Page 19 of She Used to Be Nice
He met her eye. Like she should brace herself. “But I live on Staten Island.”
Avery stared dumbly at him. Pete might as well have suggested they board a spaceship. Staten Island was part of New York City, but it was another planet entirely. No subways went there. It was quite literally an island. If you didn’t have a car, you could only get there by taking a bright orange ferry on which the words “Staten Island” were written in a Windows 95-era script font. Lots of newspapers advertised the ferry to tourists as the place to go to see the Statue of Liberty, but nobody ever suggested that you getoffthe boat when it docked.
“Staten Island,” Avery repeated slowly. “Like Pete Davidson. Wow.”
Pete rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. You think that’s the first time I’ve heard that?”
Avery chuckled. “Definitely not but I still had to say it.”
“Of course you did.” His playful annoyance turned devilish as a smirk spread across his lips. “You up for an adventure?”
Avery had been to Staten Island a couple times as a kid to visit family, but she didn’t remember anything about it, except that some of the buildings looked like barracks.
“How many women have you presented a trip to Staten Island as ‘an adventure’?” she asked.
“Oh, come on! You know you want to …” Pete let his words linger, attempting to dangle them like a carrot on a string in frontof her, but Avery wasn’t going all the way to Staten Island just for sex. She wasn’t that desperate.
“Not happening,” she said.
But she did want to kiss him again. And so she did. She kissed him hard, tugging his bottom lip with her teeth and lacing her hands through his hair, trying to summon her power. But it wasn’t enough. She needed him closer than clothes allowed. She needed sex. She whipped her head around, searching, thinking. They needed to go somewhere, somewhere that wasn’t right in the middle of a bar with floor-to-ceiling windows. Somewhere with privacy.
Somewhere like that bathroom a few feet away.
Avery scanned the bar. Besides an elderly man drinking a scotch and two middle-aged women gossiping over cosmos, there were no other patrons. The bartender was standing behind the well drinks, engrossed in her task of inspecting highball glasses. Nobody would care if two people scurried to the bathroom at the same time.
Avery stood up. She wasn’t desperate enough to go to Staten Island, but she was desperate enough to go into a public bathroom. This was a truth about herself she now needed to live with.
She pointed to the black nondescript door down a narrow hallway toward the back. “Let’s go in there.”
Pete choked out a laugh. “You’re joking.”
“Nope.” She grabbed his hand. “Come on.”
The bathroom was small, with rainbow graffiti and wads of gum decorating the walls, and reeked of garbage masked by nondescript berry air freshener. Avery ignored it all and took Pete’s face between her hands, then pressed her lips to his more urgently than before. Their kiss deepened and intensified, their mouths slipping and sliding in a frenzy of breaths and groans. She pinned him against the green tile wall with her knee and peeled his clothes off like they were on fire. Then he wiggled his way out of her grip and kneeled in front of her onto the sticky floor, pulling her skirt and underwear with him. When he was eye level with her hips, he moved his face between her bare thighs and began to flick his tongue.
Avery’s breath hitched. Warmth pooled between her legs as he kept his rhythm steady. She gripped the wall with one hand and grabbed a lock of Pete’s hair with the other, paying no attention to the open garbage pail beside her. She ground her hips against his mouth and the pressure mounted, building and building and—
He stopped. Avery flung her eyes down, panting, the lower half of her body burning hot. For a second their eyes met, and he moved his lips away to toss her a smile. Her heart leapt. She had forgotten that sex was supposed to feel good, that sexcouldfeel good, and was even better with someone you actually liked.
Although nobody, not even Ryan, had ever gone down on her like this.
“Don’t sto—” she began, but before she could finish her sentence Pete was between her legs again, flicking his tongue and holding her steady. She writhed and implored him to keep going. Once again, though, he stopped short. And then he did it again. And again.
Suddenly, there was a knock.
“Hello?” said a slurred female voice behind the door. “Is someone in there?”
Avery stiffened against the wall. She couldn’t speak, could barely breathe. All she could focus on was the feel of Pete’s hands gripping her thighs and the dizzying heat rising in her body as he edged her.
“Hold on!” Pete called out, still crouched on the ground. The woman tapped her foot a few times and stomped away. Avery tugged at Pete’s hair, a silent, desperate plea for him to finish her off. She felt woozy from the pressure coiling between her legs, begging to be released.
Knock.
“Whoever’s in there, open up.” That was another voice, a man’s this time.
Pete cleared his throat. “We—uh, I’ll be out in a minute!” He sprang up from the ground and hoisted Avery into his arms, then pressed her back against the wall, slipped on a condom, and swiftlyentered her, filling her completely. He kept his gaze locked on her as each of his thrusts pushed her closer to bursting open. When she finally cried out, the release nearly ripped her body in half, aftershocks pulsing through her limbs until she settled into quiet whimpers. Pete didn’t take his eyes off her the whole time she came, like he wanted to see all of her, defenses down. And to her surprise, she didn’t want him to look away.
The bathroom door flew open, and a bald man with a ring of keys stood at the doorway. Avery sprung off the wall and crouched down to shield her naked body from this stranger’s view. Pete tried to shield her, too, as best as he could, a gesture that was almost heartwarming enough to make Avery forget what was happening.
