Page 36 of Mr. Hook-up

She had no reason to block me, so that couldn’t be it. But if she had, I was positive the message would still look as though it had gone through—at least on my end.

I knew she hadn’t reactivated her account on Hooked. I had this strange habit of checking every few weeks, even though I’d set up an alert to be notified. I just feared that the alert, for some reason, wouldn’t go through and Love would be on the app and I wouldn’t know.

But at this point, would it matter?

Six months or so had passed since we’d texted. The last few occasions had been because I’d reached out to her, and her replies—short, unemotional—had shown she’d already pulled away.

I wondered what had changed.

Distance, regardless of where she was, seemed so trivial when you had a connection like ours. When we’d matched so well. When we had so much in common and the most explosive chemistry.

I tried sending the message again, curious if I happened to be in a dead spot or if she was experiencing an outage.

Undelivered.

I needed to make sense of this, so I gave it one more shot. I found her number in my contacts, pressed her name, and held the phone to my ear. Within a few seconds, a recording came through the speaker.

The number had been disconnected.

What the fuck?

I tried again and the same recording repeated, the identical question filling my head.

It wasn’t like we were anything, but Love and I had been something.

Something that mattered to me.

Something that made me care about her.

Something that made me miss her.

And now, we were nothing.

If I had her name, I would look her up on social media. But we’d never exchanged that detail. It was like staring at her face and never seeing the color of her hair. A name was just blonde or brunette or red to me—and I loved all three.

But what I felt in my chest, that feeling was all her.

So was the image I saw in my head and every single detail that followed.

Despite our communication fading over the latter part of this year, I hadn’t anticipated her wiping me out of her life.

But that was what had happened.

Even if that wasn’t what I wanted.

Even if I wasn’t ready for it.

Maybe it was that realization that hurt the most.

Or maybe it was the fact that I’d fallen for a woman who hadn’t fallen for me.

PART TWO

They say to get right back up once you’ve been knocked down.

But do I stay kneeling on the ground, looking up the skirt of every woman walking by?

Or do I get on my feet only to fall ...

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