Chapter 15 #3
“No,” Pete said, cringing. “Anything other than galamad is painful.”
Avery grinned mischievously. “Or mani-cotti?”
Pete covered his ears with his hands. “I can’t! It’s sacrilege!”
Avery laughed. “Just another reason I’m going to hell then.”
“Right there with you. I don’t believe in God anymore. It kills my mother and her Lord’s name in vain bullshit. I grew up Catholic and everything, but as I got older I was like, why are all the priests pedophiles?”
Avery nodded in agreement. “And then they shame women for having sex with legal, consenting adults. I really bought into the Catholic purity thing growing up. My mom constantly reminded me that the only person she’d ever slept with was my dad, and not until their wedding night.”
Pete scrunched his face. “I bet that’s a mental image you could’ve done without.”
“Definitely,” Avery said with a chuckle.
“She made it sound kind of romantic though. Like he was her one and only. I always thought that part of it was sweet. But the religious angle never sat well with me. It made me feel like I needed to apologize to God when I slept with my high school boyfriend. I was so scared of tainting myself with sex.”
Avery tensed. How could she have revealed so much about herself already? But Pete was so open and easy to talk to. It was tough to keep her mouth shut.
“How times have changed,” he joked as he took a piece of bread.
Avery gasped light-heartedly. “Slut shamer!”
“I’m kidding! I also had sex with you in that bathroom. I, too, am a slut.”
Pete placed his white cloth napkin onto his lap. Avery did the same. She forgot that that was proper dinner etiquette.
“Have you noticed that the church is always almost exclusively filled with old people?” he went on. “My dad has a theory that it’s because they’re gonna die soon and need to reserve their spot in heaven.”
“Better there than the fiery pits.” Avery paused dipping a piece of bread in olive oil. “Hold on. Aren’t you not supposed to talk about religion on a first date?”
Pete shrugged. “Whatever. There are no rules.”
“Is that so? Because if I remember correctly, you’re the one who said we did this ‘backward,’ and that you knew what my naked body looked like before you knew my last name. You love rules.”
Pete’s lips curved into a smile. “I’ll make an exception for you.”
Avery wrinkled her nose. “Cheesy.”
“You love it though.”
“I implied nothing of the sort.”
The waiter came by and set their steaming plate of mozzarella sticks down on the table.
“Now that’s cheesy,” Pete said, nodding at their appetizer.
“Okay, before we keep doing this, you should know that I despise puns,” Avery said, the seriousness of her voice mostly, but not entirely, in jest. “My boss at Metropolitan loves them, but I will actively not write them in my social copy, even if one is right there.”
Pete laughed. “Noted. I am in full support of finding little ways to make work tolerable.”
“It’s the only way to live.”
“It is.” Pete offered Avery the plate of mozzarella sticks, and she selected one before he grabbed one for himself. “Speaking of, I’ve started idly browsing some audio production job openings. Just seeing what’s out there. But I don’t think I’d ever actually quit my job.”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“I’d have to cut my salary expectations in half, maybe even less. As soul-sucking as finance can be, I don’t think I can do that yet.”
Avery understood. She didn’t like her job and didn’t make a ton of money. At least Pete had one of those covered. “I get it. Money isn’t everything, but it would be naive for anyone to say it didn’t make life easier.”
“Exactly.” Pete sipped his cocktail. “Maybe once I put away more savings, I can start to think about a career in music, which would be the dream. But for now, I’d be an idiot to quit finance.”
Pete noticed Avery’s water glass was low and casually refilled it with the jug on the table. Avery smiled at the gesture.
“Well, for what it’s worth, I’d like you no matter how much money you made,” she said.
Pete widened his eyes in mock-surprise. “Wait, you like me?”
Avery laughed. “Shut up.”
At the end of the night, Pete paid for dinner and held the door open for Avery when they left the restaurant, two more gentlemanly gestures Avery couldn’t help but clock and revel in.
Outside, yellow lamps lining the street flickered above their heads, and a tipsy, handsy couple slid into a cab that drove down the block and disappeared.
The couple reminded Avery that they’d approached that part of the first date, and she couldn’t deny that she was looking forward to this.
She enjoyed their dinner conversation, enjoyed all the little ways Pete seemed to want to take care of her already, but this was the moment she thought about the most: her hands wrapped around his neck, her fingers running through his silky hair, her lips surrendering to his with a sigh.
If she bored him with talk of her upbringing or was at all awkward tonight, this was her chance to make up for it.
Because despite how amazing Pete was, at the end of the day he was still a man, and men always secretly wanted this more than they let on, even when they were trying to be gentlemen. Or even, like Noah, when they weren’t.
Pete pulled away from her embrace. “Let me get you a cab home.”
Avery bristled, stung by the rejection. “Seriously? Just come over. Celeste is gone tonight.”
Pete shook his head softly. “Not tonight.”
She huffed. How dare he embarrass her like this. “I’ll get my own cab, thanks.” She turned on her heel to walk away, until Pete spoke again.
“Hey, wait! It’s not that I don’t want to. Obviously I do. But, really? Sex on the first date? Have some class.” Pete bounced his eyebrows on his forehead, signaling he was kidding.
Avery crossed her arms. “That’s not funny. Are we never gonna have sex again now?”
Pete sighed. “Of course we will, Avery. But we started off kind of intense with that.” He stared into Avery’s eyes and laced his fingers through hers. “Why don’t we just slow down a bit?”
Avery shivered at his tenderness. “It’s hard to do that when you’re touching me, you know.”
Pete lifted his hands up. “I’ll never touch you again.”
“No!” Avery grabbed his hands and put them on her shoulders. “Don’t stop!”
Pete laughed and slipped his palms around her waist, making her feel small and safe.
He bent down to kiss her once again, this time without letting the kiss slide into anything passionate.
Instead, he kept his lips loosely on hers, forcing her to slow down and focus on the closing space between them.
She felt light-headed when he pulled away.
“It’s very hard to resist you, trust me,” Pete said. He put a gentle hand on her cheek. “But I want to savor getting to know you, now that I can.”
Avery didn’t know what to say. Her sexual experiences with other guys were always so animalistic and carnal, just a body using hers as a means to a satisfactory end.
She rarely cared about what happened when they got drinks or during the actual sex afterward.
It was the conquest element that she loved the most, the opportunity to see herself as someone who could take the wheel after Noah stripped her of that agency.
But she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been treated like this, like she was something delicate and precious.
Like she was worthy of being taken care of, of being seen.
“Okay,” she said, completely flustered. “Sure. Yeah. That sounds … nice.”
“Now, can you please let me get you a cab? My mother will be so thrilled to know I was chivalrous.”
Avery giggled in a fizzy kind of way. She was surprised that sound could still come out of her mouth.
“Sure,” she said. She knew she could hail her own cab—and she would have, since she didn’t like taking the subway this late at night anyway, with all the crazies ready to use her for masturbation material—but she liked that Pete wanted to do this for her.
She liked that she was allowing him to do this for her.
An empty cab pulled up next to them. Pete handed the driver some cash, then opened the door to the back seat for Avery.
Before she slid inside, Pete put his hands on her waist and kissed her again, a little deeper this time, enough to leave her wanting more.
Her lips tingled with the feel of his as she climbed into the back seat.
And as the driver sped up the FDR, she looked out the window, beaming at the skyline sparkling across the East River.
“Why can’t Pete keep his toothbrush at your apartment?” Morgan asked, taking a sip of her margarita.
A few weeks had passed since Avery’s first date with Pete.
Morgan and Avery were meeting for happy hour at Ofrenda, a delicious Mexican joint in the West Village, where little Mexican flags mixed with string lights hung across the ceiling and behind the bar.
Avery felt unsure about Pete today. He’d slept over after they went out for Indian food last night, and this morning, she did a double take when she saw his toothbrush sitting in her cabinet, in the empty space next to her tampons.
As if he thought he had a spot in her apartment now.
“I don’t know,” Avery said. “It’s a lot of assumptions. It means you’re confident enough to know that you’ll be back.”
Morgan blinked at her. “But he can assume that. You’re dating.”