Page 67 of She Used to Be Nice
Avery lay her damp forehead against the porcelain, breathing in rapid bursts. Pete put his hand on her shoulder and tried to rub her back, but she shoved him away as hard as she could. He toppled backward onto the tile, landing with athud.
“I told you to stop!” Avery shouted, hoarse from retching.
Pete searched her face, frantic and confused. “What? What are you talking about?”
“I told you to stop! And you didn’t!” Avery tried to slow her breathing, but it wasn’t letting up. She was still hyperventilating. She still felt Noah pressing down on her back, heard the ceiling fan whirring above her …
“Avery, I seriously do not remember you saying that. I swear. Iswear.”
“Well, I did!”
All the color drained from Pete’s face, turning him a ghastly gray. “I swear I would have stopped if I heard you. I’m so sorry.”
Avery’s mouth tasted like acid, like bad vanilla yogurt. She lifted herself off the floor and stepped over Pete’s legs, careful not to touch him. She stood in front of the sink, turned on the faucet, and cupped her hands under the water, then slurped some into her mouth and rinsed. Pete stood up next to her and watched her slowly and methodically clean herself off. Then he put his hand on her back and she leapt backward, recoiling from his touch.
“I want you to go.” Avery pointed to the door, though what she really wanted was for him to hold her and never let go. To tell her they were going to overcome this, that everything was going to be all right.
Pete blinked at her. “Are you serious?”
“I’m dead serious. Go.”Stay,she thought.
Pete tried to touch Avery’s back again, but she flinched and wrapped her arms around her naked body, feeling too exposed. She dug her nails into her skin, leaving deeply etched half-moon marks. Who was she kidding? Nothing was going to be all right. She was so fucked up, beyond repair.
“Can we please talk about it?” Pete asked desperately. “What happened?”
Avery dug her nails even harder into her skin, as if she could claw the shame from her flesh. “I don’t want to talk about it. I want you to go.”
“I’m so confused. Please talk to me.” His voice was gentle, but Avery could barely look at him.
“Pete, I swear to God. Get out of my apartment.”
“But can’t we—”
“GET OUT!”
Pete’s eyes became glassy. He said nothing else. Only wordlessly gathered his things and left.
Over the next few days, Avery’s phone practically never stopped buzzing with calls and texts from Pete. It buzzed while she got drinks with Morgan at a new restaurant in Chinatown and while she was high on her couch watching TV. It even buzzed at work while she was once again writing social copy aboutMetropolitan’scoverage of the Dave Moore case, because yet another actress had accused him of sexual assault, and this time it happened only a year ago, and it took everything in Avery not to chuck her laptop as well as herself out the eighteenth floor window of her office building. The buzzing became so unbearably constant, so mind-numbingly irritating, that she resorted to leaving her phone at home in the mornings before work and putting it in another room when she slept. Becausenowwhat explanation was she going to give Pete? He knew she liked sex. It was completely out of character for her to interrupt it. Had Pete never fucked her in her forbidden position before? She supposed not.
And besides, no excuse would justify screaming in Pete’s face and kicking him out of her apartment with no regard for his feelings. Whodidthat to someone they cared about? Avery wasn’t cut out for real intimacy. She didn’t know how to be honest about what was going on with her. All she knew was how to yell at a man who only ever adored her and how to cut off all contact with him. How to act like they’d never known each other at all.
She thought about all of this on her way home from work several days later. She’d just rounded the corner onto her street, fantasizing about the sleeve of Oreos she was going to shove down her gullet, when she stopped in her tracks.
“Are you serious?” she asked.
Pete glanced up at her from his spot sitting on the stoop of her apartment building, his forearms resting on his knees. He laced his fingers together. “I’m very serious.” His voice was kind but resolved, like this confrontation was happening whether she wanted it to or not.
Avery shook her head in disbelief. “How long have you been sitting here?”
“As long as it takes.”
Avery shoved her way past him to jimmy her key into her front door. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t do this to himself.
Pete stood up. “You need to talk to me,” he insisted.
“I don’tneedto do anything.”
“Well, you should.”
