Chapter 3
B EEPBEEP . B EEPBEEP . B EEPBEEP . T HE high-pitched sounds pierced Avery’s throbbing skull. A light shone in her face, the heat scorching her eyelids. It felt like she was propped up on a bed with her back against a pillow.
Her eyes fluttered open.
“She’s awake.”
Three people in white scrubs hovered over her and scratched notes on clipboards. An IV drip was attached to her arm, limiting her mobility. Everything around her was bright yellow, sterile.
“Where am—” Her voice came out hoarse. The inside of her mouth tasted like burnt gasoline. “Where am I?”
“The hospital,” one of the people in scrubs said.
She looked around wildly. “I’m where ?” The scent of rubbing alcohol tickled her nostrils, making her cough. She blinked rapidly. Mascara flaked off her eyelashes and fell onto her cheeks. She felt simultaneously panicked and like her brain had turned to oatmeal.
“NewYork-Presbyterian. You were experiencing the effects of alcohol poisoning,” Scrubs continued, all business. “And you took a fall, but you’re all right now. This young man called an ambulance and brought you here.”
He pointed in the direction of a guy slumped in a blue plastic chair in the corner. Avery remembered him from last night. Or tonight? What time was it?
She wiped the smudged mascara off her face, pulling at her eyes. She felt the ridges of a wound scabbing over on her temple. Bruises blossomed on her left arm, purpling her skin and leaving her sore. The beeps from the various monitors connected to her body did not let up.
“I’m so sorry about this, uh …” She hesitated. She knew she’d met him at some point after she left Morgan at Doc Holliday’s. It was at another bar. Somewhere Irish. O’Something. McSomething.
Oh no, she thought. She’d drunk too much. She’d been with a guy. Her cleavage was out. There were some holes in her memory. Please not again.
“W—what happened?” she asked, her heart racing.
“You passed out,” the guy said. “Outside the bar. And I couldn’t wake you up so I called an ambulance. Here.” He handed Avery her wallet, meeting her eye. “They needed your ID and insurance card.”
Avery blew her stringy hair out of her face as she took her things, relieved. “Thanks.”
“Don’t sweat it.” He glanced away, seemingly to hide a blush spreading across his cheeks.
Had she been flirting with this guy last night?
The beer goggles must have been strong, because that fleece vest was hideous.
It was an ugly slate gray, and the name of some financial firm was embroidered on the chest. But the man wearing it was handsome, with wavy brown hair, light blue eyes, and lean arms poking out of the rolled-up sleeves of his button-down.
And at least he’d been nice enough to take her here.
If he’d been someone else, someone like Noah, this night could’ve ended way differently, terrifyingly so. The thought made her shiver.
The door suddenly swung open, hitting the cinder block wall with a deafening bang. Morgan burst into the room and threw her purse on an empty chair.
“What happened to you?” she shouted, the messy topknot on her head swinging loose.
Shit.
“Hey!” Avery said uneasily. Her heart hammered in her chest. Avery didn’t want Morgan to see her esteemed maid of honor like this.
She tried to sit up straighter in the bed and greet Morgan like nothing was wrong, but the IV drip stopped her from moving much more.
She plastered on her cheeriest smile, as if that would distract Morgan from the chaos. “What’s up? What are you doing here?”
Morgan’s chest rose and fell in rapid bursts, and for a second she said nothing.
Avery held her breath, bracing herself. This was it—Morgan was going to fire Avery from being maid of honor.
She was going to realize that Avery could barely take care of herself, let alone shoulder the responsibility of a wedding.
She was going to finally see that their friends had been right to ditch Avery senior year and maybe Morgan should have, too.
“I got a call from someone saying you were here!” Morgan cried. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“Oh, sorry,” the guy—dammit, what was his name?—called out from his seat. “I scanned your phone open with your Face ID and called the last person you texted. Sorry if that’s invasive. I wanted someone to know where you were. Hope that’s cool.”
Avery glared at him. The thought of this stranger touching her while she was unconscious made her feel all sorts of ill. But he could have left her for dead instead, so she supposed she had to be grateful.
“Yeah, that’s … um, thanks,” she said.
Morgan whirled her head around to face him, then did a double take. “Wait. I know you. Your name is Pete, right?”
Pete’s face scrunched in confusion. Then his eyes flew open. “Oh shit, you’re Charlie Durham’s girlfriend.”
Avery leaned backward into her crunchy hospital pillow, watching carefully as this interaction unfolded.
“Fianc é e, actually,” Morgan said with a smile. She held up her left hand, her ring glittering with rainbow beams of light. “I’m Morgan.”
Pete pointed at her. “Yes, Morgan! I knew that. And congratulations.”
Avery had no idea how to feel about this. “How … do you two know each other?”
“I know her fianc é ,” Pete said. “We met when I was a senior at UGrant and he was a senior at Woodford. We both worked at this record store in Boston and hung out sometimes. But we’ve kinda lost touch now.”
“Charlie invited you to some parties on campus, too, right?” Morgan asked. “I remember you were at a couple.”
“Yeah, UGrant had a shit nightlife. Charlie took me to a few Woodford parties, actually. I remember a Dino-Whores theme party specifically.” Pete chuckled at himself. “Kind of offensive. But also hilarious.”
Morgan sighed like she couldn’t believe she was associated with such people. “Yeah, that one was something.” She looked at Avery. “I don’t remember you being at that one. Maybe you had to study or something.”
Nervous sweat pricked Avery’s armpits. “Hold on.” She stared Pete down. “You went to school in Boston? And you’ve been to Woodford?”
“Yeah.” Pete cocked his head. “Why?”
Now Avery knew exactly how to feel about this, and what she felt was not good. “ I went to Woodford.”
Pete laughed in disbelief. “No way!”
Avery groaned and rubbed her temples. As if getting so drunk that she needed to be taken to the hospital wasn’t embarrassing enough.
Now she risked Pete knowing how much of a mess she really was.
The city of Boston was essentially populated solely by college students, so it wasn’t unlikely that she would meet someone who had also gone to school there.
But the fact that Pete also knew Charlie and Morgan put him way too close to their friend group.
Who had Charlie introduced Pete to senior year?
What if Pete met Ryan somehow and heard that Avery had cheated on him?
It was certainly possible Pete had learned about her from someone at one of the parties Charlie took him to. What a terrible first impression.
“I was—am—friends with Charlie and Morgan, but I don’t remember meeting you at school,” Avery said. “Don’t take that the wrong way.”
“I don’t, don’t worry,” Pete replied, and seemed to mean it because he laughed a little as he spoke. “I didn’t get out that much. Still don’t, really.”
Avery waited for him to tell her that he didn’t remember her either, but he didn’t offer up the information on his own, and she wasn’t sure if she should ask for it or not.
Last night, though—at least from what was crystallizing in her memory—he hadn’t shown any signs of knowing her previously or treated her like anyone other than a girl he was bonding with over Taylor Swift.
Avery remembered admiring how self-assured he was, too, in admitting he was a Swiftie.
Yes, it was coming back to her now. Pete was so easygoing, so self-assured. She coveted those qualities.
“I can tell,” she teased. “Look at your vest. Your investment firm is monogrammed on it.”
Pete laughed, the sound like a song. “Harsh! But you’re right. I need to stop wearing this to the bar. It’s not doing me any favors.”
A doctor put two fingers on Avery’s neck and studied the monitor by her bed, where a thin, squiggly line moved up and down to the rhythm of her heartbeat.
Avery felt strangely comforted by the visual proof that she still had a beating, functioning heart.
Her chest had felt emptier than ever lately, and her attempts to fill it always seemed to go awry.
Although Pete kept his gaze soft on her and there was a whisper of a smile on his lips, like maybe he didn’t mind that she’d derailed his night.
She smiled back, something warm and hopeful blooming in her chest.
Then her eye snagged on Morgan, who had busied herself with gathering Avery’s medical files.
Avery frowned. Responsible Avery, the Avery everyone once knew, would’ve been fast asleep right now, dreaming about floral arrangements and save-the-date cards, not having her bride-to-be best friend pick her up from a bender the morning after her engagement.
Avery imagined Morgan snuggled up with Charlie in their warm king-sized bed while she lay passed out in the middle of a filthy Manhattan street surrounded by judgmental onlookers.
She jumped out of bed and slipped on her black booties in her effort to hurry of there. The less time they spent in this hospital room, with reminders of Avery’s behavior ticking across monitors and scribbled on paperwork, the better.
Pete cleared his throat awkwardly, like he didn’t know what to do next. Avery didn’t know either, at least as it pertained to Pete. She just knew she needed to go.