Page 17 of She Used to Be Nice
Avery took a breath. Only she knew that Noah’s generosity was a facade to hide the piece of shit he really was. But she couldn’tlet that derail her. She just needed to focus on herself, on figuring out how she would contribute financially to the wedding, too. She just needed to save some money. To stop getting expensive takeout from Seamless and start doing her laundry at a self-service laundromat instead of dropping it off at that place with the good softener down the block. Just because Noah was fooling everyone didn’t mean he was fooling Avery. And Avery would need to stay strong in the face of that until the wedding. She had no other choice.
6
AVERY DECIDED TO WALKhome from SoHo, through the cobblestone side streets lined with townhouses in neutral colors and luxury designer stores she’d never be able to afford. It would be a long walk uptown, but a refreshing late November breeze swirled in the air, and she needed to clear her head.
The sound of Ryan’s laughter was echoing in her mind, making her heart ache. There was so much she’d loved about him—his boyish charm, his athletic prowess, how dedicated he was to his friendships—but his sense of humor was her favorite. When you heard that infectious laugh booming across campus, youknewit was Ryan Donohue, and you wanted to know what the joke was so you could laugh, too. All their friends loved him for how much of a goofball he was. He was the kind of gregarious guy who rounded everyone up at a party to do haircuts, pouring peppermint schnapps and chocolate sauce into people’s mouths and encouraging them to swish it around so it tasted like a York Peppermint Pattie when they swallowed. He would always let Avery cut the line of people waiting for one, and if anyone tried to argue with him, he’d yell “But you’re not my girlfriend!” at them. He mostly did it to be funny, but it still made Avery feel special when he ushered her to the chair and winked at her while proceeding to use her mouth as a cocktail shaker. Everyone wanted a sliver of his attention, and all he wanted was to put his attention on her. Beingin Ryan’s corner was a good place to be. And for a while, for Avery, that corner was home.
And then she burned it all down, leaving nothing but ashes.
She still couldn’t believe their friends thought she would sleep with another man. How could they think she was capable of betraying Ryan in such an unforgivable way? She’d only slept with one guy before meeting Ryan at eighteen, and it was her high school boyfriend, Thomas, who’d been equally as nervous about losing his virginity as she was of losing hers. She even remembered not taking her shirt off. When they finally had “sex,” it ultimately amounted to just sixty seconds of trying to knead a large piece of Play-Doh back into its canister, because Thomas was too limp to make anything meaningful happen. After it was over, Avery was like, “That’s it?”
In other words, she had not exactly been a femme fatale.
But now she’d spend the rest of her life climbing this mountain of regret over how she somehow led Noah on. And with the wedding in August, it would be an evenmoretreacherous ascent, since she’d also have to navigate the rocky terrain of his presence for the next nine months, particularly the way he’d started tricking Morgan and Charlie into thinking he was a decent guy. What else besides that generous gift did he have up his sleeve this year? What other behaviors of his would Avery have to grit her teeth through? She felt like she was looking down the barrel of a gun, like she could not possibly survive this without bleeding nearly to death.
She approached a crosswalk and shoved everything out of her mind, trying to calm herself down as she waited for the light to change. While peering around at fire escapes climbing up fronts of buildings and orange cones from construction sites blocking off parts of the street, the foggy window of Kenn’s Broome Street Bar caught her eye. The name of that bar sounded familiar. She thought about where she’d heard it before—
Of course. She’d heard it the night she met Pete, when he told her it was his favorite bar in SoHo. Out of idle curiosity, she squinted across the street through the murky glass window at thefront of the bar. A guy who looked like Pete was sitting right up against the glass, rolling the neck of a beer bottle between two fingers. Avery blinked a few times to adjust her vision and get a better look. Then, to her surprise, Pete came clearly into view.
And seconds later, he met her eye.
Fuck,she thought. She considered rounding the corner, disappearing from his line of vision, but instead she quickly studied him through the window. He wasn’t wearing the dorky monogrammed fleece vest this time. He was in a maroon flannel with the sleeves rolled, and he lookedgood, especially under the glow of the warm light of the bar. He’d grown some stubble, too, and it was working.
He tore away his gaze, leaving her be. She pursed her lips in thought. She truly never thought she’d see him again. She knew if she’d given him her number at the hospital, she would have felt like he risked getting too close to her. Acting with some intention of seeing him again on purpose would have been too vulnerable, would have invited him in too much to get to know her and her past. But here he was, right in front of her, having spotted her in plain sight, and something about that made her stay put. Because now she could chalk seeing him again up to a chance run-in, making it easier to justify giving him another shot, which she never would have done on her own volition. She still wasn’t sure if he’d heard the story of her infidelity in Boston, but right now her mind was drifting off to the connection they’d made at the pub a few weekends ago and Morgan’s fantasy for her at the wedding. She couldn’t deny that she’d feel better about seeing Ryan in August if she was already together and happy with someone else.
There was something different about Pete, too. Whereas Ryan was always trying to be the popular life of the party, Pete seemed to unapologetically do his own thing. Avery was intrigued by it, by this unique sort of confidence. Maybe Pete really could be what she needed to move on, from everything.
She opened the door to the bar. A bell jingled above her, echoing in the near-empty room. Sunlight sparkled through thestained-glass windows on the wall, and a list of specials written in colorful markers hung over the bar. Pete’s eyes flicked up and he froze, staring at Avery. His expression was unreadable.
Avery lifted her hand in an awkward wave. “Hey, Pete.”
Pete leaned backward on his stool, then searched her face and said nothing. Maybe this was a bad idea.
“Look who it is. Morgan and Charlie’s friend,” he said. His lips twitched into a strained smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Avery, right?”
Avery couldn’t tell if he wasactinglike he’d almost forgotten her name or genuinely had. She decided to respond in earnest. “Yeah, that’s right. It’s nice to see you again. Sorry, I was just—I saw you at the window and thought I’d, um …” She hesitated, one eye on the front door in case he told her to get lost, then gestured to the empty seat beside him. “Can I sit?”
He put out his hand. “Please.”
She sat down. Nervous sweat bubbled on her back, making her already-tight sweater cling even harder to her skin. She felt almost as humiliated now as she had when she woke up at the hospital. But she’d already decided to walk into the bar and give him a chance. She owed it to herself to keep going.
“Thank you again for getting me to the hospital the other night,” she said. “And I’m sorry I got kind of … weird and distant at the end. Blame the alcohol poisoning, I guess.” She smiled uncomfortably but hopefully, like this excuse for rejecting him would suffice.
He shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.” He sipped his beer and swirled the liquid around in the bottle, the fruity hops wafting into the air. Avery would love to order one for herself—the bartender was wide open, just scrolling on her phone—but stopping this conversation for a drink after Pete called an ambulance on her for alcohol poisoning would not be a good look. “The same thing happened to me during SantaCon in Boston. I was rushed to the hospital while wearing a Santa crop top.”
Avery chuckled at the image forming in her mind. “Why were you in a crop top?”
“Why not? A red fur suit would’ve been so lame. I wanted to stand out.”
“Weren’t you freezing?”
Pete shot her a knowing glance. “Let’s just say I gave new meaning to blue balls.”
Avery’s chuckle turned to a full-blown laugh. Pete was exactly how she remembered—cute and funny and the perfect amount of self-deprecating. And it seemed like he was letting his guard down. She kept talking.
“I’m surprised I never saw you there,” she said. “My friends and I loved SantaCon. All the bars in Boston just played dumb, knowing we were all underage and letting us in anyway.”
“I know, it was a riot. The chances we would’ve run into each other were slim, though. That event was always packed. And I only went that one year.” Pete met her eye, tossed her a grin. “You know, I wish Charlie had introduced us in school. I would’ve definitely remembered you.”
