Hooked 3 (Hooked #3)(6)

Suddenly, to my left, I heard a jangling down the hall. Someone else messing with his keys. Unconsciously, I peered down the hall.

But I immediately brought my face away. Unfortunately, Drew and I were coming home at the same time. I remembered that morning, when he had yelled at me for my unresponsiveness as he apologized, over and over. I couldn’t care about it; not now. But my heart started yammering in my chest, and I wasn’t able to fit my key in the lock.

“Have a good day?” Drew called from down the hallway. He was watching my struggle.

I wanted to turn toward him and yell at him. I was burning with a sense of confidence unforeseen in my past years. I leaned against my door as he began walking toward me, taking lazy footfalls and gazing at me with his big, wolf-like eyes. “Listen. I thought about this morning—a lot. And I’m so sorry for being aggressive.” He looked down at his keys, at his hands. He seemed mortified. I took pleasure in it, if only for a moment. “And I’m sorry about buying your dance studio. I didn’t even know you were a dance teacher. You told me you were in PR.”

I tapped my foot on the ground, uninterested in what I had said, what I had done. “It doesn’t matter—” I began. I wanted him to leave; I wanted his shadow to pass back down the hallway. I didn’t want to remember what passion, what fire had existed between us. It could never last, anyway; he was far too rich, far too important. And I was just a lowly dance teacher who could hardly pay rent. I shrugged. “Good night.” I turned and placed my key in the lock and started to turn it.


But he placed his hand on the door, stopping me. “Wait,” he murmured. I could feel his breath so close to mine. It took all my strength not to reach up and kiss him. I bit my lip.

“What is it?” I stared at the scratched wood on the door.

“I wanted to ask you something. I have to go to this benefit thing. Friends of my father’s, you know. I want to be a pillar of this community—” Noticing that he was losing my attention, my care, he switched topics. “Anyway. I need a date to the benefit.” His eyes looked at me, searching.

I raised my eyebrow. “And you want me to be your date?”

He nodded. His eyebrows were dark above his eyes, and he looked so incredibly handsome in the light emanating from the moon in the early October night.

I shook my head, showing him a well-mannered smile. “You know. I really think I have something going that night.”

I turned back toward my door and started to open it once more. But he paused me again, placing his hand against the wood. “I haven’t told you which day it is.”

I raised my eyebrow to him once more. Why was he being so confident, so cheeky? “What’s your point? You think if it is the right day, I’ll come with you? That’s where you’re wrong.”

He cleared his throat. He murmured the following words, “There will be dancing.”

Suddenly, I was unable to fit the key in the lock once more. I sighed languidly, feeling the excitement building in my blood. Dancing. Public dancing. With a man. I hadn’t done that in years. I turned back toward him. “And what makes you think I’d be interested in that?”

“I know what a marvelous dancer you are, but I’ve never seen you. Mel talked about you so much, really. I knew you were a great dancer even before I knew you—” He paused. “And, anyway. Perhaps you could go just as—just as my friend? I know you don’t think of me as anything else.” He scuffed his fine shoe into the grimy apartment floor.

I considered this, turning my head left to right. “Dancing as friends?”

He nodded, his eyes sparkling. He knew he had me; he knew he’d already caught me in his trap.

“I’ll go with you to the dumb benefit,” I answered him. “I’ll go with you. But you cannot assume I’m anything other than your friend.” And with that, I finally found the energy to pulse the key through the lock, to enter into my private world of tea bags and fuzzy cats. I slammed the door and leaned against it, breathing heavily. What the hell had I gotten myself into again?

But the rest of the night I laid back on the couch languidly, taking long sips of the herbal tea and dreaming non-stop about Drew’s smile—how when it was directed to me, I felt a stirring in my gut, a need in my mind. I needed his body over mine in so many ways; I needed the strength of his arms to see me through.



CHAPTER FIVE

The benefit wasn’t until Saturday, and the next day was a Wednesday—leaving me many more days of daydreaming. During the morning hours, I created a series of spreadsheets outlining the funds I would need in order to pay for the new dance studio. I further understood how much I would need to ask for in a loan. I had never asked for a loan before, not even for school. The dance program had paid for everything. But here, things were different. I couldn’t make a single false step.

I tucked my financial information into my coat pocket and fed Boomer before heading out into the world. I grabbed a cup of coffee at the local bagel and coffee shoppe, noting how adult and professional I felt with the smell of coffee emanating from my fingers, from my breath.

The bank was on the outskirts of Wicker Park, closer to downtown. I put my head down against the wind and forced myself to walk all the way there instead of taking the train. I knew it would clear my head.

No bell jangled when I pushed open the bank door. The bank felt so sanitized, much more like a hospital than anything else. All the tellers’ eyes were on me as I walked toward the front hesitantly. I hadn’t spent much time in banks before, and so often, the smell of them reminded me of being a young girl, waiting in line with my mother, hoping only for the free candy at the end.