Page 89 of She Used to Be Nice
Noah said nothing for a few seconds, just shook his head repeatedly as he moved to the other side of the island. Avery remained standing, panting hard.
“Jesus Christ, you’re a tease,” Noah muttered to himself. He met her eye again. “So now it’s my responsibility toaskif the girl is doing okay? Why didn’tyousay something?”
Avery had tried to say something that night. Her limbs and tongue were heavy with booze, but she did her best to communicate that she did not want to have sex with him when they were in the bedroom. And it wasn’t enough.
“I did say something,” she said. Her voice was unyielding. “I said no. Or at least I tried very hard. You ignored me.”
Noah scoffed. “I didn’tignoreyou.Youdidn’t communicate clearly enough.”
Even if Avery’s attempt to get Noah off of her was unclear and sloppy, shouldn’t the mereattempthave been enough for him to stop? Why would he proceed to have sex with someone who wasn’t fully enthusiastically engaged in the moment? She supposed when a man saw you as only a body and not as a human, the words that came out of your mouth didn’t matter.
“You can’t be this stupid,” she pressed on. She stayed strong, felt something powerful coursing through her veins. “Have you never been super drunk before? You’re not exactly functioning at maximum capacity. Anyone who looked at me would’ve known that I couldn’t give consent.”
“Give consent,”Noah repeated in a derisive, high-pitched voice. “You sound like one of those ugly blue-haired feminists who don’t shave their pits.”
“And you sound like a rapist. Because that’s what you are.”
They stared at each other for a few beats, Avery holding steady on his steely gaze. She searched his stone-cold expression for a flicker of fear. He knew there were people who believed Averynow, people like Morgan and Charlie, which was a risk to his nice-guy, charismatic start-up founder image. He’d have to explain to everyone—his colleagues at the Humane Society who’d helped him adopt the puppy, the Meow Monthly investor who’d connected him with a discount for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, his whole inner circle of friends and family—why he was no longer the best man in his friends’ wedding.
But that wasn’t Avery’s problem.
He went over to the sink and swiped his Stanley off the counter before leaning in close to Avery’s ear. His breath was hot and yeasty, frothing in his mouth. Avery remained still.
“You’re right,” he said, his voice low and hard, cutting in its quiet. “And I’d do it all over again so that bitches like you know your place.”
When he left the kitchen, Avery curled her hands into fists on the table. What a despicable excuse of a man. Of a human being.
“Fuck you,” she spat after him.
He didn’t hear her. He’d already disappeared. But it was the start of him finally getting what he deserved.
26
OVER THE NEXT MONTH,Metropolitan’s search traffic decreased at a frighteningly rapid pace. Google rolled out algorithm updates several times a year to reduce the visibility of low-quality content across the web, and this update was hittingMetropolitanhard. The site was losing rankings across dozens of search engine results pages.
“We rely on Google for over half of our pageviews,” Patricia said to Avery and Kevin, who unfortunately hadn’t gotten the job at BuzzFeed, in a meeting in her office. She alternated between pacing from one end of the room to the other and leaning as far backward in her large leather chair as she could go. “I thought Avery’s social media research was gonna help, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much.”
She stared pointedly at Avery.
“I don’t know that the traffic we’ll get from any platform will make up for this loss in the near term,” Avery said. “We have the most potential to grow on Instagram currently, and I can shift my focus to building that out more, but even that isn’t going to be an overnight thing.”
“And we need more people specifically focused on Google,” Kevin offered. “Avery can only do so much when she’s also focusing on our other platforms. SEO is an entire discipline that—”
Patrica heaved an impatient sigh. “SEO analysts aren’t in the budget this quarter. Kevin, why don’t you take the lead on what’sgoing on with Google? And Avery, you focus on our other platforms. There, we have a plan.”
Patricia put on her reading glasses and looked at her computer, as a dismissal. Kevin and Avery walked back to their desks in defeated silence.
Avery spent the next few days posting onMetropolitan’sInstagram as often as she could without irritating their followers. She knew their audience loved candid photos of celebrities doing normal things, like Hailey Bieber licking an ice cream cone or Adam Driver scraping gum off the bottom of his shoe, so she posted a couple of those to rack up likes and comments. By the end of the week, she’d amassed five thousand new followers and a thousand clicks toMetropolitanarticles from Instagram Stories.
Metropolitanhad also run a timeline of every major event in the Dave Moore case, starting from the first allegation and ending with the four women currently trying to bring him to trial. Predictably, the story was blowing up online. Some people were supportive ofMetropolitan’s coverage, including a prominent actor fromOne Happy Valleywho tweeted the article and wrote,I wish all the victims nothing but the best.Other people, though, were insensitive trolls. One reader commented on the article that the victims were looking for publicity, as “evidenced” by the fact that one of them had just begun to star on a new TV show. A Republican pundit posted paparazzi photos of one of the victims drunk at a bar, her eyelids fluttering, and wrote,Presented without comment.
Avery posted a few more Instagram stories on theMetropolitanaccount before switching to her personal one for a break. Scrolling through her feed, she froze when she came across a picture of Blair and Noah facing each other and smiling, an engagement ring sparkling on Blair’s outstretched hand, and a caption that read,I have found the one whom my soul loves. So blessed to say I’m marrying my best friend!
Avery scrolled through the deluge of comments under the post, her stomach twisting tighter with each flick of her thumb.
Congrats!
You guys are so cute!
