002: Scarlett

Avery's POV

For a few seconds I just stood there in the doorway.

My brain kept trying to make it make sense, like if I stared long enough the picture would rearrange itself into something I could live with. But there was no rearranging this. There was Colton, scrambling to pull the sheets up, and there was Brianna, not even bothering to.

"Avery." Colton's voice was shaking. "Just wait. Please. Let me explain."

"Explain what?" My voice came out quieter than I expected. "I have eyes, Colton."

"It's not — this isn't something that's been going on for long, it just —"

"How long?"

He went quiet.

"How long?" I asked again.

"Two months," Brianna said.

I looked at her. She was sitting up against his headboard with the sheet barely covering her, and she looked completely relaxed. Like she was watching something mildly interesting on TV.

"Two months," I repeated.

"Give or take." She tilted her head. "Though honestly it started before that. We were talking for a while first."

"Brianna." Colton looked at her. "Stop."

"Why?" She shrugged one shoulder. "She's going to find out anyway. She already found out."

I looked back at Colton. "You've been with her since September?"

He didn't answer. He was staring at the floor, and I realised that whatever I had come here expecting him to say, it wasn't going to be the right thing. He didn't have the right thing. Some people, when they get caught, fall apart and beg and make promises they almost mean. Colton just looked small. Smaller than I had ever seen him.

"You gave me a key," I said. My voice was starting to crack and I hated it. "You gave me a key to this room."

"Avery —"

"Why would you give me a key?"

"I don't know." He pressed his hands over his face. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"Don't." Brianna swung her legs off the bed and reached for her shirt on the floor. She pulled it over her head without hurrying. "Don't do the whole sorry speech, Colton. It's boring."

I stared at her. "You're really going to sit there."

"I'm going to sit wherever I want," she said, meeting my eyes. "This is not my fault, Avery."

"You're in my boyfriend's bed."

"Your boyfriend came to me." She stood up and smoothed her shirt down. "I didn't drag him anywhere. Men don't need to be dragged. They go where they want to go." She picked up her bag from the floor. "And honestly? You should have seen this coming."

"Get out," Colton said, looking up at her.

"I'm leaving." She moved toward the door and stopped right in front of me. We were the same height, which meant she could look me directly in the eyes when she said what she said next.

"You took the captain spot from me." Her voice was low and perfectly level. "Nine little votes. I smiled through it and I showed up every single day and I watched you stand up there with your little whistle and I said nothing." She paused. "So I took something from you too. That's all this is. Now we're even."

The room was dead quiet.

"Get out," I said.

She walked out.

The door clicked shut behind her and I stood there for a second, breathing. Just breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth, the way Coach Vega taught us to reset before a hard routine.

"Avery." Colton stood up. "Please say something."

"I brought you cookies," I said.

He blinked.

I looked down at the paper bag that was somehow still in my hand. I didn't even remember holding onto it. I put it very carefully on his desk.

"Lemon ones," I said. "From the bakery on Fifth."

"Avery, I —"

"Don't call me tonight." I picked up my bag from where I had dropped it in the doorway. "Don't text me. Don't come to practice and try to talk to me on the field. Don't send Jade to explain things to me on your behalf." I looked at him one last time. "Happy birthday to me."

I walked out.

I made it all the way across campus and to my car in the parking lot before my hands started shaking badly enough that I had to stop walking. I sat down on the low wall by the parking lot entrance and pressed my palms flat against my thighs and told myself the same thing three times.

‘You are not going to cry in this parking lot.’

I didn't.

By eight o'clock I was behind the curtain at Velvet Underground, pulling my wig on in front of the cracked dressing room mirror.

The wig was long, black, and nothing like my real hair. On nights when I needed to disappear, I was always glad for that.

"I thought you had birthday plans," said Raven, the girl at the station beside mine. She was drawing her liner on with the steady hand of someone who had done it a thousand times.

"Plans changed."

She looked at me in the mirror. "You okay?"

"I'll be fine when I'm out there."

"That's not what I asked."

I set the wig straight and reached for my lip colour. Deep red, darker than anything I wore in daylight. "I just need to work tonight, Raven. That's all I need."

She nodded and let it go. That was one of the things I liked about her.

I had been working at Velvet Underground as an exotic dancer for six months now. Three shifts a week, enough to cover the things my scholarship didn't, including rent and utilities for my mum and I. Nobody from campus came here, or at least nobody who would recognize me under the wig and the stage makeup and the name I had chosen for myself. Up here I wasn't Avery Nash, cheerleading captain, reliable friend, good student, recently humiliated girlfriend.

Up here I was Scarlett.

Scarlett was not naive. Scarlett did not bring boys lemon cookies on her birthday. Scarlett did not stand in doorways with her mouth open while her boyfriend's side piece told her they were even.

The music started, and I stepped into the lights.