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

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 even
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.”