Falling for My Best Friend's Brother의 모든 챕터: 챕터 161 - 챕터 170

Avery's POVIt seemed like everything went back to normal and I didn't see nor hear from Zoey on Tuesday. But then towards evening, I realized I concluded too soon about everything being fine. The message came through on Tuesday evening.Not a call. A message, from the club's internal system, the one the manager used when he needed to speak to staff about something that was not urgent enough for a phone call but too formal for a text. It said to come in before my next shift. It said Wednesday at four.I read it three times and then put my phone face down on my desk and sat there for a moment.Raven had said it was only a matter of time. I had thought I had more time than this.I got to the club at five to four on Wednesday. I had spent the better part of Tuesday evening deciding how to walk into that office, which sounds like too much preparation for a conversation but was not, because the way you walked into a room like that set the tone for everything that came after it. I was not g

Avery's POVShe was drinking water at the bar.That was the thing about Nikki. She was always doing something ordinary when you approached her, always in the middle of a task that gave her a reason to keep her hands busy and her eyes elsewhere, so that whatever happened next looked like an interruption of her day rather than something she had been waiting for.I walked to the bar and sat down on one of the stools and put my bag on the one next to me.Nikki finished and put the glass she was drinking from down on the counter and picked up her phone without looking at me. "You're in early," she said."I had a meeting," I said."Oh?" She tilted her head slightly to look at me. "With Gregg?"She already knew. Of course she already knew. In a club this size, a Thursday afternoon meeting with the manager was not something that went unnoticed by the people who made it their business to notice things. And noticing things was what Nikki did."Yes," I said."Everything alright?" she said, pleas

Avery's POVI had two hours before the floor opened.I sat in the changing room and did my makeup and did not think about Gregg's office or the formal notice sitting on his desk with my name attached to it or Nikki's voice in the corridor saying lines get blurry. I did not think about any of it because thinking about it while I was putting on my face was the fastest way to let it show, and the one thing Scarlett could not afford tonight was to let anything show.I did my eyes first. Then the contour. Then the lips, which I always did last because the lips were the part that completed the transformation, the moment the mirror stopped showing Avery and started showing someone else entirely. I had learned that in the first month and I had used it deliberately ever since. By the time the mask went on I was already most of the way there.Raven came in at half seven and sat down beside me and looked at my reflection in the mirror."How are you doing?" she said."Fine," I said."That is not

Avery's POVI closed the laptop.Not dramatically, not in a way that announced anything, just reached over and pulled it shut while Jade was still in the doorway taking her coat off. I folded the paper I had been writing on and put it under the laptop and turned around in the chair so I was facing her properly."Budget stuff," I said. "Nothing exciting."Jade dropped her coat over the back of the chair by the door and looked at me with the particular expression she used when she had registered something and had decided to let it go for now. "You look like someone who has been staring at numbers for too long," she said."I have been staring at numbers for too long," I said. "How was the library?""Productive." She sat down on the edge of my bed and pulled her boots off. "I finally finished the reading for the seminar on Tuesday. Only two weeks late.""That's practically on time for you," I said."It really is." She dropped the second boot and looked at me. "Are you okay?""I'm fine," I

Avery's POVI looked up from the bowl."What?" I said.Jade sat down across from me with her own pasta and picked up her fork like she had not just dropped something into the middle of a perfectly ordinary evening dinner. "Liam," she said. "Your project partner. He asked me about you today.""I'm wondering how that conversation went between you two.""Don't be silly Avery," she gave a small laugh. "I was coming out of the library and he was going in and we stopped and talked for a few minutes, since we didn't see each other at home before." She twirled pasta onto her fork. "He asked how you were doing.""He could have asked me that," I said. "He has my number.""Obviously," Jade said. "But he asked me. Maybe he was just trying to make conversation." She put the fork down and looked at me with a small, direct expression. "And the way he asked was not the way you ask about a project partner. It was the way you ask about someone you are thinking about.""What does that mean?""It means h