Hooked #2 (The Hooked Romance Series - Book 2) (8 page)

I walked back to my apartment and decided to send
Drew a text message. Maybe he was too busy to remember to text, but certainly
he would text back. I toyed with the wording for a long time before sending a
final, edited message;

“Hey, Drew. What’s up?”

Clearly, it had taken a good deal of work to come up
with this.

But perhaps the message lacked personality; perhaps
it was no good. I waited by my phone for hours, casually watching television
with my cat, and I received nothing but a silly picture from Mel about what
Jackson had done after dinner that evening. I rolled my eyes, tossing my phone
to the end of the couch. I had been stupid, I knew, to ever think a guy like
Drew would be into me.

I sighed and decided to call my mother. After all,
she was always on my mind; I was constantly afraid of her, certainly. And plus
I hadn’t seen her since before summer. She hardly drove out of Indiana, despite
the fact that Chicago was only three hours away.

I listened to the phone as it rang and rang over the
many miles between us.

“Darling, how are you?” This was how my mother
always answered the phone, no matter where she was, no matter who it was on the
other end of the line.

I swallowed, already hating the drab way my mother
spoke. “Hi, mom. I just wanted to say hi.”

“Molly. It’s been a long time. I was just talking
about you with my hairdresser. She thinks it’s fascinating that you’re a dance
instructor now. She wondered if it was upsetting, not performing anymore?”

My heart sank. I already understood the type of
conversation this would be. So much more like dick measuring than the
conversation I had heard between Marty and Drew. My mother simply wanted to
show me off to the world. This had been why she had signed me up for dance. She
wanted to hold that little ballerina’s hand; she wanted to tell people her
daughter was a dancer. And now all she could tell them was that I was a dance
instructor. And even that wasn’t true.

“Sure. Anyway, mom. I just wanted to know how you
were
doing?
”

“Oh, wonderful. I’ve joined a bridge club. Debbie
Marshal is my partner, at least when she isn’t taking that horrid teenager of
hers into therapy. Dennis is his name. He might have schizophrenia.”

This was how she spoke all the time about other
people. I sighed, noting that I could not go rushing back to this woman, to
this life. But my mother kept going, telling me about everyone at the church I
had grown up in; who was pregnant, who was gay. It didn’t matter who it was, I
learned about them.

Finally, after thirty minutes, my mother told me she
had to go. American Idol was on and her favorite singer was in the top four.

I told her that it had been lovely speaking with
her. I hung up the phone and swore to myself, beyond anything else, that I
would never return to Indianapolis, even if that meant I would have to sleep in
the hallway of this apartment building, bow down and became Jackson’s daytime
nanny, or do anything else in the world.

I could not return.

CHAPTER
NINE

The next morning, I knew the demolition crew was
coming to destroy my precious brick dance studio. I woke up early, feeling the
complete devastation of the day. I couldn’t believe that the place in which I
had truly felt like myself—at least in the days after I had learned that
becoming a real dancer would never happen for me—was going to be gone forever.
I wondered what that meant for my identity. I wondered what would be left of me
when the place was knocked to the ground.

I walked to the studio slowly, trying not to allow
tears to glimmer from my eyes. I wanted to stay fresh, vibrant. Perhaps after I
watched the destruction of the building, I could rush up and down Le Moyne
Avenue and apply for jobs, tell them my sob story. Perhaps someone would take
pity on me.

I approached the building, noting that a great
bulldozer was parked out front. It was off; the great ball of steel was hanging
still and stoic in the air. A bunch of men stood on the outside of the
building, holding clipboards and pointing at things. They wore hard hats, and
they looked very serious, very important. I decided to stand on the other side
of the street, leaning up against a stop sign and watching the way the light
gleamed off the glass of the studio for the last time. I remembered how well
the light had entered that place, how beautiful it had felt on the
inside—especially during the previous winter. It had been my only happy place,
especially in the sheer cold. The snow had piled up outside, and us dancers had
been inside, creating a world that was all our own.

I stared at the men outside the building again,
wanting to rip them apart with words. “Don’t you know what you’re doing?” I
wanted to scream at them. “You’re destroying dreams of young children and hopes
for older women! You’re destroying my dream of continuing my passion! You’re
destroying so much! Can’t you understand?”

But I knew they would never hear me over the
striking of the great steel ball, over the anger of the whirring machine.

One man in the center was rather tall,
sharp-looking. He held a great clipboard, and he appeared to be talking to
everyone else, giving the most orders. He looked so sleek, so important. I
looked down my nose at him, hating everything that he was. A corporate snob,
certainly. Someone who wouldn’t understand anything I truly cared about.

Suddenly, however, the man turned. The sun glinted
against his yellow construction hat. His suit—finely cut—traced his muscles,
his firm, taut chest. He smiled at the crew before him, revealing those
wolf-like teeth.

My jaw dropped. Drew, for some god-awful reason, was
stationed before my dance studio, helping to bring it down.

He was moving his arms wildly, speaking with a broad
smile on his face. I wanted to know what the hell was going on. Had he only
been sleeping with me to get to my place? But that didn’t make sense! Was he
going to build his bookstore here? But why here?

I remembered how I had met him mere blocks away at
that coffee shop. I remembered how he had been scouting for a place for his
bookshop. Femme Fatale. Why hadn’t anybody told him that was a terrible name
for something? Why hadn’t anybody told him that he needed to take his bookstore
and shove it?

The fire was burning in my stomach. I scratched my
boots against the pavement beneath me. I longed to tear him apart. I remembered
how well he had fucked me the evening before, and I felt hot, angry. I felt
used.

I stormed across the street, unable to stop myself.
Drew stopped speaking to the people before him as I approached. His face grew
surprised, distracted. He smiled at me, removing his yellow construction hat as
I approached. Sensing my anger, his smile started to filter off. He frowned.

“Drew,” I said. I stomped my foot a bit, trying not
to make a scene. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

Drew held up his hands to the other guys. They all
smirked at him, murmuring “trouble in paradise,” to each other.

I led Drew to the side alley next to the studio. I
looked up at him with broad, orb-like eyes. I wanted to start crying. “Drew.
Drew. How could you do this to me?”

“Do what? Not text you? I have been so busy. So
tirelessly busy trying to get this place up and running.”

But I was shaking my head vehemently. “No. How could
you have bought my dance studio?” My voice shook as I spoke. I pointed behind
me, at the sad-looking building on the corner of Le Moyne Avenue. I knew it was
the perfect location; I knew it was a place he would have wanted, regardless of
anything else. Perhaps he had chosen me, squashed me on purpose.

But he was shaking his head, frowning. “I didn’t
even know you had a dance studio until the other night. I didn’t even know this
place WAS a dance studio. The owner told me that it had been several different
things. A craft store. A home good store. A health food store.” Drew shrugged
before me. “I didn’t know it was yours.”

I started breathing heavily, wanting to crawl into a
shell and hide. I could feel the eyes of all the construction workers behind
me. “This was my home,” I told him simply. I shrugged, feeling tears wafting
down my cheeks.

But Drew just shook his head. “I have a business
plan. This is where it’s happening.” He licked his lips subtly, feeling the
tension in my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

I backed away from him, feeling the ultimate
betrayal. I walked back out of the alley, touching my hand to the glass on the
exterior of my beautiful studio. I remembered the hundreds of times I had
entered and exited the door, the way the bell had jangled. I remembered, then,
that I hadn’t grabbed the bell.

I turned toward Drew, almost ominously. I grabbed my
keys from my key ring and deposited the key in the lock, opening the door. Sure
enough, on the other side, jangled the small bell I had bought at a local craft
store—a store that had since gone out of business. It had been my first
decoration for the goddamned place.

I jangled it in the air as if it meant everything to
me. I frowned at Drew as I did it, as if everything in the world that was wrong
was his fault.

And with that, I turned on my heel and walked
sternly back to my apartment. I knew, in my heart, that I couldn’t watch the
place get torn down. I couldn’t watch the place fall. I couldn’t watch each
beautiful brick become unattached from one another. I couldn’t watch my very
heart, my very soul rupture before me.

Jangling all the way home I walked slowly, serenely,
feeling at one with the spinning earth. Everything bad that had happened in the
past couldn’t affect me anymore. Once, I had been a dancer, the finest at
Butler University—and one of the finest in the country. I remembered the way my
arms had pivoted through the air, the way my face had looked upwards toward my
slender hand during the final pose. I remembered the way they had risen in
Clowes
Hall, the auditorium, and cheered for me with
resounding applause. I remembered my mother, finally proud, spewing over and
over again that I—and I alone—was her daughter.

But it all couldn’t go on. A busted knee had
happened; a bad audition had happened. Nobody had wanted me, after all those
years of continual pirouettes, days of starving myself. Nobody had wanted
me—not even myself.

And yet in these past few weeks, I had thought
things were starting to look up. This brilliant man—this Drew—had wanted me. He
had taken me bungee jumping, and I had been able to feel the serene power of
flying, of jumping to a sure death and coming up strong and energized. I had
been able to enjoy a beautiful dinner with my best friend, her husband, and
this new man—Drew—who seemed to fit in the equation perfectly. Never had
anything come together so perfectly before. Never had my heart beat so
perfectly in tune with another’s.

Finally, I arrived at my apartment building. It had
started to rain in the cold October air, and I felt the ice-like pellets along
my cheek as I opened the great apartment door. I stomped up the steps, two at a
time, feeling the anger fuel me all the way to the top. I tore into my
apartment, feeling the tears already brimming.

Boomer was stationed at the coffee table, blinking
up at me. He meowed in that way; like he knew something was wrong, like he knew
the world was ending. I collapsed next to him, allowing him to bounce up on my
lap and nuzzle my cheek.

“It’s just you and me, Boomer,” I whispered to him.
“It’s just you and me.”

That night, I spent a long and heavy sob-session
with myself. I poured wine glass after wine glass; I ate ice cream from the
carton. I cried with Meg Ryan as she lost her own, privatized bookshop in New
York City because of Tom Hanks’s dumb, large, Fox Books. I hated Tom Hanks,
American hero, more in that moment than I hated Drew. Why were the attractive
men in the world trying to ruin the dreams and the beautiful lives of American
women?

The wine continued to almost pour itself, streaming
from the bottle like water. Boomer kept meowing at me, worried. I felt like I
was becoming a part of the couch in those moments, and I remembered Kevin, my
very first and last boyfriend—the pot smoker from Indiana. He had become a part
of the couch, a part of the pot
world,
because he had
felt he didn’t have a place in the regular world anymore. I hadn’t been able to
understand it.

Every little thing he did had an element of “I don’t
care” to it. When we went to Mexican restaurants, he scarfed down burrito after
burrito without even saying a word to me. I patted his back, always, telling
him to slow down; but there was a hunger in him that could not be quelled by
anything in the world. He had dissatisfaction, and he knew it. So he sought to
replace that dissatisfaction with something else.

Every time we had hung out at his apartment, he had
wanted only to sit and watch television. I had tried to engage him in anything,
like board games or sex. But he had wanted only to rest there, smoking casually
from a bowl, and watching whatever was on television.

When he had told me he was dropping out, I had been
relieved. This was the perfect time to dump him, to replace my dissatisfaction
with our relationship with something else; with more dancing, perhaps, or more
studying. He had told me he had wanted to give up for a long time, and he
wanted me to tell him he was free.