Hooked (Hooked #1)(7)

I went to bed after gazing at the Netflix queue, my mind in a rushing haze. I couldn’t concentrate on anything but Drew; the cut of his jaw, the way he smiled at me when I made a joke. I felt such an air of anticipation, I couldn’t even hear the dialogue, the music in any of the episodes I watched. Finally, bringing Boomer up to my chest, I fell instantly asleep, looking forward to a full day of daydreaming the next day—when the girls didn’t come to the studio and I could be safe in my head, worrying and re-working what would happen during Drew and I’s date on the following Saturday.



CHAPTER FOUR

The vibrations started at five in the morning. I felt them through my pillowcase. With my eyes closed, I started tapping my hand around the bedspread, searching. I felt Boomer, who growled at me in his sleep, certain that I was an attack. My eyes fully opened now, I finally saw the flashing light. I grabbed my phone and brought it up to my face. Without my contacts in, I could hardly read it. The number was unknown.

I answered it, groggily, expecting the worst. “Hello?” My voice croaked.

“Hey. Babe.” The voice was familiar, laid-back. Confident.

I tried to parse through it, to make sense of it. I rubbed at my forehead. “Um. Hi,” I said, trying to keep the conversation flowing.

“So. I know we agreed to have a date on Saturday. But I’ve been up all night, thinking. Talking. Drinking. Thinking about you, mostly. I wanted to know if you could go to the Cubs game with me today. Wrigley Field, you know? I haven’t been since I was a kid, and I’m a mad fan.” He was speaking quickly, as if he were hopped up on many different drugs or constant cups of coffees.

My heart was racing, realizing who it was. Drew. He had called me at five in the morning. What was going on? Why was I smiling? Boomer, annoyed with the commotion, hopped down from the bed and sauntered out of the room. “The Cubs game, huh?” I said. I had never been to one either, always too broke to toss the money over for a ticket. I looked outside, at the darkness, imagining us beneath the sun in Wrigley Field. Sharing a beer, a Chicago dog. I imagined the day I was meant to have stretched before me, at least in the hours after my first few classes I was to teach in the morning; the hours and hours of television, of bagel-eating, of thinking about how my life hadn’t worked out the way I had planned. “That sounds fun,” I murmured, thinking that I was saving myself FROM myself. I was doing the right thing; carpe diem.

“Great. Great. The game starts at three. I’ll pick you up at your apartment; we can take the train?” Drew asked.

I agreed without thinking, hearing the eagerness in his voice. I shook my head back and forth, feeling the excitement begin to build in my stomach, pulsing through my veins, through my arms, through my legs. I felt like I could run ten miles then, in that moment, with all the energy and joie de vivre that coursed through me. I had a date. That day. With the most handsome man I had ever seen. He had actually called me back, without diverting down the normal path of forgetting, of meeting someone else. Amazing. Incredible.

I rolled from my bed, noting that the sun was just now lurching from its stance over the lake. The greyness of the morning was safe, like a shade. I padded to the kitchen, following the path of little Boomer, and made a cup of coffee. I hummed as I poured a bit of extra sugar in the top. Normally, I drank it black; but something about the day warranted a little sugar.

I was quite nervous, really, about the whole thing; about going to my first baseball game, about what we would talk about together during those long, long innings. I didn’t know a lick about baseball. My grandfather, a baseball player himself, hadn’t given me the time of day as a child. I remembered him sitting by the television, watching as the balls flew through the air, as the men ran from base to base. It all seemed very grand, but I had never really understood what was going on. Any questions I had were shushed. But I had loved him, my grandfather. He had seemed like the essence of a man. I had based every man I had met against him, especially after he died during my high school years. A Cubs fan, huh? Drew seemed already to match up with my grandfather.


I had two classes to teach in the morning, one at eight and one at ten. The eight o’clock one was mainly for older people, still looking to get back in shape. Some of the ladies were overlap from the day before; however, others were different, simply preferring Sundays over Saturdays. “Non-religious,” they told me off-handedly when I asked them why they preferred the day. I shrugged, always, at these women who seemed to have their lives perfectly planned and orchestrated. They had never made a mistake or a false move. Even their plies and releves were precise—if a little hesitant. They had broken their hips before; they weren’t going to do it again.

I rushed around the house, then, realizing I had daydreamed much of the morning away. I had to be at the dance studio a bit early to prepare. I grabbed a coffee mug, noting that I could make another pot at the studio. (A coffee addict with two coffee pots; I had to have my fix.) I kissed Boomer on the top of his head and raced out the door into the stunning sounds of the city streets. I loved the feeling of being—well—busy.

I was beginning to really love Wicker Park; the old buildings, the way everyone looked—utterly bohemian, but too rich to have the hobo-ish edge. I wound through them all as they wandered off to find brunch somewhere. My dance studio was on the corner, and I unlocked it in a hurry, my heart allowing me to run, to find energy in areas of my body I had never known existed.