Page 92 of She Used to Be Nice
“They kicked him out of the wedding. But the rest of the bridal party doesn’t think Noah did anything wrong. They all still think I just got drunk and cheated and that I’m trying to pass the blame. They’re reacting exactly how I thought they would if I ever came clean.”
Pete inhaled a shaky, angry breath. “That’s beyond messed up. They think he’s innocent?”
Avery nodded. “Even though in Colorado he admitted to me that he did it. But of course he’s still lying to everyone else.”
Pete’s eyes grew slightly more open. “What a bunch ofdouchebags.All of them.”
Avery made a face likeyup.“I mean, that’s what normally happens with these things anyway. Doesn’t matter what the truth is. Have you been following the Dave Moore news? Just watch. I bet he’ll lie low for a few years, then come back and win an Emmy.”
Pete had to know Avery was right. He lived in the same backward world that she did. “I want Noah dead. I want to skin him alive.”
Avery laughed. “Good luck with that.” The breeze started picking up, tickling Avery’s cheek and whipping her hair across her face. She tucked a long strand behind her ear. “But, yeah. Now you know everything.”
Pete gave a small smile. “Well, thank you for trusting me with this.”
Avery wrapped her arms around herself. The sun was almost fully set behind the skyscrapers, cooling down the air and darkening the sky. Pete’s face was tinged with the orange-blue of dusk. He and Avery were still the same distance apart as they were at the beginning of the conversation. She took a tiny step closer.
“I think the problem with us was that I didn’t think I deserved your affection,” she began. “I had this huge secret I was hiding not just from you, but from everyone in my life. I thought what Noah did to me was my fault for so long, and I was afraid people who thought I cheated on my ex wouldn’t believe me if I told the truth. I felt awful that I let something like this happen to me. I was so disgusted with myself. I felt so broken. It was just … constant self-loathing.” Avery sighed. “And it trickled into our relationship. It made me feel like I wasn’t good enough for you.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that.” Pete sounded stiffer than Avery would’ve liked. She could feel him slipping away and his well of compassion running dry.
“I’m not naive enough to think we could get back to where we were, with us dating or you wanting to come to the wedding.” Avery bit her lip to stop herself from trembling. “But I was wondering if you wanted to … grab a drink. Or something.” She held his gaze, tried to stay brave. “I’m sorry if that’s too forward. I just … I just miss you. I can’t stop thinking about you, and I’m scared I ruined it. Well, I mean, I know I ruined it now. But I’m scared I ruined it forever.”
Avery’s words hung heavy, suffocating, as Pete gave no immediate response. She tried not to beat herself up for the horrible way she’d treated him this year, for the horrible way she behaved in general, with everything. But she couldn’t help how she dealt with her pain. You can’t control the survival tactics your body deploys when it feels under attack, the way chameleons can’t control their skin changing to blend into their surroundings in the face of a threat. It’s biology. But she hated that she’d hurt Pete with her behavior, hated that he was in the crossfire of her attempts to survive.
“Look, I appreciate you coming by,” Pete said, in a tone that suggested he was leading up to his answer. “Even if it was slightly stalkery.” He tossed her a grin.
Avery grinned back, hope making her heart flutter. “Hey, remember when you waited for me outside my apartment after our fight? Grand ambushing gestures shouldn’t be new to you.”
“I know. You’re right.”
Avery held herself tighter, her teeth chattering from the wind. “So … that drink?” She was fully cold now, and the sky was almost black. But she would wait here all night for Pete’s reply.
“Can I think about it?” he finally said.
Tears pricked Avery’s eyes, built on her lash line and threatened to fall. It was too late. It was over.
“Okay.” She felt like a deflated balloon. “I understand. Just text me, I guess.”
“I will.” Pete cleared his throat and picked up his messenger bag. A flicker of something crossed his face. Sadness? Regret? She wasn’t sure. “Get home safe. And have a good night.”
She closed her eyes as he turned around to leave. “You too.”
27
WITH THE ARRIVAL OFAugust came the oppressive, suffocating heat, the kind that made most New Yorkers flee the city and return in September when the weather was at its best again. It meant Morgan had started wearing her wedding shoes around her apartment to break them in, had intensified her workouts so her arms and shoulders would be extra toned in her dress, and had assembled the gift bags she would bestow upon each of the bridesmaids the morning they arrived at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The wedding was in just three weeks now, and Avery’s excitement for Morgan and Charlie only slightly outweighed her stress over seeing Ryan and her old friends again. At least she wouldn’t have to see Noah, or Blair for that matter. It was undoubtedly a bright side, certainly the kind of positive thinking her new therapist, Dr. Banshol, would approve of.
It had taken forever for Avery to find this woman. Once Avery decided, reluctantly, that she probably needed some professional help to get through all of this, the search for a therapist who didn’t suck was grueling. Everyone was booked with clients already, and so few people called her back after she left them messages. Finding someone she connected with was a whole other challenge. She’d needed a therapist to help her through the process of finding a therapist. But Dr. Banshol had an office a few blocks from her apartment and a gentle but firm disposition that Avery needed.They’d only had a few sessions so far. They didn’t get into many details of the sexual assault during the first session, but Dr. Banshol started poking at it in the second session, trying to help Avery push past her reflexive feelings of guilt and self-blame. It wasn’t like Avery thought she was going to heal overnight, but being confronted with Dr. Banshol’s questions and hearing herself waffle back and forth between blaming herself and blaming Noah only solidified that her road ahead would not be short.
Avery attended a couple of group therapy sessions, too, also reluctantly, per the advice of Dr. Banshol. Listening to fellow victims—and survivors, as some called themselves, though Avery probably wouldn’t use that word for herself; it felt more suited for people who’d been through life-or-death tragedies like wars or cancer—sharing their stories put a hard stone of anger in Avery’s stomach, the same anger she’d felt when she thought Noah was abusing Blair. Who knew rapists came in so many different forms? There was the woman who had panic attacks whenever she was in small spaces, a side effect of getting sexually assaulted in a bathroom on a yacht. There was the teenager whose stepfather took advantage of her at least once a week for years, and the guy who was drunk at a party and came to with a girl on top of him filming the whole encounter. Every story, one after the other, was somehow worse than the last. Avery mostly listened during these sessions, not yet ready to speak the details about her story aloud to strangers. But the fact that she was there meant people inherently knew that she was a victim, too. It was enough exposure for now.
One night, after group therapy, Avery met her parents at J. G. Melon, a burger restaurant on the Upper East Side. Avery had been tempted to cancel, but she’d made these plans before she started group and she hadn’t seen her parents in a while. The last time she’d seen them was when she spent the whole weekend listening to her mom drone on about the men who could have taken advantage of her while she was drunk after Doc Holliday’s. Which was a conversation she was not interested in continuing today. But she tried to see it from her parents’ perspective. They were protective,and part of her could see herself saying the same thing to her own daughter one day, despite knowing the kind of offensive cultural messaging it perpetuated. It would only be out of love. Out of not wanting her daughter to end up like her.
When her parents’ cab pulled up in front of J. G. Melon, her mom climbed out and hustled over to squeeze Avery in a hug. “We’ve missed you, honey,” she said.
Avery had been surprised by her mom’s suggestion that they come into the city. Her parents hated Manhattan, were suburbanites through and through. Whenever they visited, Mom lamented about all the dog shit on the sidewalks, and Dad told her he couldn’t understand how people lived in such tight quarters. All they did was complain: about the dirty subway, the high rent, how “dangerously close to Harlem” Avery lived. They were happiest in their little conservative bubble in New Jersey. Avery would never forget the fight they’d had when she insisted white privilege was real, and Mom said that “insulted” all the “hard work her father put into their family.”
“I missed you too,” Avery said.
