Page 8 of She Used to Be Nice
“What happened to you?” she shouted, the messy topknot on her head swinging loose.
Shit.
“Hey!” Avery said uneasily. Her heart hammered in her chest. Avery didn’t want Morgan to see her esteemed maid of honor like this. She tried to sit up straighter in the bed and greet Morgan like nothing was wrong, but the IV drip stopped her from moving much more. She plastered on her cheeriest smile, as if that would distract Morgan from the chaos. “What’s up? What are you doing here?”
Morgan’s chest rose and fell in rapid bursts, and for a second she said nothing. Avery held her breath, bracing herself. This was it—Morgan was going to fire Avery from being maid of honor. She was going to realize that Avery could barely take care of herself, let alone shoulder the responsibility of a wedding. She was going to finally see that their friends had been right to ditch Avery senior year and maybe Morgan should have, too.
“I got a call from someone saying you were here!” Morgan cried. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“Oh, sorry,” the guy—dammit, what was his name?—called out from his seat. “I scanned your phone open with your Face ID and called the last person you texted. Sorry if that’s invasive. I wanted someone to know where you were. Hope that’s cool.”
Avery glared at him. The thought of this stranger touching her while she was unconscious made her feel all sorts of ill. But he could have left her for dead instead, so she supposed she had to be grateful.
“Yeah, that’s … um, thanks,” she said.
Morgan whirled her head around to face him, then did a double take. “Wait. I know you. Your name is Pete, right?”
Pete’s face scrunched in confusion. Then his eyes flew open. “Oh shit, you’re Charlie Durham’s girlfriend.”
Avery leaned backward into her crunchy hospital pillow, watching carefully as this interaction unfolded.
“Fiancée, actually,” Morgan said with a smile. She held up her left hand, her ring glittering with rainbow beams of light. “I’m Morgan.”
Pete pointed at her. “Yes, Morgan! I knew that. And congratulations.”
Avery had no idea how to feel about this. “How … do you two know each other?”
“I know her fiancé,” Pete said. “We met when I was a senior at UGrant and he was a senior at Woodford. We both worked at this record store in Boston and hung out sometimes. But we’ve kinda lost touch now.”
“Charlie invited you to some parties on campus, too, right?” Morgan asked. “I remember you were at a couple.”
“Yeah, UGrant had a shit nightlife. Charlie took me to a few Woodford parties, actually. I remember a Dino-Whores theme party specifically.” Pete chuckled at himself. “Kind of offensive. But also hilarious.”
Morgan sighed like she couldn’t believe she was associated with such people. “Yeah, that one was something.” She looked at Avery. “I don’t remember you being at that one. Maybe you had to study or something.”
Nervous sweat pricked Avery’s armpits. “Hold on.” She stared Pete down. “You went to school in Boston? And you’ve been to Woodford?”
“Yeah.” Pete cocked his head. “Why?”
Now Avery knew exactly how to feel about this, and what she felt was not good. “Iwent to Woodford.”
Pete laughed in disbelief. “No way!”
Avery groaned and rubbed her temples. As if getting so drunk that she needed to be taken to the hospital wasn’t embarrassing enough. Now she risked Pete knowing how much of a mess shereallywas. The city of Boston was essentially populated solely by college students, so it wasn’t unlikely that she would meet someone who had also gone to school there. But the fact that Pete also knew Charlie and Morgan put him way too close to their friend group. Who had Charlie introduced Pete to senior year? What if Pete met Ryan somehow and heard that Avery had cheated on him? It was certainly possible Pete had learned about her from someone at one of the parties Charlie took him to. What a terrible first impression.
“I was—am—friends with Charlie and Morgan, but I don’t remember meeting you at school,” Avery said. “Don’t take that the wrong way.”
“I don’t, don’t worry,” Pete replied, and seemed to mean it because he laughed a little as he spoke. “I didn’t get out that much. Still don’t, really.”
Avery waited for him to tell her that he didn’t remember her either, but he didn’t offer up the information on his own, and she wasn’t sure if she should ask for it or not. Last night, though—at least from what was crystallizing in her memory—he hadn’t shown any signs of knowing her previously or treated her like anyone other than a girl he was bonding with over Taylor Swift. Avery remembered admiring how self-assured he was, too, in admitting he was a Swiftie. Yes, it was coming back to her now. Pete was so easygoing, so self-assured. She coveted those qualities.
“I can tell,” she teased. “Look at your vest. Your investment firm is monogrammed on it.”
Pete laughed, the sound like a song. “Harsh! But you’re right. I need to stop wearing this to the bar. It’s not doing me any favors.”
A doctor put two fingers on Avery’s neck and studied the monitor by her bed, where a thin, squiggly line moved up and down to the rhythm of her heartbeat. Avery felt strangely comforted by the visual proof that she still had a beating, functioning heart. Her chest had felt emptier than ever lately, and her attempts to fill it always seemed to go awry. Although Pete kept his gaze soft on her and there was a whisper of a smile on his lips, like maybe he didn’t mind that she’d derailed his night. She smiled back, something warm and hopeful blooming in her chest.
Then her eye snagged on Morgan, who had busied herself with gathering Avery’s medical files. Avery frowned. Responsible Avery, the Avery everyone once knew, would’ve been fast asleep right now, dreaming about floral arrangements and save-the-date cards, not having her bride-to-be best friend pick her up from a bender the morning after her engagement. Avery imaginedMorgan snuggled up with Charlie in their warm king-sized bed while she lay passed out in the middle of a filthy Manhattan street surrounded by judgmental onlookers.
