Hooked 2 (Hooked #2)(7)

“I like that spirit in you,” Drew murmured. There was such a sexual tension between us in that moment.

Suddenly, he popped the door open and rushed around to the side to let me exit. I stuck my sheer, black leg out of the car and walked, feeling model-like in the slim-fitting black clothes. We turned toward the main office, where a woman with overalls greeted us and asked us to sign several forms. Oh, the technicalities of living out your dreams, I thought for a moment as I signed, signed, signed. Molly Atwood, over and over.

“I love your name,” Drew said, tapping his finger over the paper. “It reminds me of a classic English woman.”

“With like, bad teeth and a beard?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “No. Like my grandmother, maybe. Making tea and eating crumpets and talking about society.” He turned back toward the woman and gave her his paper. “Thank you so much,” he murmured.

They loaded us in the large van. They told us that normally, they had a lot more people for a Saturday’s jump. However, this late-September day had just a hint of chill to it. “People don’t feel so daring in the autumn months,” the overall woman called to us in the back seat.

Drew and I held hands tightly. Beneath his confidence, I sensed a feeling of fear. I loved seeing that nuance to him, that other side. He looked at me with bright eyes. “Are you all right?” I whispered to him.


“I’ve done this before,” he murmured. His voice did not sound assured.

Finally, we reached the back road that took us to the alarmingly high station, where we were meant to bungee. I stepped out of the large van and looked up at it, tucked there between the trees. I noted that the clearing was large enough that you wouldn’t hit the trees, even if you spun a bit on the rope.

“It’s quite a view from the top,” the woman told us then, tapping us both on the back. “Wait till you see the autumn foliage.”

Drew and I eyed each other, both with secret, interior fear. I was humming with such excitement. I hadn’t given thought to the terrible nature of the week, to the fact that this guy next to me was just sleeping with me for fun, without passion. I hadn’t thought about any of it. I only focused on the true adrenaline I was about to feel; I focused only on the top.

To reach the top platform, we had to climb a humongous ladder. We followed the owner, a man named Everett. I focused on my hands around the ladder, on the sheer cold of the material beneath. I heard Drew puffing beneath me.

“You okay down there?” I asked him.

“Sure am,” he called back haughtily.

I knew, in that moment that this had all been a test; he hadn’t really thought I would go through with it. He thought that I was going to panic, run away. That way, I could be made to look a fool; he would be rid of me. He would get the best of me.

But I was climbing the ladder, one rung at a time. And I felt the excitement bubbling in me. “Don’t be too slow, Drew!” I called to him.

He huffed below.

Finally, we reached the top. I grabbed at the side rail, peering around us. Just as the woman had said, the fall trees were truly beautiful. I saw hints of orange, of red, of yellow all throughout. And to the east, I could see the bright, expansive lake and the beautiful, Windy City; my Chicago. My heart ached for it; the marriage of nature and city.

I turned my head up, toward Drew, and watched as his eyes turned sour and his face closed. He was fearful of the edge.

“Who wants to go first?” the man asked us. He was chewing gum, and his accent was southern, nearly foreign.

“We can go together, correct?” I asked him blinking slowly.

The man thought for a moment. “We have a double set-up, yea-up,” he said. He smacked his gum.

“Great!”

Drew swallowed slowly. I could hear it.

The man helped us latch ourselves into the bungee suits. He attached the bungee cord to us tightly, utilizing the metal clasp. He tugged at it from behind, making sure that it was soundly latched. We jerked back with it, nearly falling to our deaths below.

“Hey, hey. Easy there,” Drew murmured.

“All right, city folks,” the man said. “You can go ahead up there and ease forward and jump together. We usually hold hands when we do it. Easier to stay in line that way.”

I looked up at Drew, this man who hadn’t ACTUALLY thought he was going to go bungee jumping that day. “You look good in that bungee suit,” I whispered to him. I grabbed his hand.

He looked down at me, at my body, at my breasts. I could tell he wanted me, that I was his, truly, in that moment. He reached toward me, without Cubs cameras watching, without people noticing, and kissed me soundly. Our eyes met together as he took his lips away, licking them lightly.

We took the step up to the edge and looked down. We were about seventy feet in the air, seven or eight stories. We were higher than my apartment building; we were as high as that hotel room had been the previous week. I tried to imagine what it would feel like, tossing myself to this wind.

“Remember. We ain’t got all day,” the man called to us. The wind had started to pick up.

I inched forward once more, tugging Drew with me. He was grinning, his wolf teeth out, his hair raveling through the wind. “You’re an adventurous girl,” he called to me.

“I know.”

“If we die here today, what will happen?”