Page 13 of She Used to Be Nice
Avery had a plan once, too. She was going to graduate from Woodford College at the top of her class and live in a one-bedroom apartment downtown with Ryan, maybe in the West Village. She would pursue her lifelong dream of being a writer by working and networking in the city, and then eventually she and Ryan wouldget married, have kids, and move to the suburbs like her parents did, where she could write essays and books in peace. A simple, happy life. But now she spent her postgrad days floating around like an astronaut lost in space, hovering deeper into the open-ended nothingness that was her future. And she was too chickenshit to talk about what Noah did to her, choosing instead to let everyone believe the lie that she’d cheated on the man she once thought was the love of her life.
Noah reached over her for another bite of steak tartare. As he pulled backward with the tartare in his hand, his arm lightly grazed Avery’s skin. She jumped at the contact, the silverware on the table rattling from her sudden movement.
Everyone whirled to face her. Blood rushed in her ears.
How dare he touch her.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I’ll be right back.”
Avery hurried to the bathroom and slammed the door closed as Noah’s touch burned her skin. She hovered over the marble sink to examine her reflection in the mirror. Her makeup was smeared around her sunken, red-rimmed eyes. Her lips were dry and pale, vanishing into her washed-out face. She leaned forward, searching for a spark of recognition in the person staring back at her, but there was none. All she saw was a ghost, the faded remains of a woman she once knew, of a woman who’d disappeared at the hands of the man sitting outside at that table. And now he was back in her life, the best man to her maid of honor in Morgan and Charlie’s wedding. And there was nothing she could do to make him go away.
5
AVERY WOKE UP FROMher tired, zombie-like state on Monday morning by Snapping Morgan a picture of her eyes fluttering closed. Morgan replied seconds later with a close-up of her mouth, spit bubbling between her teeth and the metal wire of her retainer. Avery laughed out loud. Sending Morgan ugly Snapchats before work made her feel like they were still living together in college, hanging around the dorm in their sweatpants and slept-in buns. Avery knew they would’ve been roommates in the city if Morgan and Charlie weren’t so serious, though it made sense that Morgan had decided to live with Charlie instead. Avery wasn’t offended by it as much as she couldn’t believe the finality of it, what it represented. It was like the door to that carefree part of their lives, where their biggest problems were writing tedious term papers and deciding which top to wear to the bar, was officially closed. Everything really was different now.
And worse, these last several months since graduation had felt like the purgatory of adulthood. Nobody warned Avery about this uncertain, confusing period where she would feel both too young and too old for everything.She was too young to pay her own phone bill, but too old to live back home with her parents; too young to wear heels and pencil skirts to an office, but too old for the leggings and crewneck sweatshirts she wore across campus. The in-betweenness of her identity was disorienting. It made hermiss the comfort of college even more, when she had a firm grasp on who she was. At Woodford College, she’d been a student who got straight As in her journalism classes and wrote for the school paper, and her only concerns were to study and to squeeze as many fun memories into four years as was possible. She’d loved college.
She interrupted her thoughts with a sigh. She was doing so well before Noah showed up last night. She was ready to prove to her friends and to herself that she was still capable of achieving something good after everything. But now, with Noah around, she had no idea how she was going to manage that. His presence was going to send her a million steps backward when all she’d wanted to do was forget him and move on. Already her memories from that night senior year were like quick flashes of video from an old VHS tape, Noah’s firm grip and searing gaze interspersed with static darkness.
It was easy for her to tell herself she’d just cheated, too, because the bare bones of the truth of what happened—sexual intercourse with a man who wasn’t her boyfriend—perfectly mirrored cheating. It’s like how police can interrogate suspects into admitting to crimes they didn’t commit, only Avery basically interrogated herself as a form of self-protection. If her flashes of memory fit into an existing version of events, why add complexity about consent that would’ve only caused her more anguish? And now that some time had passed, if she’d decided to come clean, people would think she was just covering up a mistake that she’d already essentially admitted she’d made. It was much easier to continue lying to herself than to tell any semblance of the truth. Lying was as essential to her survival as water.
She glanced at her phone. It was 8AM, and she was officially running late for work. She shuffled to the bathroom to brush her teeth, then headed to the kitchen for a breakfast bar. As she ate, her hips leaning flush against the countertop, her phone buzzed with a text from Morgan.
Noah seems cool, right? I wish we hung out with him more at Woodford but I think he was mainly friends with Randall kids
Avery’s chest tightened. Noah’s name was the only word she saw in that text, and now it was branded onto her retinas. She supposed she’d need to get used to these startling reminders of him, after having spent the last several months pretending he didn’t exist. How infuriating that he seemed so normal last night. Socool, according to Morgan. She could never know the truth about him now. Not that Avery planned to tell her or anyone else anyway, but this solidified it. Morgan had enough to worry about with the wedding, and the knowledge that Charlie’scoolbest man could be capable of such a heinous act would ruin everything about the year that was supposed to be the best of her life. No, the truth would remain locked inside the filing cabinet of Avery’s brain, collecting dust and yellowing away, curling at the edges, until it disintegrated into nothing.
yeah, sounds like it,Avery texted back.
Maybe you guys can become friends now. We could go out like last night more often!
Avery choked out a laugh. Her and Noah. Friends. That was fucking hilarious.
for sure!she replied.
As she made her way west across the avenues toward the Q, passing a yoga studio, a specialty grocery store, and a couple of boarded-up restaurant fronts, her anxiety morphed to irritability. She projected her anger onto everyone in the subway car, like this elderly woman who kept knocking into her because she wasn’t grabbing onto the metal pole. And this disgusting mouth breather who kept huffing his lox and onion breath directly into her eyeballs. And these idiots trying to squeeze into this clearly overcrowded car, holy shit, couldn’t they wait for the next one? What was the rush? Where were they so eager to get to?Work?Fuck these people. Fuck her life.
Once the train rolled into her stop, Avery stormed up the steps and into her office building. She headed to the communal kitchen to brew a cup of weak coffee, cursing herself for being so distracted and forgetting to stop at La Colombe for their strongerbrew. At her desk, she powered on her laptop and shared the morning stories ontoMetropolitan’s social channels. One story, about a woman who was groped on the sidewalk near Times Square, gave her pause. She thought briefly about what she would’ve done in that situation and decided the last thing would have been to tell a newspaper, because she would have murdered him instead. Like she should have done to Noah.
She checked her email. There was a monthly “Editor’s Note” from Patricia Gruyere,Metropolitan’s editor in chief, and a few pitches from PR people who always made the mistake of thinking Avery was a staff writer. Which was truly the cherry on top of this morning’s shit sundae.
“Good morning!” Larry, a staff reporter in his sixties, said cheerfully, leaning against Avery’s desk. “How many pageviews did my article about the homeless population in the subway get?”
Larry used his hands to make air quotes when he said “pageviews,” as if he were saying it hypothetically.
Avery took a long sip of her coffee, which had already become tepid. She was just about ready to kill herself. “Morning, Larry.” Larry covered the public transportation beat atMetropolitan. These stories got low traffic and were always at risk of being cut, but they were Larry’s pride and joy. Sometimes Avery thought he insisted on the importance of the section just so he had an excuse to complain publicly to the mayor about how inconsistent his morning F train was. “Let me see.”
Avery perused the stories she’d shared acrossMetropolitan’s social media channels on Friday: an explainer on bipolar disorder pegged to an actor’s recent diagnosis, a feature about what a rare bird spotted in Central Park meant about climate change, a story about a white pop star apologizing for using the n-word, a list of horror movie remakes worth watching. Eventually she found Larry’s feature, about the increase of homeless people living in the subway over the last twenty years. Avery had read the story last week. It was sad but incredibly well-reported and beautifully written. Larry was a talented writer, despite being a chipper pain in herass right now. Avery was talented too, once. Maybe she should email those PR people back. She wouldn’t use any of their pitches for story ideas. She would just act like she was considering them, maybe give them her work address to send over a sample of their supposedly “revolutionary” psoriasis cream or ask some follow-up questions about their ex-Mormon client’s “mesmerizing” self-help memoir. That’s what real writers did anyway. Who would know she wasn’t serious?
She would know. She would know she was pathetic.
“That one did pretty well for your section, Larry,” Avery said. “Four thousand pageviews so far.”
“Nice! Quadruple digits!” Larry gave Avery a high five and practically skipped away, the scent of mothballs and artificial hazelnut lingering in his wake.
Kevin, the only other person under thirty in the office, messaged Avery on Slack.How does that man’s wife have sex with him?
Avery laughed.Awwww, be nice
