Rolling her eyes, Avery pulled on the hem of her black dress. “Is it too much?”
“Nuh-uh,” Jemima assured her, already moving off the sidewalk to flag down a cab. “Just enough, I’d say. With legs as short as yours you need all the help you can get.”
“Excuse me if some of us aren’t Amazonians.”
Jemima snorted in response.
Avery frowned as a cab pulled over and she shuffled into it with her friends. “Where are the guys?”
Sarah shrugged. “We’re meeting them at the club instead. So, your aunt’s still OK about these club nights?”
Avery smiled humourlessly. “She practically forces me into it.”
Jemima grunted from the other side of Sarah who was packed in between them. “Don’t need to sound so thrilled to be with us, girl.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Jammy is just teasing.” Sarah glared at Jemima, and the girl narrowed her exotic eyes on her.
“I told you to stop calling me Jammy.”
Sarah grinned unrepentantly and turned back to Avery. “So seriously, she’s OK?”
No, her aunt wasn’t OK. She wasn’t going to be OK ever again.
When Avery first found out about her aunt’s terminal diagnosis she was a freshman at NYU, studying journalism just like Aunt Caroline had. It had been a struggle for them to afford it anyway; Avery hadn’t moved out of their tiny one bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, she was commuting. And she had a part time job at a coffee chain since they were one of the few corporate companies that Aunt Caroline didn’t have a problem with.
But after they found the cancer it became clear that Avery was going to have to work full time to take care of them. Aunt Caroline had health insurance but it only went so far; they’d had to use Avery’s small trust fund to pay the rest of the medical bills, but Caroline couldn’t work so there was no money for rent and food. Avery quit school and got a full time job as an office assistant at the Greener World Magazine. Aunt Caroline had worked for them forever and they were devastated for them both, so they had offered Avery a job and were really flexible if she couldn’t come to work when her aunt was having a particularly bad day.
Of course, her Aunt Caroline was riddled with guilt, thinking she had somehow destroyed her big sister’s little girl’s chance for a life. That’s why she insisted that Avery joined her friends at their favourite nightclub, 4.0, at least once a month. No matter how much she tried to tell her not to feel guilty, Avery knew her aunt couldn’t help it. And it was so stupid, considering her Aunt Caroline had given up her free and easy life to take care of Avery when her parents had died. That had been nine years ago when Avery was ten years old. Her mom and dad had taken her on vacation to Europe. They were going to London, then Paris and then onto Venice and then Berlin. They only made it to London. They hired a car and her dad had taken a stupid roundabout the wrong way and they ended up in a head on collision with a truck. Her parents were killed and she had barely survived. Aunt Caroline flew over from New York, saw her through her recovery, and brought her home to her tiny apartment, to the sofa in the living room that doubled as Avery’s bed. But Avery didn’t care about losing her pretty purple bedroom with the fairy lights and gauze bed netting that hung over her four poster making her feel like a princess. All she cared about was Aunt Caroline, her hero. Her hero who had understood that all Avery wanted was to be normal again; who had spent all her extra money on cool clothes so Avery fit in at school; had stretched Avery’s curfew so she could hang out with her friends and not be singled out for being a loser. Somehow only she understood that after months of people ‘pointing’ at the kid who’d lost her parents, all Avery needed was not to be noticed. She liked to blend. In fact, standing out made her physically afraid. And Caroline, who was the complete opposite, had never judged her for that.
And now Caroline was dying, too.
Avery swallowed against the burning lump in her throat, looking out the cab window and blinking back tears so Sarah and Jemima wouldn’t see.
She listened distantly as the girls chatted about work and guys for the forty minute or so drive to the Meatpacking District. They pulled up to the club and Avery spotted the guys immediately. They were crowded together, not too far from the front of the line, Josh towering over nearly everyone else there. Adam and Aaron stood beside him deep in animated conversation. As her gaze washed over Josh, who was ogling the ass of the girl in front of him, she drew in a deep breath. Josh was cute in that guy next door-brown hair-perfect blue eyes-dimpled smile-kind of way. Cute but not too cute. He had been the perfect boyfriend at school - together they weren’t uncool, but they also weren’t too cool, which satisfied Avery because that way they didn’t stick out. But when his incessant immaturity and possessiveness started leading to public drama, Avery had broken up with him just before graduation. For the first few months of college he had persisted in trying to get back together with her. He only backed off now because Jemima had threatened to castrate him if he bothered Avery when she was going through all this with her aunt.
“Avery!”
She glanced up as Sarah took her elbow and smiled wanly at Josh as he waved them over. Jemima was already strutting towards them, ignoring the wolf whistle from the gorgeous guy two people back from the front. Avery and Sarah both rolled their eyes and then hurried over to the guys. The people behind them ‘hey-ed!’ and grumbled and complained at them for cutting in front until Jemima spun around and iced them out with one of her famous glares.
“Avery, you look amazing.” Josh pulled her into a tight hug, smooshing her face up against his hard chest. She struggled to pull back and actually had to push him away a little. He didn’t seem to notice though, his eyes washing over her, his eyebrows creasing towards each other in concern. “You OK?” He asked in sotto voce tones. “We’re all worried about you. We’re not quite sure you’re coping, Ave.”
Avery tried not to grimace at how patronising he sounded and was thankful when Adam punched him on the arm. “Dude, shut up.” He turned to Avery, his chocolate eyes smiling. “Ave, babe, don’t listen to him. We all think you’re coping great. Its little princess here who worries like a pimp-less whore.”
“Why would a whore worry if she didn’t have a pimp?” Sarah tilted her head to the side, her nose wrinkled in confusion. “I would have thought a whore would be thankful not to have a pimp. Aren’t pimps bad?”
Avery shook her head in disbelief. “Are we really having this conversation?”
“No, we’re really getting into this club right now cos’ I’m freezing my bony little tush off,” Jemima growled and shoved past them. They watched as she flirted with the doorman. They seemed familiar with one another. She pointed back at them and then brushed a piece of invisible lint off the doorman’s lapel. It was such a clichéd move, Avery shook her head.
It worked.
Jemima waved them down and they hurried out of the line to the entrance, ignoring the yells of complaints from everyone else in line, afraid if they didn’t move fast enough Mr Doorman would change his mind.
The bass of the music could be heard like a faint heartbeat in the distance as they checked their jackets. Avery shivered in anticipation. A security guard gripped the handle on the double doors where the heartbeat pounded behind, each thud of the bass like a taunt beckoning Avery inside. And then the door was wrenched open, the music shooting through Avery in thrumming waves, vibrating in the air around her, demanding her hips to catch the undulations. Sarah grabbed her hand and they took off down the stairs and through the crowds clustered around the tables scattered on the edges of the main dance floor. She allowed Sarah to pull her into the throng of bodies moving to the beat of Rihanna’s Only Girl (in the World), giving herself over body and soul and letting the beat wash away her stress and grief. Here was good. Here she was just one of hundreds of people enjoying the heady bliss of the dance floor.
Soon Jemima found them and yelled that the guys were getting them drinks. Avery wasn’t sure how long it took them but it was a while before they returned with a round of JD and diet coke for the ladies, courtesy of Aaron being twenty one and Adam and Josh having fake ID’s. Avery threw back the whisky and coke and broke through the crowds so she could abandon the glass on a nearby table. She didn’t want anything, even a little glass, getting in the way of her freedom on the dance floor.