Chapter 18 #2
Avery plastered a smile on her face like a shoddy paint job.
But she could feel it chipping, and was grateful when Pete brought the date back to normal by talking about an issue he was frustrated with at work.
Avery didn’t need to focus too much on the details; she could just nod along and validate his feelings about wanting to quit, which was usually what she did anyway when he ranted about his job stressors.
She was especially happy to do it tonight, to focus the attention away from her.
Her reactions to Noah were spiraling out of control lately, in a much-too visible and obvious way.
Unless she wanted everything she’d kept hidden to unravel before the wedding, she needed to get a grip.
She was nearly in the homestretch. She couldn’t fuck up now.
After dinner, Pete told her he had an early meeting the next morning and needed to get a full night’s sleep in his own bed.
He apologized and seemed disappointed that they wouldn’t be spending the night together, but Avery was convinced that he wanted to get away from her because she’d made everything uncomfortable with the phone call incident.
She sighed, annoyed that her brain provided the worst possible interpretation of their evening.
Of course a man who wanted a night on his own couldn’t possibly still like her.
The only explanation was that he hated her now.
Logically she knew this was probably a ridiculous insecure thought, but emotionally she couldn’t help but wonder if it was the most accurate assessment she’d ever made about anyone.
She begrudgingly hailed a cab alone. As she slid inside, her phone buzzed again with a call from the same number.
Nervous sweat erupted on her palms; her hands were so slippery she could barely keep her grip on her phone steady.
She should’ve known she wouldn’t be able to avoid this phone call.
Noah was obviously going to listen to Morgan and reach out to Avery to plan the bachelor party.
He’d convinced everyone he was a nice guy, a responsible guy, a good guy. What a joke.
She pressed the green phone symbol slowly, like she was setting off a timer to detonate a bomb. “Hello?”
“Avery?”
She swallowed. “Yes?”
“Oh, good. I hope I’m not calling too late. It’s Noah, by the way.”
He could not have sounded more normal, like a regular person checking to make sure now was a good time to chat.
And did he honestly think that Avery didn’t know it was him, that his voice didn’t haunt her in the deepest corners of her nightmares?
Was he overcompensating or stupid? Or did he not care?
She stared out the window of the cab, trying to focus on the East River whizzing by as they sped uptown on the FDR to her apartment.
“You’re not,” she said, her voice blank. “What’s up?”
“Cool. I wanted to chat with you about the bachelor party, if you have a minute? Since you said you were helping.”
The river was moving so fast. The cab had to be going sixty miles per hour right now. “Okay,” Avery said.
“Great. So the house is in Snowmass Village, this town outside Aspen. I could make a reservation at this Mexican place Friday night.”
Avery thought about how cold the water was. “Sure, that works.”
“It’s good, trust me. I hosted my company for a retreat at the house once, and we started our weekend there. And then we can go downtown. Most of the bars are pretty chill.”
There was no way the water was warmer than forty degrees.
“Then, Saturday morning, we’ll go on the hike. It won’t be too bad. Just a walk around the lake, maybe a couple inclines.”
Maybe even thirty degrees. “Cool,” Avery said.
“And I was thinking it might be fun to separate during the day so both parties can do their own thing. There’s shopping and nail salons downtown. The tarot card reader could be fun, too. I can text you some information, and you can book some stuff for the bridesmaids.”
Or twenty degrees? Ten?
“Avery?”
Where in the world was the ocean that cold? “Huh?” Avery asked.
“Does that work?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Great. Well, I think that’s everything on my end,” Noah said. “Just text me if you have any other questions or ideas.”
Antarctica, maybe.
“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 high was she 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.”
“What?”
“I did the orders wrong.”
“Wait, how? I thought we got crazy overcharged or something.”
Avery reread the emailed receipt to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating.
She pinched her arm, touched her cheeks, rubbed her hands over her thighs—yes, this was reality, and the number on the receipt was not something she could make disappear with an antipsychotic.
“I accidentally ordered ten dresses for myself instead of one size ten. Which means I probably did the same for everyone else.”
Morgan didn’t respond right away. Fuck . Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
“Are you saying my cousin Sandra has fourteen dresses on her stoop right now?” Morgan demanded.
“Yes. Shit, yes. I’m so sorry.”
Morgan exhaled loudly. Out Avery’s window, cars honked at a cab driver who failed to immediately respond to a green light, with one driver screaming, “Move, asshole!” Avery slammed the window shut. There was enough tension in her apartment already.
“Jesus Christ, Avery. So now what? Did you call the dress company?”
“I just did.” Avery braced herself again, lowering her voice to barely above a whisper. “Your credit card’s frozen.”
“Frozen?!” Morgan howled. “I just used it to order the flowers! Dammit, Avery!”
Avery rubbed her chest, willing her pulse to slow. This was just a mistake. People made mistakes, didn’t they? Morgan knew that better than anyone. She was there during the fallout after Avery’s mistake senior year. After what she thought was Avery’s mistake senior year.
Because what happened that night was far from a mistake.
And Avery didn’t know how much longer she could pretend that it was.
It would, after all, make no sense to Morgan that Avery messed up the bridesmaids dress orders because she needed to soothe herself after talking to Noah.
How much longer could Avery allow Morgan—could Avery allow everyone— to think she was a mess because that was simply who she was?
Was she truly capable of continuing to pretend until the wedding that she wasn’t hiding something?
Yet how could she trust that everyone wouldn’t think she was covering up for the fact that she’d cheated?
If only everyone knew she’d been doing the opposite: that she’d rather people see her as a cheater instead of a weak, helpless victim.
That she’d rather her actions that night be interpreted as something she had control over, instead of something she didn’t.
But she’d had no control. She couldn’t consent. This was all Noah’s fault.
“I’m so sorry, Morgan,” Avery pleaded, pacing back and forth by the foot of her bed. “Just call the credit card company and tell them it’s not fraud. They have to understand, don’t they?”
“Yeah, but now everyone probably has to ship the dresses back to prove it was a mistake before I can even get the refund, which I don’t know if I’ll be able to get because my card is frozen!
” Morgan sighed. Loudly and pointedly. “You know what? It’s fine.
I doubt we’re the only people in the world who have done this.
I’ll call the credit card company and figure it out. ”
“No, let me do it. Please. I was the one who did this.”
“Well, they’ll probably need my personal information, so it’s easier for me to do it.” Morgan’s voice was firm. “I got it.”
Then she hung up without saying goodbye.