Chapter 6 #2
Avery loved the way Pete’s mind worked. She felt like she’d never be able to break free from the death grip that night senior year had on her identity, but she longed to remember who she once was. Maybe with Pete, she could.
“For sure,” she said. “I’m also thrilled to no longer have to do homework.”
Pete nodded vigorously. “The fact that we no longer have homework is insane! I had homework for eighteen years of my life. And now I get to spend my free time doing anything I want?” He pressed his fingers to his temples and made a mind blown gesture, which made Avery laugh.
“I know, right? And now we have some money, too. Which is also insane.”
“Don’t even get me started on that. Sometimes when I put on my tie every day, I feel like a kid playing dress-up in his dad’s closet. And then I get a paycheck, and I’m like: okay, never mind, I am a legit adult.”
Avery laughed again. Pete returned the grin, and their eyes stayed locked on each other for a few beats, until he broke away to take another sip of his beer.
She was feeling some d é j à vu from the night they met, except now she was sober and had her wits fully intact.
Maybe now she could close the deal with him, the way she’d failed to the other week.
She rested her hand on his thigh. “Well, again, I really appreciate you being there for me after the pub. You saved my life.”
Pete’s eyes followed Avery’s thumb as she rubbed it back and forth on top of his jeans. He seemed a little unsure, though not enough to pull away.
“Nah, that’s not true,” he said, his voice low and somewhat bashful. “I mean, someone else would’ve found you.”
He glanced at her mouth. She could feel him coming around to her flirtatiousness, slowly wrapping around her finger.
“But I’m glad it was you,” Avery said, and when Pete glanced at her mouth again, she knew that was her moment to lean in.
When their lips touched, she was surprised by how different it felt right away.
Even with her eyes closed, unable to see him, she was excited that it was Pete she was kissing, and for some reason this was the detail she focused on the most: not just on the feel of a pair of lips pressing against her own, but on the fact that it was Pete’s lips.
It was an awareness she hadn’t felt during a hookup in a long time.
She dug her hand into Pete’s hair and sighed into his touch, prying open his lips with her tongue and exploring his mouth. When he pulled away a few moments later, his cheeks were red. Her face slowly zipped open into a smile.
“Well—uh.…” Pete coughed to clear his throat, then exhaled a quick laugh. Yes, those teeth . Avery remembered now how flawless they were, like a row of white Tic-Tacs. “Sorry. That was just, um, unexpected.”
Avery hovered her lips close to his. “Good or bad?”
“Good!” he said quickly, reassuringly. “Definitely good. Sorry. Just surprising. Since you didn’t give me your number and all.”
Pete ran his hands through his thick shiny hair and fluffed out the strands, his movements emitting delicious whiffs of pomade, at the same time that Avery realized she needed to sleep with him.
More specifically, she needed to fuck him.
She needed to fuck away his memories of their night at the hospital, of the girl who drank so much that she passed out and woke up attached to an IV drip.
Because when Pete thought of her, he was not going to think of someone like that, someone so weak and helpless.
She wasn’t either of those things. She wasn’t like that when Noah pinned her wrists down senior year, and she certainly wasn’t like that now.
She was strong. Powerful. In control. She just needed to prove it.
“I’m telling you, it was the alcohol poisoning.” She didn’t want to talk about it. She just wanted to get this done, show him who she really was, excavate his existing memories of her like old bones from an archaeological site. “How would you feel about going somewhere else?”
“Yes. Let’s do it.” Pete took out his credit card to pay for his drink. “Do you live close? I can grab a cab.”
Avery shook her head. “I can’t do my place.
My roommate’s hosting a potluck dinner for her club soccer team.
” That was a lie. Celeste didn’t play sports.
But inviting a man over to her apartment was too intimate.
She much preferred their place. It was easier to escape afterward, leaving no trace of herself except the version they’d gotten in their bed.
That’s what they always wanted anyway: something that existed for their pleasure and nothing else.
Except now she’d lead with it on her terms, not theirs. Never again theirs.
“I was thinking maybe yours?” she asked.
Pete slipped his signed bill to the bartender. “Well, we could, but …” His voice trailed off.
“But?”
He met her eye. Like she should brace herself. “But I live on Staten Island.”
Avery stared dumbly at him. Pete might as well have suggested they board a spaceship.
Staten Island was part of New York City, but it was another planet entirely.
No subways went there. It was quite literally an island.
If you didn’t have a car, you could only get there by taking a bright orange ferry on which the words “Staten Island” were written in a Windows 95-era script font.
Lots of newspapers advertised the ferry to tourists as the place to go to see the Statue of Liberty, but nobody ever suggested that you get off the boat when it docked.
“Staten Island,” Avery repeated slowly. “Like Pete Davidson. Wow.”
Pete rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. You think that’s the first time I’ve heard that?”
Avery chuckled. “Definitely not but I still had to say it.”
“Of course you did.” His playful annoyance turned devilish as a smirk spread across his lips. “You up for an adventure?”
Avery had been to Staten Island a couple times as a kid to visit family, but she didn’t remember anything about it, except that some of the buildings looked like barracks.
“How many women have you presented a trip to Staten Island as ‘an adventure’?” she asked.
“Oh, come on! You know you want to …” Pete let his words linger, attempting to dangle them like a carrot on a string in front of her, but Avery wasn’t going all the way to Staten Island just for sex. She wasn’t that desperate.
“Not happening,” she said.
But she did want to kiss him again. And so she did.
She kissed him hard, tugging his bottom lip with her teeth and lacing her hands through his hair, trying to summon her power.
But it wasn’t enough. She needed him closer than clothes allowed.
She needed sex. She whipped her head around, searching, thinking.
They needed to go somewhere, somewhere that wasn’t right in the middle of a bar with floor-to-ceiling windows. Somewhere with privacy.
Somewhere like that bathroom a few feet away.
Avery scanned the bar. Besides an elderly man drinking a scotch and two middle-aged women gossiping over cosmos, there were no other patrons.
The bartender was standing behind the well drinks, engrossed in her task of inspecting highball glasses.
Nobody would care if two people scurried to the bathroom at the same time.
Avery stood up. She wasn’t desperate enough to go to Staten Island, but she was desperate enough to go into a public bathroom. This was a truth about herself she now needed to live with.
She pointed to the black nondescript door down a narrow hallway toward the back. “Let’s go in there.”
Pete choked out a laugh. “You’re joking.”
“Nope.” She grabbed his hand. “Come on.”
The bathroom was small, with rainbow graffiti and wads of gum decorating the walls, and reeked of garbage masked by nondescript berry air freshener.
Avery ignored it all and took Pete’s face between her hands, then pressed her lips to his more urgently than before.
Their kiss deepened and intensified, their mouths slipping and sliding in a frenzy of breaths and groans.
She pinned him against the green tile wall with her knee and peeled his clothes off like they were on fire.
Then he wiggled his way out of her grip and kneeled in front of her onto the sticky floor, pulling her skirt and underwear with him.
When he was eye level with her hips, he moved his face between her bare thighs and began to flick his tongue.
Avery’s breath hitched. Warmth pooled between her legs as he kept his rhythm steady.
She gripped the wall with one hand and grabbed a lock of Pete’s hair with the other, paying no attention to the open garbage pail beside her.
She ground her hips against his mouth and the pressure mounted, building and building and—
He stopped. Avery flung her eyes down, panting, the lower half of her body burning hot.
For a second their eyes met, and he moved his lips away to toss her a smile.
Her heart leapt. She had forgotten that sex was supposed to feel good, that sex could feel good, and was even better with someone you actually liked.
Although nobody, not even Ryan, had ever gone down on her like this .
“Don’t sto—” she began, but before she could finish her sentence Pete was between her legs again, flicking his tongue and holding her steady. She writhed and implored him to keep going. Once again, though, he stopped short. And then he did it again. And again.
Suddenly, there was a knock.
“Hello?” said a slurred female voice behind the door. “Is someone in there?”
Avery stiffened against the wall. She couldn’t speak, could barely breathe. All she could focus on was the feel of Pete’s hands gripping her thighs and the dizzying heat rising in her body as he edged her.