Ask for Andrea (Ask for Andrea, #1)

by Noelle W. Ihli

“On a date that isn’t going well? Do you feel unsafe or just a little uneasy? Ask for Andrea at the bar. We’ll make sure you get home safe.”

I wasn’t breathing hard because I wasn’t breathing at all.

Not until I stood up—while my own body stayed put. I looked at the soft chambray pajamas I’d changed into after getting home from work, now dirty and damp. One of my slippers was kicked off, so you could see the chipped peach polish on my bare toes. My long, dark hair was streaked with something darker and sticky. I couldn’t feel the throbbing in my head or the awful pressure on my neck anymore.

“He’s gone,” I whispered. “You can wake up now.”

He was the kind of beautiful that drew you in before you even considered the fact that beautiful things can be poisonous.

The mix of happy and sad and anger and terror felt effervescent and tight. Like a pop bottle that’s been shaken up.

Sometimes I thought about what might happen if I, you know, stopped being a social caterpillar and transformed into a social butterfly.

“I don’t know the answer to those questions either, Bubbelah. What I know is that the people we loved on the other side are gone. I mourned you, like you mourned me when I died. But I have learned, as you know now, that the people we love are not gone forever. That everything we ever loved, ever did, ever said, ever read, ever experienced, comes back to us. See, here we are together.”

For now, I wanted to be here. I wasn’t ready to leave without the option of returning. I knew my resolve wouldn’t last forever. I wasn’t even sure what I was waiting to feel when someone finally found me. If, I reminded myself. If someone found me. All I knew was that I wanted to be found.

There were foxes, and there were hounds. And then there were the animals who didn’t fit into the natural order of things at all. Who meant the hurt they caused every time.