When It Hooks You

by Nicki Elson

  “Sorry.” One side of Cliff’s mouth went up in a sheepish grin.

  “Account giving you trouble? Anything I can help with?” Karen strolled into his office and leaned her rump against the edge of his desk. She’d become his unofficial mentor at the firm.

  “No, but thanks. My woes are personal in nature.”

  “I’d be happy to give that a go, too. My experience isn’t only in mergers and acquisitions, ya know.” She’d been satisfactorily married for eight years.

  He didn’t think anything she’d say could ease his anxiety, but he asked a question, anyway, for the sake of diverting the focus from him. “How did you and Steve meet?”

  “At a bar.” She shrugged. “I know, most boring origins story ever. But he had a girlfriend at the time, so that spices things up a little, no?”

  “He cheated on her with you?”

  “No. He thought he was in love and stayed faithful. We were just friends for a while.”

  “Really?” Cliff sat up straighter. “How did that change?”

  “With lots of patience on my part. I started feeling something more for him early on, but I was too afraid to act on it, even after he and his girlfriend broke up. I wasn’t sure he felt the same way about me, and I didn’t want to risk the friendship.”

  Cliff thought back to several months earlier when he and Trish had tried a friends-with-benefits relationship. He’d foolishly hoped the physical connection would bust them out of the friend zone and into a full-on romance. Instead, Adam Helms had interfered from a zillion miles away. Trish hadn’t yet gotten over her breakup with the globe-trotting businessman. She’d broken down while she and Cliff were half naked. At that point, Cliff would’ve been a complete jackass to have tried to coax her into doing anything but cry it out. He hoped he wasn’t a jerkoff for having…well, jerked off later that night while imaging the things he and Trish would’ve done together had Adam never existed.

  Effing Helms.

  “But then one night,” Karen continued, “Steve walked up and planted one on me. Honest to God—my knees went weak. He’d just needed some time to figure out that our friendship meant more to him, too.”

  “Sweet,” Cliff said, smiling.

  “Yeah.” Karen stood. “You tell anyone outside this office there’s so much as a hint of sweetness in my history, I’ll break your kneecaps. Can’t risk my ballbuster reputation.”

  Cliff laughed. “Right.” If there was anything threatening about Karen Keefer’s reputation, it was that she’d kill with kindness—and impeccably sound contract language. He knew from stories he’d heard from other freshmen attorneys that he was very lucky to have landed Karen as a mentor.

  “So, you good?” she asked, eyeing him with a skeptical eyebrow half raised. “No more clumsy attempts to fornicate with…” She looked around the room. “Whatever you were asking to do you earlier?”

  “I’m good,” he said, nodding. Her story actually had helped. Perhaps he wasn’t a total moron for thinking his friendship with Trish could one day turn into something more.

  “Okay, then, see you in the conference room in a few hours.” Karen left his office.

  He sighed, once again alone with his tousled emotions. He’d thought he’d managed to get his longing for Trish under control, had convinced himself he was perfectly fine with friendship-only. The thundering of his pulse ever since Adam’s drop-in proved differently, however.

  But perhaps Helms’ reappearance was the best thing that could happen. Cliff had meant it when he’d told Trish several weeks earlier that she might need to see Adam again in order to fully get over him. Now she could tell the guy to his face to piss off, and that would give her the closure she needed…thus bringing her one step closer to moving on and seeing how much better Cliff was for her.

  His eyes flicked toward his phone lying dormant just a few inches away. Waiting to hear from her was going to be torture.

  Preparing for and attending the evening meeting had taken Cliff’s mind off Trish. But the moment he was back in his office, he went directly to his phone. There was no message from her. That could potentially be bad. It might mean she was mad at him for sending Adam her way. Cliff thought of sending a text, but called her instead. It was much harder to ignore an actual phone call. Yet she did it, anyhow—after a number of rings, he ended up in her voice mail.

  “Hi, uhm, yeah, it’s Cliff. I hope you’re not mad. I honestly thought it would be best for you to see him…to…ah…get anything off your chest that you needed to. I’m sorry if I was wrong about that. Please don’t hate me. If you need to, pretend your pillow is me and punch the crap out of it tonight. But call or text in the morning so I can be sure we’re still friends, okay?” He clicked off. “I’m pathetic.”

  And selfish, he added silently, realizing that whether or not Trish was mad at Cliff, she was probably upset about Adam, and her distress over that should’ve been the focus of his message. He picked up the phone to call her again, but stopped. He’d already asked her to call the next day. He should leave her alone for the rest of the night. He tossed his files into his briefcase and went home.

  After unwinding with a glass of scotch in his eleventh-floor Streeterville apartment, he washed up for bed and changed into a pair of pajama bottoms. He pulled out the sofa bed and determined that it was time to upgrade from a studio apartment to a one bedroom. Despite his respectable starting salary, he’d been frugal during his first year at the law firm in case it proved to be a bad fit. But things were going well for him at River South. It was time to make the change.

  His phone buzzed with a text just as he pulled back the covers.

  Still up?

  Yes. How are you?

  I’m going to call.

  A few seconds later, his phone rang. He crammed as much compassion as he could into one short syllable: “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Trish said, followed by what sounded an awful lot like a giggle.

  “So, you’re doing okay?” he ventured, hoping he hadn’t misinterpreted the sound.

  “Um, yeah, I’m doing great.” There was that noise again.

  “I take it you’re not mad at me.”

  “Quite the opposite. We’ve decided you should be the ring bearer at our wedding.”

  She might as well have lobbed an army boot straight into his gut. He couldn’t breathe. “W—Wedding?” he choked through his suddenly dry mouth.

  “Just kidding! I mean, not to say a wedding in the far future isn’t a possibility, but for now we’re taking it slow.”

  Slow? What the hell did that mean? Why was she taking anything anywhere with this guy? “So…you forgave him? For everything? Just like that, he’s back to Mr. Wonderful?” He hoped he’d done a decent job of keeping the whine out of his voice.

  “Not ‘just like that.’ We talked a ton, and we still have a lot more talking to do, but we set all that aside for a few hours to give ourselves a chance to start over again, get to know each other better before we jump back to where we were.”

  “How are you going to get to know each other when you live in Chicago and he lives all over the world?” Last fall she’d been ready to walk away from everything to follow Mr. Magical.

  “Modern communications technology and aeronautic travel—mostly on his part. He’s still got a lot of butt kissing to do, and he knows I’m committed to the Mji management training program for the next three years, which he fully supports.”

  Cliff nodded. “Good,” was the only response he could muster.

  “I know I probably seem like a huge idiot to give him another chance.” She must’ve picked up on the resentment in his tone. “But wouldn’t it be more stupid to walk away from someone who makes me feel the way he does? You’re the one who told me many moons ago that everyone else was looking for what Adam and I had. If he’s willing to give us another try, then so am I.” Her voice was steady, unwavering in her conviction. If Cliff had detected a fissure of doubt to wriggle into, he’d have exploited it. But no such
opportunity existed. Then, as if needing to drive her point home, she added, “No other man in the world makes me light up like he can.”

  That stung. Cliff had always been able to make Trish light up in a smile or ignite in a laugh. During the past year, he’d been the one to reassure her and let her cry in his arms. He’d lifted her up after Helms had knocked her so far down. Yet she remained stubbornly blind to all the ways Cliff could illuminate her.

  Why did he continually fall back under her spell when he knew very damn well where it would land him? After their failed attempt to get physical, he’d pulled back. He’d accepted that friends was all they’d ever be. He was fine with that. He was great with that. Then time passed, Helms had vanished, and she’d seemed uninterested in dating other guys, giving his hope all the fertile ground it needed to again take root.

  He hadn’t realized how wildly that hope had flourished until Helms had shown up that afternoon. Cliff had to rip it out, remove all traces. He could get back to the steady place where he’d been. But he needed a night to recalibrate. He had to end this conversation—now.

  “I’m glad for you,” he said, and then let out a calculated yawn. “Would it be rude for me to beg off now? It’s late and I’ve got to meet with a demanding partner tomorrow.”

  “Yes, of course. Sorry I kept you up.”

  “Don’t be sorry. It’s great to hear you happy. I trust your judgment, so ignore my skepticism. It’s just something good friends do.” When lying, cheating douchebags roll into town to steal their girl, he kept from adding.

  “You’re the best, Cliff.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  She let out a small laugh. “Goodnight, sweetie.”

  “’Night, darlin’.”

  He clicked off the phone and sat still on the edge of his mattress. “Shit,” he breathed out in a slow hiss. He jerked himself to standing and went to the kitchen counter, leaning on his elbows and clasping his hands together. For a long while, he stared at the bottle of scotch but made no move to open it. Drinking wouldn’t improve his mood.

  He bowed his head, clamping his eyes tight, as if the pressure of his eyelids could ease his internal pain. Giving up on that, he slowly opened his eyes, looking straight at the slight paunch of his bare waist curving above the waistband of his pajama pants. A workout would soothe his nerves. He’d been more faithful to the gym recently, determined to get back to fighting weight. He was making good progress, but Chicago deep dish and beef sandwiches were wicked sirens. Lord knew was a fool for wicked sirens…

  But Trish wasn’t wicked. She was open-hearted, caring, fun, smart, and so damned beautiful. He should’ve turned and run the second he’d seen her sitting at the reception desk on his first day at River South Partners. She’d been his unattainable crush throughout undergrad when they were both at University of Iowa. He should’ve known their dynamic would never change. Instead, he took the chance reunion as a sign that his time had finally come.

  Standing straight, he groaned at how wrong he’d been and lumbered to the living room. It was too late for the gym. Standing in front of the TV, he lowered to the spot on the rug that should’ve been imprinted with ass marks by now. He’d get a virtual workout via his latest video game. His abs were already perfectly toned in that world. And the beautiful girls were programmed to be into him.

  He started the game and focused on doing what he needed to do to level up. If he saw something nice for the non-player character he was romancing along the way, he’d pick it up for her. If only romancing Trish could be as easy. One law degree and a promising career later, he was still jonesing for this girl—and probably always would be. A cyborg jumped in front of him. On total reflex he leveled his ray gun, splitting the monster’s head into a hundred bits of oozing bone and metal.

  Acknowledgments

  I’m ever so grateful to my straight-shooting and insightful critique partner, Jennifer Lane.

  My gratitude also goes out to John Wharem for providing the invaluable guy’s perspective in his feedback.

  Endless appreciation to Coreen Montagna for polishing the manuscript and then bringing it to life with a beautiful cover and typesetting.

  About the Author

  Nicki writes spicy fiction with a sweet and dreamy center. She does other stuff, too—like obsess over reality TV. Writing fiction wasn’t something Nicki set out to do; it just sort of happened when she realized writing reports was by far her favorite part of her investment consulting position. She traded stock allocation and diversification for story arcs and dialogue and now weaves her creative writing time in with the other activities of her busy life with her family in the Chicago suburbs.

  You can find Nicki’s full collection of books at Amazon.