Hooked 2 (Hooked #2)(3)

“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 person 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.