Chapter 17 #2
“And very expensive,” Charlie added with a self-deprecating chuckle. “My best man hooked us up with a discount, though. He’s a start-up founder and his company is pretty successful, so he’s got some serious connections. He’s probably gonna be on Shark Tank , actually.”
“Wow, that’s super cool.” Pete sounded too impressed. Avery indulged in an eye roll. “I love Mr. Wonderful. He’s such an ass but he’s so entertaining.”
“Totally,” Charlie agreed. “Noah’s been talking to the producers. Nothing’s final yet but it’s gonna happen.”
Avery crossed her arms tightly over her chest. Of course Noah would be on Shark Tank , would continue to be successful and trick even more people into thinking he was not scum.
She looked at Morgan and motioned to the blue binder of karaoke song choices splayed out on the bar.
Morgan followed her over, out of earshot of the boys.
“Isn’t that cool about Noah and Shark Tank ?” Morgan said with a smile when they were alone.
Avery shifted her eyes to Morgan, then back to the binder. She flipped a page. “The coolest.”
Morgan didn’t notice Avery’s indifference. She even kept smiling. “And it’s so fun that Pete and Charlie know each other. It really is such a small world. Do you know Pete’s astrological sign, by chance?”
“No, why?”
“Can you find out? He always seemed like an Aquarius to me, the couple of times I met him.”
Avery laughed. “I truly don’t care what his sign is, Morgan.”
“Fine, fine. My overall point is, I like him.” Morgan’s brown eyes caught the light under the glow of the disco ball, her voice dreamy and full of hopeless romanticism. “I really hope you’ll bring him to the wedding.”
Avery looked over at Pete, and a warm pink blush spread across her cheeks when he met her eye.
The more they hung out, the harder it was going to be for Avery to see herself without him at the wedding.
She couldn’t deny how special it would feel to have him on her arm, someone who saw the good in her in the face of so many people who didn’t.
Having Pete by her side could make the wedding not only tolerable, but enjoyable.
Morgan and Avery finalized their song selections, and Pete and Charlie joined them on the zebra print couch in the main karaoke room so that they could begin.
The lyrics to Avery’s song choice, “Delicate” by Taylor Swift, came up first on the projector.
She took the mic, stood up, and began to sing.
Or more like scream. She wasn’t an amazing singer, exactly.
She was talented enough to be in her high school musicals, but there was a reason she was mostly cast in roles that required more speaking than singing.
But she forgot how much fun performing was, so she grabbed Pete’s hands and dramatically serenaded him with the unbridled confidence of her seventeen-year-old self as he encouraged her and sang along.
While belting out a lyric, she felt the tickle of a breeze on her shoulders. She looked up. A white fan mounted on the ceiling had begun to spin, the blades whirring and picking up speed.
Her chest tightened. Her song continued to play, but she couldn’t hear anything except the sound of the whirring growing louder above her. She swallowed and tried to focus on singing, but she had to be messing up, because she couldn’t hear anything but the—
Whirr …
She’d forgotten all about that ceiling fan, the incessant low buzz it made while Noah pinned her down that night senior year and gave her bruises the shape of fingers wrapping around her wrists.
It was the only other sound she’d been able to hear aside from his grunts and her own drunken voice trying to tell him no.
Whirr …
She remembered now, too, how freezing Ronald’s bedroom was.
Avery had no idea why it was that cold. It had been October in New England, yes, but the windows were closed, so no draft had been coming in, yet the fan was cranked up so high.
Maybe Noah had turned it up on purpose to drown out her cries.
Whirr …
She took a shaky deep breath, trying to calm down. You’re in the East Village, she reminded herself. You’re in Manhattan, in New York City, far from Woodford College, far from that bedroom with Noah—
“You were so good!”
She’d finished?
Whose voice was that? Where was she?
“Avery? Are you okay?”
She blinked a few times, brought herself back to the present. She stared at Pete. She was somehow sitting on the couch next to him. “Hey, yeah, sorry,” she said. “I’m just—”
Whirr …
Goosebumps erupted on her arms. She was suddenly frigid. “It’s been a while since I performed like that. Guess I got overwhelmed.”
“Well, you killed it,” Pete said, his arm around her. “I’d for sure come to your concert.”
Noah wasn’t here. She wasn’t in danger. She wasn’t—
“Thanks,” she muttered. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.”
Avery chugged the rest of her beer on her walk to the bar to get another one.
The whirring sound didn’t leave her head for the rest of the night, even as Pete serenaded her next with his karaoke song of choice.
Even as they headed back to Avery’s apartment together at one in the morning and snuggled under the covers in her bed.
Even as she brushed her lips against his cheek and moved her naked body on top of him, trying to move on.
Trying to erase that night senior year with more nights like these.
The following week, Blair came down from Boston to stay with Noah in Brooklyn for a few days, and Morgan suggested everyone come over for a pregame.
Naturally, she encouraged Avery to invite Pete.
But Avery was hesitant to invite him on another night out, embarrassed about how she’d acted toward the end of karaoke.
She’d drunk much more than he had, almost puking in the cab during the ride back to her place and then knocking over the crowded shoe rack in her foyer.
Somehow, though, Pete didn’t seem to care.
They had great sex the next morning, then took a walk to get bagels like nothing had happened.
And for the days that followed, it seemed, even more confusingly, that Pete’s feelings for Avery grew.
He’d started sending her good morning texts, wanting to FaceTime more regularly, and had taken to calling her “babe” on a semi-regular basis.
Avery found this very suspicious. The insecure part of her thought he was only being sweet out of obligation, like he was taking pity on her or that she was some project he wanted to fix.
The smaller, slightly less insecure part of her wondered if he was just encouraged by the double date with Charlie and Morgan.
Like he knew that was her way of letting him in and allowing him to get to know her a bit more.
She did her best to focus on the latter part and go along with his kindness, hoping his motives were pure and borne out of real feelings for her.
Especially because she wasn’t going to bring up her panic attack on her own.
Avery decided she’d acquiesce to Morgan’s request to hang out, even if it meant she’d have to be around Noah for an extra unplanned night, but she wasn’t comfortable bringing Pete around the larger group yet.
It was a big enough deal that she took him on the double date and an even bigger deal that he’d witnessed her having a panic attack of such magnitude.
She feared the other potentially worse triggers that awaited her if she were in the same room as Pete, Noah, and even Blair, as would be the case at Morgan’s pregame.
Who knew what random thing would set her off next and then what kinds of questions Pete would start to have about what was going on with her and her friends?
He might not have noticed this panic attack, but she knew it wouldn’t be the last one.
Her panic attacks were like landmines she needed to carefully avoid, the explosions secrets she was not yet ready to share.
“This feels like college!” Morgan said as she cranked up the music in her living room and began to dance. “I know, I have no rhythm. Don’t tell my mom.”
Avery laughed. Morgan was such an awkward dancer; Gabriela always made fun of her, saying Morgan couldn’t possibly be her Puerto Rican daughter.
Morgan used to do a handstand and twerk against the wall in their dorm room, and—God help her—her limbs were just out of control.
The girl was all pointy elbows and scrawny knees.
Avery’s laughter immediately stopped when Noah came into the living room and gave Charlie one of those stupid dude-hugs, with Blair following right behind.
“You know Blair, if you moved here, we could hang like this all the time,” Charlie said.
“I know.” Blair pouted stupidly. “I’ve been thinking about it. Just to be closer to Noah.”
She kissed Noah’s cheek. Avery flinched.
Noah and Blair were officially together.
Her Instagram was filled with repulsive couple photos accompanied by cringeworthy pun captions: a picture of her and Noah eating pizza with the caption You stole a pizza my heart (ugh); a picture of them on a dock in Maine, captioned My Maine squeeze (ewww); a picture of them holding kittens at the Humane Society, captioned He’s my purr-son (gag).
Eventually Avery couldn’t sign onto Instagram without getting assaulted by the posts, so she had to mute Blair entirely.
Real life, sadly, didn’t have a touch screen.
Just five more months until the wedding, she thought. And then you’ll never have to see these people again.
“It’s hard with our busy schedules to find weekends to visit,” Noah said. “I was gonna go to a conference in San Francisco this weekend for Meow Monthly, but I decided to stay, or else I wouldn’t see her for so long.”
“Speaking of, any news on Shark Tank ?” Morgan asked.
“Not yet,” Noah said. “But you’ll all know as soon as it’s confirmed.”
Charlie gave him an enthusiastic high five. “So sick, dude.”