Page 35 of She Used to Be Nice
Avery followed her mom downstairs to the kitchen, where a pot of hot water was boiling on the stove and a “Bless This House” plaque was nailed to the wall above a set of French doors leading into the yard. Dad was sitting at the table reading the paper, and Mom went over to rub his shoulders and give him a kiss, as though he’d had to journey through a treacherous jungle to pick her up and he’d made it out unharmed. Avery rolled her eyes. It was just Manhattan, for Christ’s sake, despite their favorite Fox News pundits convincing them the city was twenty-four/seven mayhem. Though if Avery were in a better mood, she would find their protectiveness of each other sweet.
Hunter was kicking the soccer ball around outside when he spotted Avery through the window and sprinted inside to greet her. Avery hadn’t spoken to her little brother in a while, but he wasonly seventeen—young and naive enough to think she was busy being an adult, not that her life was falling apart.
“Hunter, no more soccer until your science project is done,” Dad reprimanded. “You need to get working on it.”
Hunter exhaled loudly. “Iknow.” He turned to Avery and told her about his indoor soccer game last weekend, when he outran the other team’s fastest defender. “The goalie had no chance. He was cursing like crazy. I won’t repeat what he said because Mom will kill me, but it rhymes with puck and sit.”
“Hunter!” Mom barked.
“I didn’t say the words! Just what they rhymed with!”
Mom poured Avery a cup of tea in her Woodford College mug. Avery dunked the tea bag up and down and watched the brown liquid swirl around inside the hot water. Avery had gotten this mug during freshman orientation week. She remembered feeling a sense of belonging those first few weeks on campus as she walked among Woodford’s majestic gothic buildings and classic manicured lawns. Cheering on Woodford’s top-tier football team, thumbing through pamphlets of extracurricular activities, and enrolling in enriching academic courses, Avery had felt part of something bigger than herself, something that would help her make her lasting mark on the world.
“Hunter’s trying to get into a summer program for science and engineering,” Mom said. “Soccer’s been taking up too much studying time.”
Hunter scoffed. “I’m gonna get in, Mom. I got into their space camp two years ago. That’ll give me a leg up.”
“I’m sure it will, honey.” Mom ruffled Hunter’s hair, beaming proudly at him. “You just wait, Avery. Hunter’s gonna give you a run for your money with his grades. He’ll graduate high school with an even higher rank than you.”
“He probably will.” Avery was less enthusiastic than she should’ve been, but Mom was right. Hunter easily had a shot at being valedictorian when he graduated high school next year. Avery, meanwhile, didn’t even walk in her commencementceremony at Woodford, still reeling and alone from her breakup and the aftermath. She’d spent all of graduation day in her dorm room drinking Rubinoff by herself, telling everyone she had the stomach flu.
Dad put down his newspaper and fixed his attention on Avery. “How’s work going? I’ve been meaning to tell you, my coworker’s daughter was a copy editor at a travel magazine, and she became a staff writer after working there only a year.”
“Oh wow, Mike, that’s great!” Mom said. “Did you hear that, Avery? You can leverage your social media job in the same way. You gotta show them your essays!”
Avery offered a tiny shrug. Her parents had always been supportive of her writing, which Avery used to share on all her social media pages. Her mom was especially supportive on Facebook, where, in addition to writing unnecessarily long posts about relatively minor life events and commenting on everything in all caps, like “YOU LOOK GORGEOUS” or “WHO’S HE? CUTE,” she used to like every singleGoldenarticle Avery posted. But Avery never posted anything now.
“I haven’t been able to write at all lately,” Avery said matter-of-factly. “Been going through way too much this past year.”
Avery’s parents exchanged a sad look.
“What do you mean?” Mom asked.
Avery froze. She’d slipped too easily into the cozy cocoon of her parents’ love and support. But she forgot that they didn’t know any details about the breakup. Nor did she want them finding anything out.
“I just—I just mean that, uh … work’s been busy,” she said. “I don’t have time to pitch anything if I wanted to.”
Mom was still frowning. Dad’s lips were a straight, concerned line. Avery tossed them another shrug and an unbothered smile, likeoh well, what can you do?But she could tell what her parents were thinking, which was that they’d raised her in a nurturing, loving environment and even that wasn’t enough to prevent her from failing miserably in her adulthood. At this point they shouldjust focus their energy on Hunter. She wondered what they told their neighborhood friends during run-ins at Wegmans.Oh, yeah, Avery’s still making tweets,she imagined them saying. Hunter, on the other hand, is gonna be the next Bill Gates!
“Well, maybe you should reach out to those other magazines you applied to, then,” Dad suggested. He sounded cautious, like he didn’t want to startle a skittish animal. “They could have a staff writer opening now.”
Avery scrunched her face as she recalled the magazines she’d told her parents she applied to after Ryan dumped her but did not.
“Maybe.” She gulped down the rest of her tea, preparing to leave. She had no interest in hearing about her lost potential or being the subject of her parents’ pity once again. “I’m gonna go for a drive.”
Avery headed outside and climbed into the white Honda Civic she’d had since high school and couldn’t afford to park in the city now. She pulled out of the street and cracked open the window, letting the cool, piney air refresh her skin. She passed the bagel shop, where she used to get bagels because she wanted to and not because they soaked up the booze in her gut; the strip mall parking lot, where teenagers more sexually deviant than she’d been with Thomas in high school used to hook up. She passed the road that led to her high school, too, which reminded her of a fight she got into at lunch once with her childhood friend Joan. She couldn’t remember what caused the fight, but she remembered that after the argument, Joan shouted across the table, “Well, Jacob imprints on Bella and Edward’s baby!” Avery was in the middle of readingBreaking Dawn.Joan might as well have told her to go fuck herself.
Avery missed fighting with Morgan about stupid things like that. Like the time Morgan put up an Instagram post and Avery didn’t like it right away.Why haven’t you liked my post yet?Morgan had DMed her.My likes-to-minutes ratio is terrible.Or the time Avery got annoyed when Morgan bombarded her with dog memes that did not spark the warm and fuzzy reaction Morgan had wantedthem to.this isn’t making me like dogs,Avery had texted. it’s making me feel like a bitch.
Avery wasn’t even sure if they were fighting now as much as Morgan was disappointed in her, which was undoubtedly worse. But Avery could never tell Morgan why Blair’s comment rattled her enough to make her run out of the engagement party. Because for all her friends knew and for all they would continue to know, Averydidget too drunk and hurt someone she loved senior year, like Blair said. Avery had, indeed, had sex with someone else. It hadn’t been her choice, but it was the only version of the truth that mattered.
Avery pulled into the park, then sat down on a bench in front of the frozen lake that disappeared into the horizon. She wrapped her arms around her upper body to warm herself up. A man in black workout gear jogged by before stopping to lean against a tree and catch his breath, white clouds of air billowing up into the sky as he exhaled. His brown wavy hair glistened appealingly with sweat and fell in thick ropes into his face, and he had some of the nicest arms Avery had ever seen.
A beat later, he caught her staring at him, and she glanced away. Then she looked back again. “Jonathan?”
He squinted at her before his face opened in recognition. “Avery?” Jonathan jogged over and went to give Avery a hug but quickly pulled back. “Actually, no, you don’t want to touch me. I’m covered in sweat.”
Avery let her eyes wander up and down Jonathan’s firm, toned body. She and Jonathan had been friendly in high school drama club, but they lost touch after graduation and grew further apart for no reason except that they led different lives. There were rumors that he’d had a crush on her, too, but he never acted on it, and she never saw him that way. Now he was much cuter than she remembered.
