Out There

13. Andy

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” –Aristotle

Life in the city was everything Andy had ever wanted and more. Growing up, she had big ambitions. She knew the first time she laid eyes on a fashion catalogue at five years old that she’d never need anything other than clothes, shoes, and accessories.

Countless trips to the mall with her mother, spending all of her extra hours scouring the news online of the latest fashion lines, and all of her practicing drawing designs; it was all paying off.

She had been at her internship with Tanah and Ollie now for a little over two months. That first week was a blurry memory. She followed Laelli like a shadow, watching over his shoulder for the important things, running stupid errands.

Within that very first week, she had met her twin. Everything since then had been irrelevant. Briefly her mind flashed back to Wes, and a pang of longing stirred in her heart. She hadn’t seen him since that night.

He had been the only guy she had ever actually wanted to get to know. Rationally, she knew he probably had wanted to give her space— largely due to the fact that she’d just met her twin sister— but Andy wasn’t rational. She didn’t compartmentalize.

He was just another guy who never called.

This thought surprised her on her Sunday morning walk to the coffee shop. Neyna was back to working mostly full time and Andy was getting lonelier than ever. Greg refused to Skype with her. That bothered her.

Andy had never been interested in having a relationship before. She liked her freedom. She liked the idea of waking up and doing whatever she wanted to do. Naturally, Greg just went along for the ride. She never thought of him as a separate entity, as she would have thought of a boyfriend. He was simply coming with her, and that was all.

Wes had done something entirely different to her, though. He had sparked something inside her she’d never wanted to feel before. She had never asked Blake about him. He had barely even crossed her mind. She’d been so busy with Neyna, her internship, and Greg, that she hadn’t had time to ponder anything else.

Now that everything in her life was truly settling down, she had this humid Sunday morning to think about it. Wes wasn’t going to be the one for her. She knew that. If he were supposed to be the right man for her, she would have thought of him long before that present moment.

So maybe it wasn’t Wes himself. Maybe he served a greater purpose. Maybe Andy was starting to warm up to the idea that she might eventually want a boyfriend…even love.

Neen had taught Andy so much in such a short time. Everything with them had happened so quickly. Andy had witnessed a real love.

It wasn’t always between a man and a woman.

Sometimes the feeling snuck up on her. She’d be doing her hair or standing in line getting Laelli’s lunch, and she’d feel her mind begin to wander. It never got very far. Neyna was ever present in Andy’s mind, millions of times a day. She was never slow to follow every irrelevant thought.

She had this unyielding love for her sister. It possessed her with a fierceness that frankly scared her shitless. Never in her life had Andy’s life made more sense. The pull she had always felt towards this city may not have been about her fashion dream at all.

Sometimes there are bigger things in the world than the scope of the human mind. Neyna had said that to her, once. Either that, or she read it in a book.

The bell on the door of the coffee shop brought her back to her present. Andy followed a customer through the open door and smiled at her sister behind the counter.