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Chapter Twelve
Andi was lying in bed two hours after Hill left, still wide awake. She’d almostkissedhim. When he’d held her, had been so kind and gentle about her fear instead of dismissing it, that frazzled part inside her had settled for a moment. She’d had the thought,Maybe him. Like maybe this was the guy who could finally help her push past her anxiety about getting physical with someone. That maybe she could have a normal night where she’d had a cute guy over and ended the date with a kiss.
But the minute she’d pushed up on her toes, intending to kiss him, a surge of panic had nearly knocked her on her ass. Flashes of terrifying things had flickered through her mind like a horror movie on fast-forward. She was alone in a house with a man—one she barely knew. She’d stopped checking in with Eliza hours ago, so no one knew he was still there. If she kissed him and he wanted to take it further than she did, she’d have no way to physically stop him. All of it had flooded her brain, dousing any desire she’d had with cold water.
She’d kissed his cheek and backed away, hoping to God he wouldn’t be able to see the panic coursing through her. She’d been stupid to think she could justdecidethat she could do this now. That she could handle interacting with a guy in that way. She’d been telling herself a story that when she felt ready, when she found a man she was comfortable with, she could do this. Like it was an actual decision she had control over. Her brain and nervous system had reminded her tonight who was really in control. Anxiety was a fucking dictator, not an elected official. You couldn’t simply vote it out of office. Anxiety grinned its evil grin and told you to take a seat.
And that realization had made her…furious.
Furious with herself. Furious with the situation. And furious with the disgusting bastard who had broken these things inside her. Even in jail, Evan Longdale was still stealing things from her—her sense of safety, her chance at a normal life, the simple pleasure of being able to kiss a man she’d shared a nice night with.
It made her want to throw things.
It made her want to cry.
It had her feeling trapped in a way that made it hard to breathe.
If she were the star in her own horror movie, the villain was winning. He had been for a really long time. She often liked to think of herself as the badass final girl—that was the kind of heroine she wrote in her books—but she’d been faced with the hard truth tonight. She was no Laurie Strode or Ellen Ripley or Sidney Prescott. She wasn’t standing up and facing her fears and telling those fears to fuck off. She was carefully orchestrating a life around them.
And she was fucking tired of it.
She sat up, pushed her blankets off, and got out of bed to grab her laptop. By the time the first rays of dawn started to peek through her windows, she’d already consumed two cups of coffee and had finished a long email to Eliza. Then she took a breath and opened up a new document in the program she used to outline her novels. She clicked to the spot meant for the title of the book.
Here goes nothing.
Before thinking too hard about it, she typed inThe Revenge of Andrea Lockley.
Time to write a story no one else would see, a new story for herself.
***
Eliza flipped through the mostly blank pages Andi had plopped in front of her at their favorite Mexican place a few hours later. Andi was bouncing her knee beneath the table, hyped up on lack of sleep and too much caffeine. She put another tortilla chip in her mouth, trying to absorb some of the coffee she’d had.
“Well,” Eliza said, finally looking up, “I always knew you were smart,chica, but you just inadvertently outlined a type of therapy that already exists—with what I’m guessing is no prior knowledge of it.”
Andi swallowed her mouthful of tortilla chip. “What do you mean?”
“You wanting to rewrite your own story—making yourself an external character and writing her book—it’s a version of something called narrative therapy. I’m not trained in it, but I know the general overview.”
“You’re shitting me,” Andi said, leaning forward on her forearms. “This is a thing?”
“I shit you not,” Eliza said with a little smile. “I should’ve thought of it before. You’re a writer. Telling stories is what you do. Recasting yourself as the heroine in the story, modeling yourself after those heroines in the books and movies you like so much, might be really powerful for you.”
A little spark of hope went through Andi. “I was lying in bed last night after everything and I was so mad, Eliza. So freaking mad.”
“Mad is good,” she said, dragging a chip through the salsa.
“And I realized that if I were reading the book of my life, I’d be really frustrated with the heroine. She’s overcome a lot, but she’s letting what happened to her as a teenager define her life. If I turned in that kind of story to my editor, she’d send it back with red marks about a weak lead who doesn’t transform. She’s not on the hero’s journey.”
Eliza gave her an empathetic look. “She’s not weak, Andi. Maybe she’s just in the early part of her story. Maybe this is only Act One.”
The thought buoyed Andi, and she appreciated Eliza talking about her in the third person like she was a separate person, a character. That was the flash of insight she’d had last night. If she could step outside herself and see herself as a character in one of her books, it would be easier to map out a plan. Easier not to get caught up in the anxiety of imagining those moves for herself. “So, do you think this could work?”
Eliza considered her, a little wrinkle in her brow. “I think…that you’re capable of anything. Let’s get that out of the way first. But”—she flattened a hand against the table as if bracing herself—“I really worry about you doing this without a therapist to guide you. Part of the narrative-therapy thing is that sometimes we tell negative stories about ourselves that aren’t necessarily true. A therapist can offer another perspective.”
Andi frowned and sagged back in her chair. “I see what you’re saying, but therapy is out of the question right now. What little insurance I have doesn’t cover it, and this is the first time in a long time I’ve felt motivated to tackle this, so I don’t want to wait until I can afford therapy.”
Eliza rolled her lips together and nodded, then a little smirk peeked out. “Well, therapist me will tell you to be careful and that you know you can always talk to me. But friend me is really proud of you and pulling for you. I think you already are a badass movie heroine.”
