Chapter 4 #3
Morgan suddenly gasped, like she remembered something, and told everyone about her and Charlie’s tour of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden last week.
Morgan had always dreamed of getting married there, and it was Charlie’s idea to take her on a tour of the venue during their trip last weekend, probably because he knew he would pop the question soon.
(“Right, babe?” she asked, beaming, to which Charlie shrugged with mock innocence.) Morgan described the beautiful outdoor area for the ceremony and the huge glass dome in which they could have their reception, where you could see all the flowers blooming from inside the hall.
Avery smiled and nodded and squealed at each moment that called for a reaction, all while Noah sat mere inches away. Someone get her a medal.
“But we don’t know if we can afford it,” Morgan said with a frown. “So we’ll have to see.”
Charlie put a reassuring hand on his fianc é e’s arm. “We’ll do our best, babe. We have awhile to save.”
“Do you have an idea of a date yet?” Avery asked, and suddenly Noah reached over her to grab a forkful of steak tartare. She stiffened at his closeness. She could see every hair on his forearm, every freckle on his skin, the bulging veins revealing the strength he used to pin her down …
“We’re hoping to book about a year from now,” Morgan said. “Maybe less, if it’s available and we can swing it.”
A year. Avery had to be around Noah for a whole year.
She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again, forcing herself to stay present as the conversation morphed to rising rent prices. She didn’t know how they’d transitioned to that; in between her blinks she mentally left the table and also Earth.
“One of my coworkers at the ad agency used to live in Bushwick,” Charlie said. “He said it wasn’t too bad of a commute.”
Avery took slow, deep breaths. One year.
It sounded long now, but the older you got, the less time it was.
Today it was one twenty-fourth of her life, for example, but when she was twenty-nine it would only be one thirtieth.
Etcetera. She commanded herself to internalize this or else she’d lose her mind.
“Even that deep in Brooklyn has become pricey, though,” she said. “I considered it before I moved here but I couldn’t afford it.”
“Brooklyn Heights is the same,” Noah agreed. “That’s where I live. Brooklyn is just expensive in general.”
Avery was so glad she lived in Manhattan, where people from Brooklyn rarely made the trek and vice versa.
It wasn’t unheard of for New Yorkers to remain firmly, stubbornly in their borough.
Avery hoped Noah was one of those. Manhattan was hers , after all.
In fact, the entire city of New York was hers.
He wasn’t allowed any piece of it. She didn’t know or care where he was from originally, but he needed to go back there—now.
“Hold on, Charlie,” Morgan said, her nose scrunched in disgust. “Are you talking about that gross video editor you work with?”
Charlie nodded sheepishly. “The one who got suspended for sending offensive messages about a female producer, yeah …”
“Ooof,” Noah said. “What were the messages?”
He locked eyes with Avery for a beat before they both looked away, Avery’s heart slamming against her ribcage.
Then he took a sip of his drink, all casual and unbothered as if they had not been exchanging knowing eye contact all night.
The normality of his behavior sickened her.
This must’ve been how he acted at school when he heard the story of her infidelity spreading like wildfire through her friend group and the wider lacrosse team.
Just took a proverbial sip of his drink and said nothing.
“He wrote, ‘Rachel has the most fuckable ass’ in our corporate-wide group chat,” Charlie said.
“Well, does she?” Noah asked, laughing briefly before adding, “I’m kidding. That’s bad.”
Charlie grimaced. “Yeah. It was clearly meant to be private. I felt kinda bad for him.”
Morgan held her hand up. “I don’t feel bad for him. He shouldn’t be saying that about a female coworker at work. And she saw his message? Traumatizing.”
Charlie and Morgan spent the next few minutes bickering about the severity of what happened.
Practicing for marriage , Avery thought rudely as she drained the rest of her wine.
At least they had someone to bicker with.
They had someone to be with, for richer or for poorer and in sickness and in health and all the romance that goes along with that. They had a plan .
Avery had a plan once, too. She was going to graduate from Woodford College at the top of her class and live in a one-bedroom apartment downtown with Ryan, maybe in the West Village.
She would pursue her lifelong dream of being a writer by working and networking in the city, and then eventually she and Ryan would get married, have kids, and move to the suburbs like her parents did, where she could write essays and books in peace.
A simple, happy life. But now she spent her postgrad days floating around like an astronaut lost in space, hovering deeper into the open-ended nothingness that was her future.
And she was too chickenshit to talk about what Noah did to her, choosing instead to let everyone believe the lie that she’d cheated on the man she once thought was the love of her life.
Noah reached over her for another bite of steak tartare. As he pulled backward with the tartare in his hand, his arm lightly grazed Avery’s skin. She jumped at the contact, the silverware on the table rattling from her sudden movement.
Everyone whirled to face her. Blood rushed in her ears.
How dare he touch her.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I’ll be right back.”
Avery hurried to the bathroom and slammed the door closed as Noah’s touch burned her skin.
She hovered over the marble sink to examine her reflection in the mirror.
Her makeup was smeared around her sunken, red-rimmed eyes.
Her lips were dry and pale, vanishing into her washed-out face.
She leaned forward, searching for a spark of recognition in the person staring back at her, but there was none.
All she saw was a ghost, the faded remains of a woman she once knew, of a woman who’d disappeared at the hands of the man sitting outside at that table.
And now he was back in her life, the best man to her maid of honor in Morgan and Charlie’s wedding.
And there was nothing she could do to make him go away.