Hooked (Hooked #1)(19)

I had never really seen any of my neighbors before, and I couldn’t align the voice I heard with any given face. I remembered the Indian man who lived a floor down (who always cooked such delicious-smelling food). I remembered the college students down the hall who had several raucous parties. But this voice. This was a man’s voice. I listened more closely.

“Yeah. I mean. You should have seen these breasts. Just. Bang, bang, bang—in my face. I f*cked her lights out.” The voice was saying.

I rolled my eyes. Another group of males discussing the women they had banged recently. Great. I had come across the liveliest of all conversations; the dick measuring kind.

But I continued to listen.

Another guy chimed in. “Is that that bitch you screwed a few weeks ago? The one with the tattoo?”

“That girl was weeks ago,” the first voice said, washing the other comment away, as if resentful that the other man would even consider it.

I raised my eyebrows in great judgment. This man seemed to really enjoy screwing a lot of women. In my heart, I felt terrible for all of them—all the women he wooed, all the women he convinced to go to bed with him. I felt that there had to be a sort of sincerity in bed. Otherwise, what the hell did it even mean?

“All right, all right,” the second guy said. “How do you get so much *, anyway? You drug them?’’

The first voice started laughing. The laugh wasn’t riddled with any compassion, with any humor. Instead, it seemed rooted in anger. “Yeah. A lesser man would think it was drugs,” the first man said sarcastically. Suddenly, I heard tapping feet and the screen door slam. The pair of men had obviously gone back inside. I felt alone, then, even as I knew that the two men hadn’t been privy to my presence.

I looked down at my palms, shaking a bit as I neared the end of my cigarette. The nicotine was coursing through my veins quickly, changing me. My brain was rushing from topic to topic. I was thinking, all at once, about the grand f*cking I had done the evening before—how it had immediately cleared up everything that had been wrong inside me for many, many years.

And then; just hours after I left the naked arms of that most beautiful man, my world had come crashing around me. I thought again about what Mel had said to me—that I could ask Drew for the money. But the thought of it actually killed me. I knew I couldn’t; I knew I wouldn’t.

I was too proud.

Suddenly, my phone started buzzing in my coat pocket. I stabbed the cigarette down on the ground and reached into my pocket to retrieve the phone. It was a text message. I grinned as the name DREW popped up in the bright light. For a moment, I could see nothing but the sheer fire of my own passion for him, for his body. For our bodies coming together.

I read the text, then;

“Hey. You rushed out on me this morning. I want to see you again. Up for a quick drink this evening?”

But I shut the light from my phone, my heart beating too fast in my throat. I knew—if I saw him—I would immediately ask him about the money, tell him all of my problems. He was the only person I knew in the goddamned city (except for Mel and my cat, of course), and therefore I was vulnerable to him. I would tell him anything he wanted to hear—probably more than he wanted to hear. And as such, I would ruin anything that we might have ultimately built.

Plus, I knew; if he found out how truly poor I was—after I had spouted all that about being a PR major with an assistant—he would immediately run away. Rich guys were made, truly, for rich girls. To treat them. To trade money with them, really. I thought of the constant exchange; this jewelry for this tie. This f*cking for these shoes. I shivered, thinking about the world that I would never be a part of.

I turned my phone off, certain that I couldn’t go out with Drew. That I could never see him again. I wouldn’t be a part of Wicker Park much longer; therefore, when his bookstore went up, I wouldn’t see it every day. I wouldn’t know that he was successful, or that he crashed and burned. I wouldn’t know anything about him.


I tried to imagine what I should do, how I could work myself out of the situation. But all I could do, really, was light another cigarette and pulse small smoke rings into the air. All I could do was watch as my cat sauntered from this way to that on the inside of my apartment, on the other side of the glass.

All I could do was live in the dismal notion of the moment, hoping that nothing else got worse.