I immediately felt eighteen again.
And it’s so stupid.
I’m not eighteen anymore. Or twenty. Or twenty-four. I am none of the ages when Andrew stole my voice and morphed me into who he wanted me to be for him. I’m thirty years old. I should be over this.
Except, how can I get over him when he’s always there when I go home? Waiting for me to make a mistake. To slip up. To kiss him like I did three Christmases ago.
I had just received another rejection email from another literary agent. Wrong time, wrong tropes, wrong everything. It was the same story and the same disappointment. And well, Andrew was in my room when I got home. On my bed. And he felt like a comforting memory because he was something that I knew. Sometimes the things that feel comfortable are the things that hold us back, but in that moment, I just needed to be held.
After thirty minutes of our lips remembering each other, he’d pulled back and said, “Quit trying to be something you aren’t, RayRay. Don’t you miss this? Miss me?”
I push up toward the surface, gasping for a breath of fresh air.
The bathroom door opens, and Lily pokes her head in. “Hey, Mal’s on the phone.”
“Oh,” I gasp, trying to find my breath.
I texted Mal when we got up to Evan’s room. Lily was insistent we come to his room instead of mine. Better bathtub andamenities she said, and I hate to admit that I feel safer here. As if somehow Evan’s room can protect me, since I have this eerie feeling that KillerPlotTwist knows my room number.
“We’ve been talking, and we think she should send Wonton to guard you. He’d be like your Rajah. I always wanted a pet tiger like Princess Jasmine, but Wonton sounds like he would do,” she rattles off.
Of course, she’s been talking to Mal. Lily doesn’t know a stranger, and I’m convinced it’s because she wants to make sure she has all the information she needs up front so she doesn’t have to tiptoe around conversations or pretend to like someone she will eventually hate.
“Wonton is probably friends with KillerPlotTwist,” I say.
Lily laughs at this. “A cat with a phone and a fanfiction account. Now that’s something I’d love to see! Could his username be WhiskeredWords? Or PurrfectPlots?”
I shake my head and then extend my hand, gloved in bubbles, for my phone.
Lily dries off my hand before placing my phone in it.
“Hey, Mal,” I say.
“Rach! Are you okay?” she asks immediately.
Lily smiles at me before she leaves, shutting the door behind her.
I breathe a sigh of comfort simply hearing her voice on the phone. “I’m fine. I mean, I will be fine. I just didn’t handle the situation like I should have.”
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“I should have told that creep that he doesn’t really see me, he just sees what he wants to and that my skin was crawling with cooties just looking at him,” I say.
Mal laughs, but I hear the reservation in her tone. “Rach, this could be serious.”
“Because I let it get serious,” I admit. “He messaged me last night. I should have told someone about the message.”
Evan’s voice is clear in my mind.“Do you think at all?”
I wanted to yell back. To tell him that I overthink everything, but overthinking is how you killed dreams and optimism.
“Rach, you aren’t in the wrong here. Thestalkeris in the wrong,” Mal says.
She’s right. I know she’s right.
But also, I feel like I’m kind of in the wrong.
“Lily seems nice,” Mal adds.
