Chapter 9 #3
Avery hustled to the bar and inhaled a deep, cleansing breath once she was far enough away from Noah.
She needed to take some control here, needed something to make her feel like a regular functioning person, even though she wasn’t exactly behaving like one.
She stared at the bartender, with his deep tan and muscular arms, then leaned over the bar and asked him for another drink.
Soon the two of them fell into easy conversation about where he learned to bartend, like any two people meeting on a night out, his eyes lingering on hers just long enough for her to know he was flirting with her.
Finally, something normal was happening. Everything was okay now.
As the conversation continued, Avery almost forgot where she was, until she glanced over her shoulder and spotted Noah gesticulating around the room while telling some elaborate story that had everyone double over laughing.
At one point, midsentence, he locked eyes with Avery.
And before she could look away, her vision began to tunnel.
She tried blinking to clear it, but the pull was too strong and she zeroed in on his eyes.
His olive green eyes, with that hint of sage and the navy dot by his pupil, the last thing she saw before he flipped her around and pressed her face into the mattress …
She tore away from him and asked the bartender for another whiskey, a double this time. She drank it all in two gulps. The booze rushed to her head and emptied her thoughts so that she was filled only with nothingness, with air, like she was inflatable. Much better.
Charlie stood in front of the room and used a knife to tap his beer bottle.
Or maybe it was a wine glass. Avery’s vision was too fuzzy to see what he was drinking.
She could barely make out his movements, let alone his beverage, as he gave a speech thanking their friends and family for coming out to celebrate and sharing a few words about how excited he was to marry Morgan.
Avery did her best to channel her drunken energy into cheerful whoops and claps, imagining subtitles translating her inebriated babbles.
When he finished his speech to a round of applause, a blurred figure gestured for Charlie’s wireless microphone, making Avery’s breath catch again.
She knew it was Noah, despite her poor intoxicated vision.
If Noah ever murdered someone, she’d be able to help the FBI pick him out of a lineup of one trillion blond, green-eyed men.
“I’ll be quick.” Noah eagerly tapped the microphone. Then he clasped an open palm on Charlie’s shoulder. “First, I wanted to say thank you to Charlie for letting me stand by him as his best man. We’ve only recently gotten closer, but now I don’t know what I’d do without this kid.”
“Same here,” Charlie murmured into the mic.
Avery held back a gag.
“As some of you know, I founded a start-up called Meow Monthly,” Noah continued. “You might’ve seen us on Instagram. Our account is at 400,000 followers now and this is only the beginning, because we plan to post a lot more cute animal videos.”
He paused for reactions and laughter from the audience, eagerly looking around in a self-satisfied way.
Avery did not chime in.
“Every Saturday, my company and I volunteer with the Humane Society to help abused and neglected animals,” he continued. “Sometimes, we’ll even take one home with us.”
Noah grabbed a cardboard box from behind him. He removed the lid and held up a golden retriever puppy like fucking baby Simba in The Lion King. There was a chorus of gasps and squeals from the crowd.
“I was gonna wait until the end of the night,” he went on, “but my friend at the shelter dropped this guy off early, and I didn’t want to keep him in the box for too long. Happy engagement, guys!”
Avery’s mouth dropped open. Who gives a live animal as a surprise gift?
Wasn’t this how animals ended up abandoned—because of “gifts” that recipients didn’t necessarily sign up for?
Even Avery knew that a puppy was a major life decision and she didn’t fucking like animals.
Noah the animal lover should absolutely know this.
But he didn’t care, of course he didn’t, because he only cared about how these grand generous gestures would make him look, with no regard for the people whose lives would change because of them.
Avery studied Morgan, who had tears pouring down her cheeks and was clamoring about how she’d always wanted a golden retriever.
Emma and Blair rushed to the microphone stand, begging to hold the puppy, while Charlie nuzzled his face into its soft yellow fur.
Avery stared at her pitiful collage sitting upright on the gift table, which now looked like it was made by a blind toddler.
Then she glared at the puppy, at Morgan and Charlie practically throwing themselves into Noah’s arms and howling with gratitude.
Avery clenched her fingers into a fist. Every note of praise Noah received for this gift sent her deeper into a spiraling rage.
The commotion crescendoed around her until the room spun, too, prompting her to stumble to the bar and grip the wood to stabilize herself.
She tossed back a shot of whiskey. As the warm, spicy liquid hit her stomach, she felt a tap on her shoulder.
“Hey, girl!” Blair said with her hands on her hips, her fake-nice voice extra high-pitched.
Avery plastered on a smile and said nothing. She could not deal with one more thing right now.
Blair eyed Avery’s shot glass. “Whiskey can really screw you up. You’re much better off sticking to something lighter like champagne.” Blair tapped her flute, the bubbles trickling to the rim.
Avery once again said nothing, because fuck that. Blair took a dainty sip of her champagne.
“You know, Avery, this is your best friend’s engagement party.” Blair’s voice was serious now, almost threatening. “You should probably have your wits about you.”
“Thanks for—” Avery hiccupped. “The tip.” She waved her empty shot glass at the bartender. “Can I—” Hiccup . “Another one? Thanks.”
Blair sighed audibly, drawing out the sound for an unnecessarily long time. “I’m just looking out for you, girl. I would hate to see you get too drunk and hurt someone you love.” Blair took a step closer to Avery. “Again.”
Avery clutched her chest. She stole another glance at Noah, at the man who was frighteningly good at making everyone believe he wasn’t a bloodsucking parasite, and felt lightheaded, like she was standing on the roof of a skyscraper and peering over the edge to her death.
She threw back the other shot of whiskey and sprinted through the front doors, out under the street lights.
Avery awoke groggy and hungover the next morning with a stabbing pain in her head, like pieces of shrapnel were lodged in her brain.
How had she gotten back to her apartment?
She closed her eyes and waited as bits and pieces of last night crystallized in her mind.
She saw herself running out of Sel Rrose, hailing a cab in the freezing cold, swiping mercilessly on Tinder, matching with a guy—named Donovan?
—and inviting him over. He was cute, but she remembered him sending her a gross politically charged pickup line that, in her desperate, drunken state, somehow did not turn her off.
She opened her phone and peeked at her Tinder messages from him, one of which said: I may be a liberal, but I don’t believe in giving your pussy a safe space.
Jesus.
Avery closed the conversation and navigated to her home screen. Her eyes bulged when she saw she had fifteen unanswered texts, all from Morgan.
Hey where are you? We wanna take a group wedding party photo!
We’re gonna wait for you. You ok?
Avery where’d you go? We’re doing the cake
Did you leave???
***
Avery slammed her phone on the mattress.
What was she thinking last night? She wasn’t thinking at all, that’s what.
She was too busy being drunk and selfish, just like she’d been senior year.
But Blair should’ve kept her mouth shut, because as usual she was clueless and didn’t know what she was talking about.
The thought of having to deal with her snide, arrogant comments about that night all the way up until the wedding day made Avery want to scream.
There was no need for Blair to keep bringing it up, but of course she would.
She didn’t stop in college, continued to rub salt in the wound even when it was obvious that Avery was maxed out on suffering.
Blair said horrible things about her mother all the time, and that was her mother, so what made Avery think Blair would show Avery any mercy?
Avery didn’t need more reminders that she’d made a mistake, that the chain of events of that night senior year all started with her, even if they ended with Noah.
With shaky fingers, Avery typed a response back to Morgan.
hey omg i am SO sorry. i got too drunk and couldn’t be there anymore.
i’m so sorry. Then she hit send. She waited for a response, but each second passed by with excruciating slowness and no reply.
It was only the first wedding event of the year and already Avery had fucked up because of Noah, which was the exact thing she’d been hoping to avoid by keeping quiet about him.
Gutted by the silence, she picked up the phone and called Morgan three times.
Each call went unanswered, ringing into infinity and then to voicemail.
Tears stung Avery’s eyes. She couldn’t lose Morgan.
Morgan was the only person who cared about her, the only person who hadn’t turned their back on her, the only person who still loved her despite what she thought Avery had done.
Avery stared desperately at her phone, willing Morgan’s reply to appear on the screen. She filled the silence with sobs.