Hook Me Up - Ali Parker

Chapter 1

Hailey

His name was Chuck, with a “CK.” I had to click my tongue against the back of my teeth to really get the sound right. He’d showed me about ten times over the course of our less than mediocre first date, but I’d yet to get it right. My tongue didn’t pop against the back of my tongue properly and it felt like I was making an ass of myself each and every time. The sound came out in a half slur, half snap, and now I’d reduced myself to just not calling him by name.

A foolproof strategy really.

Chuck wasn’t at all my type. I wasn’t quite sure he was anyone’s type.

He wasn’t tall, dark, or handsome, and he wasn’t blond and buff either. He didn’t have the broad shoulders I’d usually swoon over or the athletic body type that sometimes got my motor running, like a hockey player.

Drool. Hockey players.

But that fantasy wasn’t anything like the man sitting across from me. I supposed I wasn’t his idea of a perfect woman, either. I was on the shorter side. And I was definitely a little fuller in person than my online-dating profile suggested.

And by a little fuller, I meant a good thirty or forty pounds. I knew I had to change the picture. My sister Hannah had been insisting over and over that I wouldn’t have any less interest by showing my real self online. In fact, she’d tell me in her feminine sing-song voice, you’ll attract the right men who want you just as you are, and you won’t have to waste time on bozos with shallow intentions.

But that was all easier said than done.

Take Chuck for example. The photo I’d seen of him prior to meeting him at the restaurant for our blind date had let on that he might be a little firmer and more handsome than he actually was. Perhaps that was because he hadn’t been able to talk from said photo.

But in person?

Off-putting, I thought as I took a big sip of chilled white wine. Very off-putting.

Chuck was like a guy from a home improvement show. Problem was, he wasn’t the handyman. He was the project.

Somewhere in the middle of our fancy dinner and strained conversation, I’d come to the conclusion that my sister hated me, though she claimed to be my very closest friend. The bitch hates me, and I’m going to get her back good for this date.

I could see her now, sitting in her living room, eating Ben and Jerry’s, and laughing her ass off as she pictured me right where I was on this Godforsaken date. She had a friend? Chuck was a friend of hers? From where? The bottom of the barrel no other women were looking in?

“And then I told this old boy that…” Chuck had been going on about some story he thought I absolutely needed to hear again while I cursed my sister. He’d already run through so much date material I could hardly keep up.

So I’d stopped trying.

Besides, who called another grown man “old boy?” I smiled politely across the table from him and began to mentally work through my options to get the hell out of Dodge. I could feign an impromptu illness, press the side of my hand to my forehead and lean back in my chair like I was going to faint, and finish the event with a breathless feminine sigh before telling him I was feeling ill and needed to go home to lie down and rest.

Classy but too much effort. And there was always that risk that he’d be one of those guys who wanted to be my superhero and whisk me out of the restaurant in his arms.

Ick. No thank you.

I could knock the candle over between us and set the restaurant on fire.

Too expensive.

I could start choking and hold my breath until the ambulance got there.

Too dangerous.

Jackson.

Yes, I thought as relief washed over me. There it was. My escape. My exit strategy. My forever knight in shining armor.

I could text Jackson to save me again. He would give me shit for months to come, but that was what best friends were for. They were there to pull you out of the deep when you were drowning in your own self-pity. He’d done it a million times. Tonight would be no different.

“Could you excuse me for just a minute?” I took my white napkin off my lap and set it on the edge of the table beside my wine glass.

Chuck