Hooked #3 (The Hooked Romance Series - Book 3) (3 page)

I took the seat across from him at the desk. I
crossed my legs once before uncrossing them, shuddering in the sheer
awkwardness of my body. “Hi. I wanted to talk to you—“

“It’s done, Molly. I already sold him the place. I’m
so very sorry.”

But I waved my hand in the air. I knew everything
was done, that I couldn’t change the past. But I could make amends. “No. I
wanted to talk to you about all the payments I owe you. I know I owe you
thousands of dollars. I want you to know—that I’m going to pay you back.”

The landlord’s eyebrow twitched as he peered at me.
His black eyes were like daggers. “You want to pay me back?” he asked, as if he
were shocked into disbelief.

I nodded. I swallowed slowly, my mind racing. I was
sure that I could find the money. If not now, I could orchestrate a series of
payments.
A hundred dollars here, a hundred dollars there.
Perhaps it would take one hundred years, but I would pay him back. “I need to
pay you back. I always meant to. I wanted to let you know that our working
relationship can’t be over until I’ve paid my debt to you.” I felt the strength
of my words; I felt a sense of adulthood come over me like a wave. Perhaps this
was all adulthood would really be; standing up to your fears, to your mess-ups.
Standing, unflinching, and accepting them whole-heartedly as your own.

But the landlord put his long fingers into the air
and arched his left eyebrow. “I’m so sorry, Molly. I simply can’t allow you to
pay me back.” His voice was direct, if a little soft. He was talking down to
me, I knew, even as I tried to rise to his level.

“You don’t understand, I don’t think,” I said
hesitantly. I wanted to make things right! I wanted to make things even.

“I do, Molly. And I appreciate it, truly. You’ve
been a marvelous tenant.” He said it so succinctly, like there was no dispute.

I shook my head. “I don’t think you understand. I—I
didn’t pay you. I haven’t been marvelous, even for a moment.”

But he shook his head, allowing his long, white
fingers to elongate once more. In my head, they looked like spiders—or long
snakes. “No, Molly. I don’t want to deal with payments until the final days of
your life. I’m cutting you off. You’re free. Everything that’s happened between
us will not follow you, will not haunt you. Go off, and start a new life
somewhere else. If that means you start a dance studio or a nudist colony, I
don’t care. Just go. Be. Live. Do well. I believe in you. I always have.” He
smiled at me and winked at me for a moment, his face happy—content.

My arms went limp on either side of my body. I shook
my head in disbelief at such kindness. “How can I—how can I thank you?” I
sputtered.

He stood up and reached across the desk. I stood up
to greet his hand, to shake it like a true adult. “Just by living the best you
can,” he murmured. He tapped at his desk a bit loudly, and his secretary opened
the door on the other side, allowing me an easy exit. “Be well.”

I stepped from the leasing office, feeling the fire
once more in my belly. Anything was possible, even in the wake of all that had
come before. I could continue down this path of wellness, of beauty. I could
create the world I wanted to live in. I leaped in the air, high like a
ballerina in front of the leasing office, feeling the October wind whip around
my long arms, my pretty legs. I giggled with glee. Everything was going to be
okay.

CHAPTER
FOUR

I was floating on air when I finally arrived back to
my apartment. I walked to my mailbox and opened it to find a bill.
Just one bill.
I flapped it against my thigh, still thinking
about the previous day’s efforts. My keys jangled in my hand as I neared my
door. I was thinking about all I would have to do that evening, all I would
have to calculate. How much could I make if I charged this much and had this
many students? How much could I make if I paid this much for rent—and perhaps
got a different apartment, one that was even cheaper, even shittier? The
numbers revolved fast in my brain.

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.

“Can I help you?” one of the tellers asked. She was
a young, rather chubby woman wearing a blue dress.

“I’d like to ask for a loan,” I murmured, sending
the financial information her way across the counter.

She paused, peering down at the intricate
spreadsheets. “All right,” she said hesitantly. “Everything seems in order.
We’ll send you to the loan offices down the hall.” She stamped a particular
piece of paper and asked me to sign it with all of my information. I nodded at
her and accepted the crisp sheet, turning toward the back room and following my
shaking feet.

At the loan offices I sat with my leg crossed over
the other, nodding and shaking my head at questions the loan officer asked me.
I felt so earnestly nervous, so certain that the loan wouldn’t go through. I
tried to explain my predicament to him.
“So.
I found
this wonderful new dance studio. I just need a bit more money to get the ball
rolling. But after that, I know exactly how much to charge, how many people I
need to have in order to break
even,
and also to make
a profit.
Which would be really incredible.
” I nodded,
tapping at the paper before me.

But this was uninteresting to the loan officer
before me. He simply explained the intricacies of what would happen if I didn’t
pay for the bills, if I didn’t ultimately pay back the loan. He explained how
the interest racked up over the months, making it even more difficult to pay it
back. My heart felt desolate in my chest as I listened to his words strumming
across my brain. Why was it so difficult to do everything? Why was it so
difficult to be a real person?

But I grinned. I gripped hard to my hope that
everything would be okay. I signed papers that day for a loan—one that allowed
me to make a down payment on the new studio. I looked down at the paper—at this
beacon of hope, at this representation of my dreams—and nearly felt tears fall
down my face. I looked at the loan officer as if there had been some sort of
mistake. “Are you sure? Are you sure you want to approve me?”

But the loan officer simply yelled out to his
secretary, a rather pudgy woman whose legs forced her body to waddle as she
churned from his office to her chair, over and over again throughout the day.
“NEXT.”

I scurried from the office, eager to tell
someone—anyone—about the loan. I called Mel. On the other line, she seemed
distracted but eager to listen. She was holding Jackson, and I could hear the
way his lips bumbled together as he spoke nonsensical, one-year-old words.
“That’s so great, Molly! I always knew you could do it!” I pictured her with
spit-up on her shoulder, and I grinned—knowing always that this was what she
wanted. This was the life she had chosen.

I hopped along to my apartment, feeling like
everything was coming together. As I walked down the hall, I yearned for Drew
to come bursting out of his apartment, to say sorry once more. But I knew I
needed to wait to see him until Saturday. I realized that I missed simply
having someone to talk to—someone around. My tireless existence in my sad-sack
apartment was getting rather lonely.

CHAPTER
SIX

The next few days went rather smoothly. I made the
appropriate calls to the woman, Carol, who owned the studio above The Goat Pub.
I couldn’t wait to get into the studio and get my hands
dirty,
make it what it needed to be. It was October, and with the loan money I had
received I assumed I wouldn’t have to rush into anything. I could wait until
the end of the holiday season to begin having dance classes again, if I wanted
to. Start at a good time, a good place.
A new year.
I
hummed as I worked over the spreadsheets, thinking about all the new routines I
could show the girls. Maybe I could even introduce a hip hop class?
A tap class?
Burst beyond the realms of ballet, of
old-fashioned Tchaikovsky?