Page 78 of She Used to Be Nice
Morgan shrugged. “I’m not sure. She didn’t tell me. You know Blair, so prim about her business.”
Avery and Blair made eye contact for a beat before Blair went back to pushing around her food.
Back at the house later that night, Avery heard Blair washing up in the bathroom upstairs. Noah was in the bathroom, too,watching Blair dab eye cream under her eyes with her ring fingers. The door was cracked open. Avery pressed her body against the wall around the corner, listening hard.
“Can we talk?” Noah whispered.
“I’m not in the mood to talk,” Blair replied.
“Don’t ruin the weekend over this.”
“Go away.”
He sighed and left, leaving the door cracked open. Avery watched him disappear into a bedroom before poking her head into the bathroom. She winced at how much it smelled like Noah in here. His grooming products, organized in the corner of the sink, released his scent like a carbon monoxide leak poisoning Avery’s lungs.
“Hey, Blair,” she said.
Blair glanced at Avery, then flicked her gaze back to the mirror. “Hey.” She rubbed lotion on her elbows, filling the room with the smell of coconut.
“You okay?” Avery spoke carefully, as kindly as she could. “Sorry, I just, um … the door was open.”
Blair twisted the cap on her lotion and put it back in her toiletry bag. “Yeah. I’m fine.”
She brushed past Avery and out the door.
Everyone woke up at the most ungodly hour the next morning for the hike. Avery pulled her matted hair into a low messy bun and threw on a pair of leggings and an oversized T-shirt. Charlie reacted to her trudging down the stairs all disheveled and exhausted with a good-natured laugh.
“Someone’shappy to be alive,” he said.
Avery gave him a pained smile. She’d stayed awake all last night tossing and turning, trying to figure out what was going on between Blair and Noah. She didn’t even know why she cared. Couples fought all the time, so it was probably nothing, and it wasn’t like she and Blair were friends anymore. But she couldn’tforget about it. She had to know what was going on. She’d understand whatever Blair was going through. Avery knew more than anyone how awful Noah was. It was certainly possible that Blair was in the wrong in their argument, because she was awful in her own right, but Avery hoped that wasn’t the case. She hoped it was Noah who’d started it, giving her confirmation that he was the bad guy she’d finally admitted to herself that he was. Using the word.
“I’m not a morning person,” she replied. “Or an outdoors person.”
Morgan appeared beside Charlie in a matching white leggings and crop top set. Her shiny ponytail sticking out of her white baseball cap swung as she bent down to lace up her hiking boots.
“Oh, stop,” she said. “It’ll be fun!”
Noah jogged down the stairs in shorts and a muscle tank, with Blair sulking behind him. Noah put his hand out to her, but she refused him.
Avery narrowed her eyes.
“The trailhead is a quick walk from the house,” Noah announced to the group, who’d all gathered in the foyer. “We should be there in no time. And wait until you see the mountains. The sun casts these shadows right under the peaks, and they shine through the tree canopy to create these incredible shapes when we’re on the trail.”
Noah sounded so stupid, talking about the mountains and trails nearby like he carved them from the fucking Earth himself.
Charlie clapped his hands together once, loudly. “Let’s do this!”
The walk to the trailhead was not quick like Noah had suggested. It was at least a mile. They’d barely started the hike when Avery’s scalp tingled with itchy sweat. Morgan, sensing Avery’s struggle, fed her words of encouragement until they reached the trailhead. Once there, they pressed onward, starting to make their way up an incline under a canopy of trees. The shade from the trees made the climb a little easier, but after they rounded a corner and approached a more vertical incline, the drop to their leftgrowing steeper as they ascended, the sun’s rays beat directly down on the tops of their heads. Avery’s chest burned in agony.
“I need to stop,” she breathed, panting hard.
Morgan stopped next to her and rubbed her back. “Just push through. A few more steps. You can do it.”
“My hamstrings are killing me.” Avery dug into her bag for her water bottle and chugged it. Over her shoulder, a few yards behind, Blair was walking alone. Avery pretended to stretch so she could get a better view of Blair, but she must’ve lingered in her stretch for a beat too long, because Morgan scoffed.
“This isn’t that difficult, Avery. You’re delaying the whole group.”
Avery blinked at Morgan. “What?”
