Page 90 of She Used to Be Nice
OMG YAY!
Avery leaned back in her desk chair and took slow, even breaths, in through her nose and out through her mouth. There had once been a time when she thought Blair’s betrayal couldn’t get any worse. What could be worse than one of your best friends insulting you behind your back and turning all your other friends against you when you needed her support the most? Well, this. This was worse.
Avery took a screenshot of the Instagram post and sent it to Morgan. Morgan called her immediately.
“I know,” Morgan said, sounding just as flabbergasted as Avery.
“Like, is she serious?” Avery asked.
“Unfortunately, she is. We kicked her out of the wedding, too.”
Avery’s jaw dropped.
“It’s sociopathic to me that Noah admitted to you that he did it yet continues to lie and deny it to everyone else, including—clearly—Blair,” Morgan said. “It’s like he purposely wanted to make sureyouknew he knew what he was doing that night so that, in addition to the assault, now he also gets to make you out to be crazy. Meanwhile Blair refused to acknowledge even thepossibilitythat you were telling the truth. Even Viraj and Parker were like, ‘Who knows?’ when Charlie and I talked to them. I’m not saying their response is ideal, but it’s better than outright dismissing Noah’s involvement.”
First Noah, and now Blair. Morgan and Charlie’s unflinching support was more than Avery could’ve dreamed of. She had severely underestimated her best friends’ love for her. That she was worthy of any support at all was still something she was getting used to. And the fact that Noah admitted what he did to her gave her a strange kind of satisfaction. It was gratifying, she supposed, to get his confirmation of what she knew to be true—not that she needed it to know it was true. But the thing she’d gotten confirmed was the fact that she was raped. This wasn’t exactly a victory she wanted to celebrate.
“And then Blair has to go ahead andmarryhim?” Morgan made a guttural sound of disgust. “Sorry, but fuck her.”
Although Avery was thrilled that Noah and Blair weren’t coming to the wedding, that wouldn’t magically fix every issue he had caused. He was still the reason Avery kept men at a distance, the reason she felt so unlovable. The reason that Pete had dumped her.
Avery’s heart sank to the floor of her cubicle. What she wouldn’t give to see Pete right now, to melt into his tender embrace and laugh at his dumb jokes and feel his confident, reassuring presence. At this point their relationship felt like a dream, the details slipping away the harder she tried to remember them. Did Pete miss her like she missed him? Did he even think about her? She wondered what he was doing. She closed her eyes and fantasized about the weight of his arm draping across her side and his face snuggled up in her hair. She’d rarely let him spoon her when he slept over, and he’d always joke about how lonely it was on the other side of the bed. But whenever she did let him pull her in, the warmth of his chest on her back felt like sunshine.
She suddenly remembered that she still hadn’t followed him back on Instagram. She’d resisted doing it the whole time they were together. “I see enough of you in person. Do we need access to each other’s entire digital footprints, too?” she’d said one Saturday morning while they were lying in her bed, splitting a plate of pancakes from the diner. In his very charming way, Pete had replied, “I want access to every part of you.”
She wanted that, too. She wanted him to know everything. Everything she’d been too scared to tell him about her past.
She typed his username into her search bar. She knew following him back would give him a notification. Maybe it would get his attention, like a flame shot into the sky by a ship abandoned at sea. She tapped Follow.
Avery hadn’t known what she expected to happen after she followed Pete back on Instagram. But what did happen was nothing.
She let a full week go by before she called him, her heart racing as she dialed his number. If she wanted to talk to him, she’d have to summon some bravery, whatever morsel she’d found in Colorado, and reach out to him directly. She listened as her phone rang into his voicemail. Then she hung up and tried again, and still nothing.
She checked the time. It was Thursday at five. Pete could be in a meeting. More likely, he was ignoring her. But she remembered Thursdays were generally his slower, more normal day, when he got off work closer to 5:30. They’d gone on their date to Monkey Bar on a Thursday, did karaoke with Morgan and Charlie at Planet Rose on a Thursday. There was a chance she could catch him on his way home.
She rode the subway up to midtown to Pete’s office, which was inside a skyscraper on Park Avenue. The shades of pink in the early evening sunset reflected against the glass side of his tall, towering building. Avery felt very small from where she stood on the sidewalk, craning her neck up to watch the building disappear into the clouds and then trailing her eyes back down to the imposing revolving front door. A few yards away from the entrance was a massive circular bench made of cement. Avery made her way toward the bench, climbing up the long steps that stretched nearly half the block, and sat down. She crossed her legs and waited as the warm early summer breeze caressed her bare arms. Lots of men in dorky fleece vests emerged from that front door. She watched them intently, hoping that soon one of those men would be hers.
Finally, at 6:30, he appeared. Hair slightly overgrown, sleeves of his blue button down rolled, vest tight against his core. Her breath caught in her throat.
“Pete!”
Pete whirled his head around and froze as his gaze settled on Avery. She strode toward him but was careful to keep her distance when she stopped walking, not wanting to scare him away by getting too close.
“I was hoping I’d catch you,” she said.
Pete tossed a glance behind her shoulder. “Have you been waiting here …?”
Avery nodded.
“How long?” he asked.
“I would’ve waited as long as it took for you to come out.”
Pete didn’t budge. He just sighed. “What do you want, Avery?”
Avery’s eyes burned with tears. Already. She missed him so much, but his tone was disapproving. He was also probably creeped out, even though he’d once ambushed her outside of somewhere he knew she’d be, too. It was arguably creepier of him to wait at her apartment building that one time. At least this was a public space.
“I just want to talk to you,” she said.
