Page 82 of She Used to Be Nice
“Fuck off, Noah! Nobody wants you here!”
“Why are you being so rude to him?” Morgan shouted. “I don’t understand you. You snarled at him when he tried to help you in the dog park, and you never once called him back to talk about this weekend. I know you don’t want to be here but you could at leastpretend.”
Avery had no idea where that last comment came from. She looked sadly at Morgan. “What are you talking about? Of course I want to be here.”
Through her peripheral vision, Avery watched, her stomach in her throat, as Noah whispered something in Blair’s ear, until Morgan stole Avery’s attention again by grabbing her arm with her perfectly manicured fingers and forcing Avery to look at her. Her engagement ring glowed against the backdrop of the early evening sun seeping lazily in through all the windows. Tears burned in Avery’s eyes, threatened to fall down her cheeks. She knew she was ruining even more of the bachelor party than she already had, but she couldn’t go back now. Not when she already mustered up the courage to confront Noah, after she’d spent so long in silence.
“No, you don’t care atallabout this weekend!” Morgan cried. “Noah said he called you to help plan our activities, and you wereso spacy on the phone. I told him you’d get back to him and you didn’t! He had to plan everything byhimself.”
Avery’s eyes darted back and forth among Noah and Blair and Morgan, unsure who to give her attention to first. Her stomach lurched again when Noah kissed Blair’s cheek.
“Plus my dog almost died and it would’ve beenyourfault if I couldn’t get his medicine in time,” Morgan continued. She was trembling with rage now. “And you didn’t order the shirts!”
Blair’s face was devoid of color, her pale lips barely moving as she responded to whatever Noah was saying.
Morgan grabbed Avery’s arm again. “Avery! Are you even listening to me?
“No!” Avery said, then quickly backtracked. “I mean, yes! I mean … what shirts? What are you talking about?” Avery imagined Noah’s cologne lingering in Blair’s nose, his hand pressing firmly on her back …
“The shirts! The bachelorette shirts you said you were gonna bring. We talked about it at the shower!”
Blair leaned away from Noah again, and Avery clenched her fists. She wanted to wring Noah’s neck until his face turned purple. She wanted to douse every room in gasoline and light this mansion on fire. She wanted—
“You’re not listening to me!” Morgan yelled again.
“No, no, I am listening. I swear … It’s just …” Avery rubbed her eyes to reorient herself. When she opened them, Blair was scooting away from Noah on the couch, yet for some reason he was creeping toward her, closer and closer and—“Noah raped Blair! I know he did because he did it to me too.”
Avery glared at Noah, whose mouth hung open in shock. Their eyes locked.
She did not—would not—break his gaze.
Blair stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Excuseme?”
Avery took a shaky deep breath. She felt the pressure on her back, heard the ceiling fan spin above her.Whirr …
“You keep avoiding him,” she said. “And you have those bruises. I thought—”
“That absolutelyneverhappened,” Noah insisted.
Blair shook her head. “Noah’s just making us move to San Francisco so he could be more in the start-up world and I … I’d already made all these plans to move to New York City and—” She cut herself off and glared at Avery. “Why am I telling you this? It’s none of your business. And for you to accuse Noah of …” She shook her head again. “My goodness, Avery. He would never do that.”
Avery swallowed. Maybe Blair was just scared to admit what happened. Avery couldn’t fault her for that. She understood completely.
She pointed to Blair’s arm, the evidence. “But … but you have bruises. On your wrist. Like the ones I had. You’ve been covering them with your sleeve.”
“Because we used restraints!” Noah shouted.
Everyone whirled to face Noah.
Fuck,Avery thought.
“Noah!” Blair muttered through clenched teeth. “We weren’t gonna tell anyone that.”
“Yeah, well, that was before someone accused me of being arapist,” Noah spat. “We use restraints in bed during sex sometimes. And I accidentally tied them too tight and that’s why Blair’s wrists are bruised.”
Noah’s penchant for dominating women in bed came in all forms, it seemed. Consensualandnonconsensual.
He looked at Avery again. “So, there you go,” he went on, seething. “I didn’t rape her. And I didn’t rapeyoueither.”
