Hill’s neck muscles tightened. He had not forgotten how great sex was or even just making out on the couch, but imagining doing those things now—with this new body and all its scars—made dread wash through him. After his accident, Christina had stopped sleeping with him. At first he’d thought it was because she was afraid she’d hurt him, but once he’d found out about Josh, he’d figured out the truth. She wasn’t attracted to him anymore and was getting what she needed from someone else.
“I don’t think I’m ready for the dating scene yet, but I hear what you’re saying,” Hill said, knowing his friend’s heart was in the right place. “Maybe I can find some way to get moving on the finding-a-new-career thing. Andi offered to give me a tour of the coworking space where she has an office. She said meeting people who are doing all kinds of different things can be inspiring. And there’s a test kitchen there that food vloggers use.”
Ramsey paused midbite and lowered his burger. “What the fuck? You let me get halfway through lunch without telling me that part? She wants to show you around where she works? Help you figure out what you want to be when you grow up? You dumbass, you totally should’ve asked her out. You’ve got zero game. No, not even zero—negative points would have to be given.”
Hill leaned back in his chair and flipped his friend off. Ramsey was a pain in the ass, but Hill loved that he still treated him like he had before the accident. Other people had become more careful around him, like he was so fragile he’d break. Ramsey still regularly insulted him. It was the best. “Fuck you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ramsey said, unperturbed. “But at least now you have a second chance to get this shit right. Tell her you’ll take that tour and then ask her out for coffee after or something.”
“And if she only sees me as the disabled firefighter she wants to help out because she’s a charitable person?”
He shrugged. “Then at least you know what’s what. And hey, she could become your hot friend and then I can ask her out. Because”—he picked up Hill’s phone again and turned Andi’s headshot his way—“hell yes.”
Hill grabbed his phone out of Ramsey’s hand. “Stay away from my neighbor. Our walls are thin, and I can’t handle that kind of trauma.”
Ramsey chuckled and went back to his food.
They moved on to a different conversation, but Hill couldn’t get the previous one out of his head. Andi had absolutely not been flirting with him, but he found himself fantasizing about that being the case. That she’d come over because she was interested. That she’d invited him on a tour because she wanted to spend more time with him.
But as quickly as he let the thoughts spool, they started to unravel. He was deluding himself, and if he let those thoughts go in that direction, he’d end up embarrassing himself. He knew he needed to take baby steps, and Ramsey was probably right. He should have a hookup at some point to get past that initial fear and dread of sleeping with someone. But doing that with Andi would be a terrible idea, even if she was interested. Beyond the fact that she was his neighbor and tenant, a hookup was supposed to be a temporary, fleeting thing. Lighthearted. Low stakes.
Nothing about Andi said low stakes.
She seemed like the kind of woman who would make a guy want to push in all his chips. Bet the house.
He couldn’t afford to risk that much again. He’d already lost it all.
Andi Lockley was off-limits.
Chapter Five
“Every woman knows what it’s like to contemplate murder. Not as the perpetrator—though some ex-bosses and ex-boyfriends can definitely inspire a fleeting thought—but her own murder. The loud guy trying to sell you something in the street. The man two aisles away in the grocery store who’s watching you instead of inspecting the quality of the tangerines that are on sale. The random grammatically challenged dude on Instagram who thinks your pics with your dog ‘r real sexxy.’
“We’re all familiar with that sick pang of warning in our guts, the tensing of muscles in our legs, our bodies readying themselves to bolt, or even just that vague sense of unease.” Andi paused the recording to edit out a place where she’d coughed. She hit Play again. “Listeners, that feeling is your personal oh-shit detector. Listen to it. Be best friends with it. Trust it like you trust your hairdresser. Don’t let anyone tell you it’s silly, that you’re overreacting, that you’re being ridiculous.
“I think Janice Walters trusted her oh-shit detector about her new coworker. She brought up concerns about Cliff Bastrop to her boss, that she had a bad feeling about the new guy. Her concerns were dismissed. Where was the proof? He was a nice guy. He was helpful. He always had a compliment for every woman in the office. No one but Janice seemed to question why he was so ready to help, to go out of his way for the ladies in the office, until one night when she was the last one out the building and Bastrop was waiting there to help her carry things to her car. Before she could decline, he grabbed her, the file box she’d been carrying hit the ground, and no one ever saw Janice alive again.”
Andi inhaled deeply, trying not to imagine the scene and to focus on the podcast recording. She knew getting Janice’s story out there was important, knew her listeners needed to hear the message the story held, but she also didn’t want to have a complete freak-out the next time she had to leave WorkAround at night. Covering these cases and managing her anxiety was a fine line to walk every day.
Horror and true crime gave her an outlet to process her anxiety in a safe way. After what she’d been through as a teenager, she’d worried that she was demented for finding solace in this stuff, but her therapist had explained that it wasn’t uncommon. She’d given Andi a stack of research articles to show her she wasn’t alone. Andi had learned that the majority of true-crime enthusiasts were women. And horror movies and fiction were as popular with women as they were with men. Her therapist had said watching horror or studying true crime could act almost like exposure therapy, women looking their biggest fears straight in the face and coming up with mental plans for how they could keep themselves safe.
For instance, with Janice’s story, Andi wanted her listeners to hear that trusting the this-guy-makes-me-uncomfortable feeling wasn’t only valid, it could be lifesaving. And not to let others dismiss their instincts.
It was one of the main reasons Andi had started the podcast. She wanted to shine light on things that often remained in the dark otherwise. Scary stories gave people fuel to protect themselves. Those stories gave them proof that their fears or bad feelings or instincts weren’t “overreacting” or “being silly.” There was power in knowing that. In not letting society gaslight you into thinking you were being paranoid if you carried mace or sent a photo of the guy you were going home with to a friend or didn’t accept a drink that you didn’t see poured. Knowledge truly was power.