Chapter 27
W ITH THE ARRIVAL OF August came the oppressive, suffocating heat, the kind that made most New Yorkers flee the city and return in September when the weather was at its best again.
It meant Morgan had started wearing her wedding shoes around her apartment to break them in, had intensified her workouts so her arms and shoulders would be extra toned in her dress, and had assembled the gift bags she would bestow upon each of the bridesmaids the morning they arrived at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
The wedding was in just three weeks now, and Avery’s excitement for Morgan and Charlie only slightly outweighed her stress over seeing Ryan and her old friends again.
At least she wouldn’t have to see Noah, or Blair for that matter.
It was undoubtedly a bright side, certainly the kind of positive thinking her new therapist, Dr. Banshol, would approve of.
It had taken forever for Avery to find this woman.
Once Avery decided, reluctantly, that she probably needed some professional help to get through all of this, the search for a therapist who didn’t suck was grueling.
Everyone was booked with clients already, and so few people called her back after she left them messages.
Finding someone she connected with was a whole other challenge.
She’d needed a therapist to help her through the process of finding a therapist. But Dr. Banshol had an office a few blocks from her apartment and a gentle but firm disposition that Avery needed.
They’d only had a few sessions so far. They didn’t get into many details of the sexual assault during the first session, but Dr. Banshol started poking at it in the second session, trying to help Avery push past her reflexive feelings of guilt and self-blame.
It wasn’t like Avery thought she was going to heal overnight, but being confronted with Dr. Banshol’s questions and hearing herself waffle back and forth between blaming herself and blaming Noah only solidified that her road ahead would not be short.
Avery attended a couple of group therapy sessions, too, also reluctantly, per the advice of Dr. Banshol.
Listening to fellow victims—and survivors, as some called themselves, though Avery probably wouldn’t use that word for herself; it felt more suited for people who’d been through life-or-death tragedies like wars or cancer—sharing their stories put a hard stone of anger in Avery’s stomach, the same anger she’d felt when she thought Noah was abusing Blair.
Who knew rapists came in so many different forms?
There was the woman who had panic attacks whenever she was in small spaces, a side effect of getting sexually assaulted in a bathroom on a yacht.
There was the teenager whose stepfather took advantage of her at least once a week for years, and the guy who was drunk at a party and came to with a girl on top of him filming the whole encounter.
Every story, one after the other, was somehow worse than the last. Avery mostly listened during these sessions, not yet ready to speak the details about her story aloud to strangers.
But the fact that she was there meant people inherently knew that she was a victim, too. It was enough exposure for now.
One night, after group therapy, Avery met her parents at J.
G. Melon, a burger restaurant on the Upper East Side.
Avery had been tempted to cancel, but she’d made these plans before she started group and she hadn’t seen her parents in a while.
The last time she’d seen them was when she spent the whole weekend listening to her mom drone on about the men who could have taken advantage of her while she was drunk after Doc Holliday’s.
Which was a conversation she was not interested in continuing today.
But she tried to see it from her parents’ perspective.
They were protective, and part of her could see herself saying the same thing to her own daughter one day, despite knowing the kind of offensive cultural messaging it perpetuated.
It would only be out of love. Out of not wanting her daughter to end up like her.
When her parents’ cab pulled up in front of J. G. Melon, her mom climbed out and hustled over to squeeze Avery in a hug. “We’ve missed you, honey,” she said.
Avery had been surprised by her mom’s suggestion that they come into the city.
Her parents hated Manhattan, were suburbanites through and through.
Whenever they visited, Mom lamented about all the dog shit on the sidewalks, and Dad told her he couldn’t understand how people lived in such tight quarters.
All they did was complain: about the dirty subway, the high rent, how “dangerously close to Harlem” Avery lived.
They were happiest in their little conservative bubble in New Jersey.
Avery would never forget the fight they’d had when she insisted white privilege was real, and Mom said that “insulted” all the “hard work her father put into their family.”
“I missed you too,” Avery said.
“How did you get here?” Mom asked, already in a panic. “Subway? I hate the idea of you going down there by yourself. The crime rate in your area has got to be astronomical.”
Here we go . “It’s fine, Mom. I feel very safe.”
“Can’t you move somewhere with a doorman?” Dad asked. “We’d feel so much better if you had that extra layer of protection.”
“If you want to pay the rent that kind of apartment would cost, absolutely.”
Inside the restaurant, they were seated at a table right near the bar, below a row of televisions mounted on the ceiling.
The table was covered in a green-and-white checkered tablecloth, with salt and pepper shakers and a ketchup bottle gathered in the center.
Avery had specifically chosen J. G. Melon not only because it boasted one of the juiciest burgers in the city, but because it was the safest choice for her picky parents, who mostly stuck to the same two Italian restaurants within a five-mile radius of their house.
“What’s new, honey?” Dad said after the waiter took their food and drink orders. “You guys getting ready for the wedding?”
Avery nodded. In addition to therapy, she’d also been busy with last-minute wedding tasks, like scheduling mani-pedi appointments for the bridesmaids and drafting her maid of honor speech. “Yep. It’s just a few weeks away now.”
“I forgot to ask you how Colorado was. Morgan’s pictures online looked beautiful.”
Avery fiddled nervously with the tablecloth. “Oh, yeah. It was fine.”
“Whose house was that?” Mom asked. “It was stunning.”
“Noah’s. He’s a friend of Charlie’s.” Now that Avery had told some people about her sexual assault, she wondered if she should tell her parents, too.
Didn’t they deserve an explanation for why their daughter had changed so much over the last year?
With their conservative tendencies, though, could Avery trust them to believe her?
Morgan, Charlie, and Pete already did. Maybe there was more support available to her waiting with open arms, if she’d just let herself be held.
“Well, he must be very successful to afford something like that,” Mom concluded.
A journalist on one of the television screens in the restaurant suddenly began discussing the Moore victims’ accounts of what happened during the assaults, focusing on how Moore tied a blue bandana around the base of his shaft to keep himself erect.
Avery blew bubbles in her Diet Coke to block the information from entering her brain.
“Goodness,” Mom scoffed, nodding at the television. “All these women want is attention.”
“And money,” Dad said.
Avery took her lips off her straw. “What did you just say?”
“They want to sue Moore for his millions , ” Dad said casually, like this was a widely known fact. “Money talks. These girls are full of it.”
“ And they get to go on the news,” Mom added in the same factual tone. “I bet one of them is an aspiring actor auditioning for her next emotional TV role.”
Avery couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her parents weren’t just conservative. They were fucking conspiracy theorists.
“That’s a little ridiculous, don’t you think?
” she said. “These women are getting so much shit right now. I see it at work all the time. If Metropolitan’s social media replies are filled with death threats just because we’re covering the story, I can only imagine what the women themselves are dealing with. ”
Dad shrugged. “I doubt those women will care about a bad tweet when they’re raking in the dough.”
“Dave Moore won’t go anywhere,” Mom said with a wave of her hand. “His shows are too good. The networks need him for content.”
Avery felt the rising tides of fury unearth themselves from deep inside her. What kind of nonsensical reaction were her parents having right now? What kind of nonsensical reaction would they have to her?
She thought about the people in group therapy, about the women coming forward to share their abuse at the hands of Dave Moore.
She thought about Noah and his appearance on Shark Tank and their confrontation in Colorado.
About his admission. So many perpetrators, getting investments in their start-ups and prestigious Emmy awards and forgiveness from ignorant people like her friends and parents and idiots on social media.
Still. Even after #MeToo, even after the illusion of cultural progress had been made.
A forest fire of rage lit up inside Avery’s stomach. Something else needed to change. More of these predators needed to be taken down.
Including hers.