Page 60 of She Used to Be Nice
He knew. He fucking knew.
Is that all they are, Noah?she wished she could scream back, but the words were lodged deep in her throat and she couldn’t dig them out.Just stupid drunken hookups? What if one person was significantly more drunk than the other, couldn’t stand up straight or speak in complete sentences? What would you have to say about those? About what you did to me?
She buried herself in Instagram, her only real distraction from this current hell. But when she opened the app, the first post on her newsfeed was a zoomed-in picture of Dave Moore’s crusty face and a caption summarizing the accounts of the two women who’d accused him of sexual assault. She quickly scrolled past it and clicked off her phone. Was there no escape?
“Avery, I’ve been meaning to ask, is Pete free the weekend of the bachelor party?” Charlie asked. “My coworker can’t make it anymore so we have an extra room, if you wanna bring him.”
Avery slid her gaze to Morgan, who’d just re-entered the living room carrying a bowl of pretzels. Morgan put the bowl down and clapped her hands excitedly. Had she put Charlie up to this?
“Oooh, yes! Invite him!” she squealed. “We need to even out the guys and the girls.”
“Yeah, otherwise I’ll look like I have no friends,” Charlie said with a laugh.
“Who’s Pete?” Noah asked.
None of your fucking business. “This guy I’m seeing,” Avery said. “No big deal.”
“His name’s Pete DeFranco,” Charlie explained. “We were buddies in college but lost touch after graduation, so Avery definitely knows him better now. We worked at G.E. Records together in Boston. I brought him around Woodford a few times, but I don’t think you would’ve been there, Noah. Were you at the Dino-Whores party?”
Noah pursed his lips in thought. “Nope, can’t say I was.”
Charlie gave him a playful shove. “Randall kids were too cool for that, I get it.”
“It’s possible that I met him there,” Blair offered. “But I have literally no idea. Everyone was in those ridiculous dinosaur costumes. I don’t remember.”
Avery looked at Morgan, who gazed hopefully back. It was as if Morgan thought the confirmation that Blair and Noah had never met Pete was all Avery needed to hear to bring him around the friend group. It certainly didn’t hurt, but Pete meeting people from Woodford now could still risk him having conversations that Avery wasn’t comfortable with him having yet.
Then she sighed. She supposed this integration would have to happen eventually if she wanted any shot at being normal again.
“Is it weird if I invite him to the bachelor party but not the wedding?” she asked.
“Who said you’re not inviting him to the wedding?” Morgan teased.
“Okay, let me rephrase. Is it weird if I invite him to the bachelor party when I’mnot sure yetif I’m inviting him to the wedding?”
“I think they’re different,” Charlie said with a bemused shrug. “The bachelor party is just a party, at the end of the day. The more, the merrier.”
Morgan nodded. “Totally agree. The wedding is way more formal. Definitely a higher bar to entry. Anyone would understand that.”
Avery needed to seriously think about all of this, if she wanted to keep seeing Pete. Which she did. And there would come a point where isolating him from her friends would seem strange, the ironic, self-fulfilling prophecy of not wanting him to suspect anything by behaving in ways that were suspicious.Thatmight spark more questions from him than anything else.
“All right,” she said. “Maybe I’ll see if he’s free.”
“Yay!” Morgan cheered. “You should help plan the weekend, too. You were so good at doing the bridal shower. Why don’t you and Noah find stuff for us to do in Colorado?”
“Like drinking,” Charlie added, holding up his beer.
“That sounds good to me,” Noah said earnestly, like this was a serious request from his dumb investors that he’d prioritize immediately. Avery would’ve treated it the same way if she’d been asked to work on it with anyone else. But all she felt was panic. “Avery?”
She reflexively turned toward the sound of her name, then looked away when she realized it was Noah who’d said it.
“Here.” Morgan took out her phone. “Let me text Noah your number—”
“No!”
The word flew out of Avery’s mouth before she could stop it. She lunged forward and tried to knock Morgan’s phone out of her hand, prompting Morgan to shriek in surprise. Avery’s heart beat violently in her chest, inching up her throat. Everyone stared at her, alarmed and confused.
“Sorry,” Avery muttered.Chill out, chill out, chill out.“I … uh, lost my balance for a second.” Avery wiped the dust off her pants. Blair stared at her with one sharp eyebrow raised. Morgan’s head was tilted to the side in worry. “It’s fine, yeah. Sorry. You can … you can give him my number.”
