Page 64 of She Used to Be Nice
“All right, well … okay. Have a good night, Avery.”
When Noah hung up, Avery came back down to earth, tried to forget about the sound of his voice so close to her ear, the heat of his beer breath from that night. She exited the cab in a frenzy and jammed her key into the front door of her apartment, then sprinted up the stairs to smoke a bowl and lie down on top of her comforter. The sound of the pipe crackling as she inhaled calmed her down, brought a welcome heaviness to her limbs and helped her become one with her bed. She was part of the mattress now. She was coziness embodied.
Her phone buzzed. Emma had sent an email in the bridesmaids chain with her dress size and her vote for her favorite gown. It looked like the official winner was the flutter-sleeve midi dress in the color “ballet.” Avery loved that dress, especially the way the flowy sleeves glided over the upper arms, giving the illusion that they were toned. She’d need that for pictures if she’d be standing next to Morgan’s skinny arm.
Morgan, she reminded herself as the last of her panic floated away in a cloud of weed smoke and she no longer knew where she ended and where her pillow and blankets began. She was putting up with Noah for Morgan. For her best friend’s wedding. Which was almost here and then almost over. Almost, almost, almost.
She grinned lazily at her laptop and placed the order for the dresses. Then she fell asleep, dreaming about ruffles and chiffon.
A week later, ten brown boxes were piled in the lobby of Avery’s building, each one delivered from Bella Blue, the bridesmaids dress company. Avery scratched her head, wondering why there were ten boxes when there were only six bridesmaids. She carried as many boxes as she could up the stairs and into her apartment, then opened one and splayed the dress on top of her bed. This was the right dress. She looked at the tag and saw that it was a size ten, which was her size.
She took out another dress and looked at the size. It was also a ten. Who else was a size ten? Avery thought she was the only one. She opened the bridesmaids email and read through everyone’s sizes, confirming that she was, indeed, the only size ten.
She hurried back downstairs and grabbed a couple more boxes, then brought them back to her bedroom and tore them open, winded from her second up-and-down climb. They were the right dresses, again, but they were two more size tens. Avery’s heart seized. How many size tens had she ordered?
She sprinted two steps at a time from her bedroom to the lobby and back again until all ten boxes were inside her apartment. Her pulse racing from the stairs and her mounting anxiety, she tore each box open and checked each size. Panicked heat pricked her chest when she realized that all of them—all of them—were size tens.
She checked the receipt in her email and nearly passed out when she saw the charge. Ten thousand dollars. To Morgan’s credit card.
“Fuck!” she screamed. How highwasshe when she placed this order? She must have been so out of it. She hardly remembered placing the order at all, though she did remember Noah calling beforehand. What did they talk about? There was the sound of a river where Noah’s voice should’ve been. She remembered something about the bachelor party. Had they discussed it?
Avery dialed Bella Blue’s customer service number, trembling so violently that she barely processed when someone picked up.
“Hello and good evening, ma’am,” said a woman with a slow, syrupy California voice. “My name’s Cheryl, how can I be of—”
“Hey,” Avery interrupted. “I recently made a very big purchase and I need help getting it refunded as soon as possible. Like, now.” She spoke extremely quickly, like if she did not get these boxes out of her apartment in the next five minutes they would explode.
“Sure thing, ma’am, we can help you with that.” Cheryl, who had all the fucking time in the world, typed something on the other end. “Can I get your name for the order?”
Avery blanked on her name. Then, “Avery. Russo. Avery Russo.”
“Sure,” Cheryl said. “One moment.”
Cheryl said nothing for an excruciating thirty seconds.
“All right, Ms. Russo. I’ve got it. On our systems, it’s showing that the packages were successfully delivered to—”
“No, they weren’t.” Avery rubbed her temples. Her patience was wearing razor thin and her Jersey was threatening to emerge. “I mean, they were, but it was the wrong order. I ordered ten size tens and I only needed one, and now I have ten boxes and no idea how to refund them because I tore them all apart.”
Another long pause from Cheryl.
“Okay, yes, sure ma’am, we can help you with that.”
Avery’s phone beeped with an incoming call from Morgan. Her heart fell to her stomach. She ignored it.
“Hmmm, let’s see.” Yet another pause from Cheryl. It should be illegal to employ anyone who operated this slowly in customer service. “It looks like your credit card company has blocked any activity going to your card.”
“Blocked?!”
“Yes, ma’am. You’ll have to call them to sort that out first and then we’ll be happy to arrange a refund.”
Avery’s phone beeped again. Morgan.Fuck.
“Okay, thank you.” She hung up with Cheryl and took a shuddering deep breath before answering Morgan’s call. “Hey Morgan.” She grit her teeth in a smile to trick herself into keeping the alarm out of her voice. “What’s up?”
“Why the hell did Bella Blue charge us ten thousand dollars?” Morgan asked. Right to it. “I just looked at my bank statement, and I’m about to flip on my credit card company. This has to be a mistake.”
Avery squeezed her eyes shut, bracing herself. “It’s my fault.”
