your classes already,” Mel pleaded. “They need you for as long as they can have you. You’re a perfect dance instructor; can’t you see that? Don’t. Don’t give up on this,” Mel whispered. I could hear the baby cooing in the background, and I longed to be there with them. My apartment was bleak around me. My coffee was decreasing at an alarming rate. Would I be alone for the rest of my life?

  “I just have to figure out what comes next. That’s all,” I answered her. I hung up, after telling her I loved her, my only good friend in the city. Mel was dumbfounded, sure; but perhaps she would understand, through the next few weeks, that this dance thing was actually holding her back, that other things, other organizations waited for her in the rest of the world.

  I sighed and stood up, knowing that nothing waited for me. Nothing.

  The sun was higher now in Wicker Park. Across some of the buildings, I could see the Four Seasons hotel in which I knew Drew was sleeping. I wondered if he was hunting around for his new bookstore location; I wondered if he was thinking about me.

  I took the train out to the lake that crisp morning and put my tennis shoes to the pavement along the pulsing water, hoping to pound an inch of energy, of life back into my brain. My phone played loud music into my ear, and I felt small tears streamline down my face. I remembered my mother, back home in Indiana, telling me that Chicago would never work for me. At twenty-four years old, I knew, in my heart, that she was right; perhaps nothing I truly wanted would work.

  But where did that leave me?

  I didn’t know.

  I huffed and puffed back to the train. Before entering, I bought a large pastry at a side bakery, where the crescent rolls, the donuts, the pain au chocolats gleamed in the bright light. The woman who handed the pastry to me had sagging skin and a cragged smile. “You have a nice day, dear,” she yammered to me as she handed me several hundred calories, wrapped in a simple brown package. As I removed the monstrous jelly pastry, I remembered all the years I had watched my weight for dance purposes. Now that dance had kicked me to the curb in every arena of the world, I found myself on the side of the road, eating a jelly pastry. And some small part of me didn’t care at all.

  In my pocket, my phone began to buzz. Irritated, I wiped my hand on my jacket and picked it up. The name DREW blasted across the screen. Shit. Now, not only had I lied to Drew about being a PR major looking for work throughout the great city—with an assistant, to boot—I had also lied to him about myself on a few other levels. I had built a sense of confidence, a sense of sexual prowess with him that I knew I couldn’t match in my current state. I had built a small notion of love for him inside my soul. And I was further certain that if I saw him, I would become gooey, off-center.

  Which is why his text message, which said; “Meet for Lunch in the Park?” was ignored easily. I stuck my phone back in my pocket and caught the train back home. Netflix, a bottle of afternoon wine, and some serious cat cuddling was in my future. This, ladies and gentleman, was a twenty-four-year-old woman without hope, without a plan.

  Drew texted me later that day, around lunchtime. “Wish you were here. Couldn’t decide between a burrito and a sandwich, so I went with a pretzel. This was a big mistake, only avoided with your assistance.”

  I imagined him typing this with great care in line at some dumb deli, and I shivered as I ate day-old macaroni and cheese from a yellow bowl. Melanie had called me a few times to try to pound me with hope. “We can fight this! We can!”

  But I had already moved on. Between Netflix movies, each with a sappy ending, I had looked up receptionist jobs throughout Chicago. I had looked up waitressing jobs in my hometown, dismal Indianapolis. I had read eight blogs about the Peace Corps, because options for my life were unending—and also seriously unappealing. I wanted to dance. That was all I had ever wanted. But, because it was no longer in the cards for my life, picturing myself in a tiny hut on the coast of Africa, trying to restore a sense of world peace was my next option.

  Life was bleak. The sun had never really escalated in the sky beside my apartment, and thus the day was grey, crowded with a sort of angry fear. Every person I saw on the train, every person I saw on the street seemed to frown eternally.

  The days sort of filtered on like this, as well. I sent out a message to all of my students, from the over-fifties to the youngsters, to tell them what had happened; that I would ultimately need to close. Some of them hadn’t yet paid for their sessions. (I had never quite gotten around to nagging them hard enough, so grateful I was that they had e
ven signed up for MY class over everyone else’s.) They wouldn’t be paying; I was out several hundred. But I didn’t care.

  My diet of macaroni and cheese and wine at noon continued on into the week. Drew continued to text me, but I felt like I read all of his words in a clouded haze of depression. I had already begun to think about moving back to Indiana. What would my life be like? Would I have to admit to everyone that I had failed, that I had done nothing with my life? Would I have to admit that Molly—prima ballerina—was really just a dumpy woman who ate too much macaroni?

  I called Melanie a few days later on Thursday. She seemed forlorn, nearly afraid of me on the phone. “Have you gone in to get your stuff?” I asked her. My eyes blinked heavily as I spoke. I wondered if I would ever feel normal again.

  Melanie sighed. “So. There’s really no convincing you to fight this, is there?”

  “I don’t really see the point,” I told her.

  “Come on. Meet me out. You need a drink more than anyone I’ve ever known.”

  I looked down at my nearly empty wine bottle and noted I had several others lined up on the counter. I was perfectly fine on my own. “I can’t, Mel. There’s too much to do here.” My voice was lined with sincerity. I hummed my apologies. She knew I was lying; of course she did. But there was nothing she could do.

  “At least call that Drew fellow. At least go sleep with someone. I know it was doing you wonders before this all—happened,” Melanie said impatiently.

  But I shook my head. “No, no. I just lied to him the entire time. He thinks I’m looking for PR work. I can’t imagine dating anyone right now with all this in my head. You know?”

  Melanie couldn’t understand. Why would she, anyway? She was happily married, a baby eternally on her hip. I longed to be with her, to hold her baby, to laugh with her in her brightly-lit kitchen. But I couldn’t. All the happiness I had once had seemed far away from me, unreachable.

  CHAPTER TWO

  On Friday night, the Chicago air ripped up a few degrees in temperature—enough to allow me to take my drinking outside. At around five in the afternoon, I dragged myself out to my balcony, looking up at the still sunlit day. I sighed, feeling the sun as it rippled across my face. I had showered that day, feeling a sense of hope as I did so, as I smeared away the grease and the grime. I took a long sip from my wine and allowed my head to lean back between the posts.

  My phone began to buzz on my lap. I picked it up languidly and looked at the number. I saw it was Drew once more. I wasn’t surprised, of course. He had been ringing me almost every day since I hadn’t responded to him nearly four days ago. I wasn’t sure why such an attractive, confident man like that had continued to pursue me. At this rate, it all seemed a little cartoony—like he wasn’t actually real, just an enigma I had created in my head to get me through the “tough times.”

  The phone began to ring again. I looked at it, noting how strange the buzz felt against my leg—almost like the buzz created in my head from the wine. Suddenly, I heard a squeal, a squeak. Somebody from the nearby balcony around the corner was coming outside. I hadn’t had any human interaction in days, and I heard the tremors of their male voices. I relished them, even though I knew they would create their ravenous dick-measuring conversation about fucking women. Whatever.

  But then the voice began. It was the same voice as before; the same voice that had mentioned he had fucked several different women in the past few weeks. But the voice seemed frustrated, this time. Constrained. “God!” the voice called into the wind.

  His buddy was right there. “Hey. Calm down, man. You seem stressed. Have a beer.”

  I heard him pop the top from his bottle. “I can’t believe she hasn’t been answering my calls, my messages. Nothing.”

  “Man. Bitches are crazy. You know that.”

  “She just seemed different, you know. Well. The sex was incredible, certainly.” He laughed off the seriousness of the initial sentence. His friend joined in, as well.

  I could tell his voice was strained, that he seriously missed this girl. That he wanted her beyond the physical sense. But I knew his friend couldn’t comprehend this. I brought my ear further toward them, trying to catch their words in the rush of the evening wind. (The Windy City, I thought, grinning.)

  “You know where she lives?” the other guy asked. “Why not do a romantic gesture? Head to her apartment and surprise her, something like that?”

  “She lives somewhere around here,” the man said. He sipped his beer. I could hear his lips come away from the top with a squelch. “But there are things she doesn’t know about me, yet.”

  “You are a secretive guy, man. It usually works for you, yeah. But if you really like this girl, you need to come clean about it all.”

  “I’ve just never had to before,” the man continued. “I’ve always been here or there. New York or California. Never caught here in the middle of the country, in my hometown, thinking about a girl in a—whatever. A serious way.”

  My heart was beating fast in my chest. I had begun to link this voice with someone else; someone quite close to me. Was this man—who was complaining about a girl not answering his phone calls—Drew?

  I clutched my wine glass tightly between my fingers and sipped at it ravenously. What the hell was going on? Certainly, this couldn’t be Drew. I tried to laugh it off, almost. Certainly it couldn’t be Drew because Drew was many miles away, at that beautiful Four Seasons Hotel. Certainly, he had already taken up with another poor Wicker Park slut, like myself. Certainly they were banging against the window; she was telling him her all-too-real story about how she actually WAS a PR major, instead of just pretending to be one, like me.

  But what if—?

  “Why don’t you just call her? Right now. And leave her a message,” the other man said. He was clearly bogged down with the conversation, bored with it. “You being who you are. You can have whatever you want. And you know that.”

  My heart quickened. This was it. This was the moment I could discover, truly, if I was as crazy as I thought.

  “All right; all right. I’ll call her one more time. But I’ll look desperate.”

  “That’s the chance you’ll have to take.”

  The man laughed as he dialed. I looked down at my leg, where my phone was positioned easily on my legging. My legs were still tight; still like dancer legs. I wondered what they would look like as I aged, as I turned away from my dreams. I wondered if you always ended up looking the same as you were meant to, regardless of the choices or the careers you had in your life.

  The phone started buzzing. I looked at it, dumbfounded. Could it be a coincidence? The name blared across in bright, white letters; DREW.

  My heart was racing. I allowed the phone to ring and ring, to buzz against my leg. The man on the balcony kicked his foot against the balcony railing. I could hear it; bang, bang, bang in the coming nighttime.

  Finally, the phone stopped ringing. “See?” he sputtered. He was angry at being put up to it, I could tell.

  My mind was racing. Why did he live here, in my building, if he also had a hotel room at the Four Seasons? Why was he here, in a wonky apartment in Wicker Park, when he could be eating room service lobster while living the life of eternal luxury? He was rich, wasn’t he? Why had he lied about where he lived?

  Suddenly erupting with eternal drama, I decided to head to the hallway and knock on the door. The door was just down the hall, I knew. It seemed strange that I hadn’t run into any of the people who lived there. For a long time, I had thought that apartment had been empty. I tidied my hair as I crept toward the door, hoping I didn’t look too much like I had been drinking wine, eating macaroni, and feeling depressed about my life for the past week. I wanted to look sexy, sultry; even if this man wasn’t for some reason, Drew.

  I put my hand against the wood and I knocked three times, decisively. I stepped back, waiting.

  I heard loud footfalls behind the door. I heard the CLUNK as the deadbolt opened, as the p
erson swooped the door open to reveal a rather grey, ordinary apartment. I looked up at the man—this man that was so very much NOT Drew, and I felt my heart float down to my stomach. He had curly, black hair, and his face was a bit round, a bit burly. He looked mean.

  “I’m so sorry—“ I sputtered. I wanted to rush back into my apartment. Why had I thought Drew had been outside? Had I imagined the entire thing? Perhaps I was drunker than I thought.

  The man looked at me, confused. Suddenly, I heard the voice—the voice I had heard outside—call from the back room. “Is it the pizza?” the voice asked.

  The man at the door shook his head, his eyes still centered on mine. Why hadn’t he said hello yet? My mind was rushing to come up with an excuse, anything. But I felt frozen in place, in time.

  “Naw. Some girl,” the man said. “Can I help you with something?”

  I sputtered once more. “No—No. I just thought. I thought this was someplace else—“

  I saw a shadow pass over the room behind the man positioned before me. The man with the curly black hair seemed to take up the entire doorway, leaving me no room to see beyond.

  But I heard the voice again. “Marty. Who’s at the door?” The voice was so familiar, so dear. In my head, I pictured him; Drew, there at the baseball game, his mouth over mine. My body seemed to melt.

  Marty, the man with black hair, wheeled around, revealing him to me; Drew. Drew Thompson.

  He looked so casual, standing there in the subtle darkness of the living room. He was wearing a baseball jersey, Cubs of course, and he held a beer in his left hand. He looked at me sheepishly, as if he had never been surprised in his life. “Molly?” he asked. He held his phone in the air. “I was just—I was just calling you. How did you find me?”

  I put my hands on my hips, nearly gasping for air. What was happening? “I live down the hall. I heard you guys talking on the balcony.”