Daydream: A Novel (The Maple Hills Series Book 3)

“WE’RE THINKING OF STARTING A podcast.”

We’re still up north after playing here this weekend, and after our loss earlier—our third in the past two weeks—we decided to brave Faulkner’s wrath and use our hour before we head back to Maple Hills to see JJ. I’ve been trying to drown out the constant noise of my teammates chatting in order to concentrate on an essay that my brain really doesn’t want to concentrate on, but hearing the word podcast come out of Mattie’s mouth is enough for me to lower my laptop screen.

“We want to call it The Frozen Three,” Kris adds.

Bobby nods. “It’ll be about hockey.”

JJ rubs his fingers against his temple. “Gentlemen, ask yourself this: are three more straight men with microphones what the world needs?”

The noise from the other patrons rumbles around us while Mattie, Kris, and Bobby deliberate over JJ’s question. As much as I want to be home in a dark room alone, I’m happy they’re all talking about the pros and cons of a podcast instead of my shitty performance.

They keep telling me it isn’t my fault, and yet I can’t shake the feeling that I’m letting them all down. I don’t know how to fix it. Not only that, if I don’t finish this essay, then it won’t matter how hard I’ve been trying to be a good captain, because Faulkner will murder me if I get a bad grade.

Halle tried to make me work, but thinking about peeling her clothes off her makes it hard for me to concentrate on some boring essay about a topic I don’t care about. I just want to touch her constantly and it’s distracting, especially because she wants to be touched constantly.

My free time is filled with a lot of dry humping and jerking off in the shower right now. She hasn’t asked for anything more than that, so I figure she’s still doing whatever mental gymnastics she was doing last week.

The guys are still talking about a podcast when I get back to my laptop and that little flashing line is taunting me. I can’t fail this as well as failing at being captain in the space of a week. I just can’t. The more pressure I put on myself, the less I can concentrate on my screen; the guys are getting louder and louder, and it’s all getting too much.

By the time we’re pulling up in front of our house, I’m mentally done. Coach insisted I sit with him on the bus and talk and talk and talk. Even when Robbie tried to take over, I then had to listen to it. I was looking forward to being alone, but the universe has other plans for me and Halle’s car is parked outside of my house.

Companionship is a difficult thing to navigate when I feel overwhelmed. When I know that in all likelihood this person I care about and who cares about me is going to work hard to make me feel better, and with her patience and affection she might help. Of all the people in the world I would want to be waiting for me unexpectedly, she’s the one I’d pick.

But in the same reality, the idea of anyone being near me, existing in my space and wanting basic human interaction from me, feels like the heaviest weight I can’t survive.

Halle approaches me as I climb out of Russ’s truck, a glass container clutched tightly in her hands. I meet her halfway down the driveway to get out of Russ’s way while he grabs Robbie’s wheelchair from the back, and also because I’m not sure I want to invite her in.

“You look really exhausted,” she says softly, handing me the container filled with cookies. “I know you’re probably holding yourself to an unfairly high standard right now, and I know my opinion on the matter doesn’t really count, so I wanted to bring you something nice instead.”

I appreciate that she isn’t trying to give me a speech on how teams sometimes lose games like everyone else seems to want to. “Thank you.”

“I’m going to leave because you look like you need to rest. I’m fighting all my natural urges to try to find the solution to your problem, because I know you don’t like to be smothered with attention when you don’t feel great,” she says, smiling softly. “Call me if you need anything, okay? I’ll try not to overwhelm you.”

She doesn’t hug me or try to kiss me. She just gives me a small wave goodbye, turns around, and climbs into her car. There’s a huge part of me that’s relieved; I don’t want to be touched and asked to talk about my feelings, not even by her, who really, at this point, is the only person I do like touching me. But as I watch her drive away, I start to miss her.

Robbie has lived with me long enough to know he should give me space when I feel like this. Russ has a sixth sense for any kind of negative atmosphere and leaves me alone after making me a cup of tea.

I judged Aurora at first when she said a good cup of tea could solve a multitude of problems, but as much as I hate to admit it, it is comforting. As soon as she bought us a kettle so we’d stop boiling water in the microwave, everything changed for the better.

I still feel like my Word document is laughing at me and my four hundred words as I stare at my laptop screen. Usually an impending deadline would give me the stomach-turning anxiety to produce something quickly, but apparently even knowing Thornton is expecting something from me tomorrow is not enough to get me moving.

I really fucking hate myself for not concentrating when Halle was here to help me earlier in the week. She warned me that I would struggle if I didn’t complete it with her because she was adamant I wouldn’t be able to do anything while away with the team.

I don’t know why I’m like this and it makes me want to tear my hair out.

In my head, I have an ideal scenario of how things will go. Whether that’s how I act, how my day goes, what I eat—everything works together in perfect harmony, and I thrive. I don’t feel like I’m hyperaware of everyone around me and yet equally completely oblivious. I don’t have to concentrate so hard on people’s mannerisms and behavior and choices so I can do them, too. I do things in advance, so they aren’t something I have to worry about later. I’m a good friend who doesn’t struggle to keep up with the people he loves.

In my head, I just exist peacefully and that’s enough. I have a routine and it’s fucking great.

I tell myself I’m going to work harder to be the version of me in my head, and I’m so frozen by the prospect that I do nothing at all, not even the things I would have done before, and I make everything worse.

Pulling my cell phone from my pocket, I ignore the hundreds of messages in the various group chats that I don’t have the energy for and click Halle’s number.

“Hey,” she says when she picks up a few seconds later.

“I can’t write my essay. I’m really struggling to get out of my head.”

I expect an I told you so or it’s your own fault; it’s what I deserve under the circumstance. Aside from the other stuff keeping me permanently sexually frustrated, I spent our time together last time drawing the painting I was supposed to be writing about on her thigh.

But it’s Halle, so what I assume isn’t what happens. “What can I do to help you?”

“Are you busy?” I ask, hearing background noise that sounds like she’s out somewhere.

“I asked first. What can I do to help you, Henry?”

I can tell she’s somewhere doing something, but there’s a selfish part of me that desperately wants her to make me feel like this isn’t an impossible task. “Can you come over and help? If you’re not busy.”

“I’ll be twenty minutes,” she says. “Have you eaten?”

“I’ve had a cup of that tea Aurora gets from England and a protein shake.”

She laughs, and even hearing it over the phone gives me the same serotonin boost I get when I see her do it in person. “That’s a no then. Healthy or unhealthy?”

“I want crunchy stuff like cucumber and chips. Nothing sticky.”

“Coming right up. I’ll be with you soon, so try to relax for now. We’ll get it done, Henry. We haven’t failed yet, and I’m sorry this one is taking more energy than you have.”

“You’re the best.”

I STARE AT MY CEILING for the thirty-five minutes it takes for Halle to turn up at my house, and as soon as I see her standing on my doorstep everything instantly feels more manageable.

She struggles to hold up the grocery bags since they’re so full, but she attempts to show me anyway. “I bought everything that looked crunchy.”

I lean forward to take them out of her hands, kissing her cheek gently as I bend down. I want to tell her how much better she makes everything, but Russ and Robbie appear from the den like two dogs responding to a rustling treat bag. Robbie stops next to the kitchen island. “Did you get them?”

I think he’s talking to me until Halle responds to tell him yes. Putting the bags on the counter I look between my friends. “What?”

“I need beer if we’re going to get through this study session,” Robbie says. “But Halle was scared to use her fake ID that isn’t fake.”

Halle starts unloading the bags, not making eye contact with me until she can’t take me staring at her. She clears her throat and steps toward me. She looks up at me with big eyes. “Aurora invited me to go for dinner with her, Poppy, and Emilia earlier. We’d just finished eating when you called me, and I forgot to ask you to check if anyone else needed anything from the store, so she called Russ—”

“And Russ was watching TV with me,” Robbie says, interrupting her. “And we decided we should probably be doing something productive instead of watching reruns. So, we’re going to all work together and drink beer and eat. And you’re not going to struggle in your room alone and blame yourself for shit that isn’t your fault when you have people who want to help you.”

“I’m not blaming myself for shit that isn’t my fault.”

Russ takes a bag of chips and opens it loudly, somehow managing to crinkle every inch of the bag. “We win as a team, we lose as a team. No one person is responsible for how we play. It’s quite literally a group effort.”

“Faulkner wants me to go to his office on Monday. He’s not pretending this isn’t my fault.”

“He wants to check that you’re okay, Hen,” Robbie says, cracking open a beer and handing it to me. “He might pretend he doesn’t give a shit, but he does. He notices the way you retreat into yourself after every loss and he’s worried. He might be a hard-ass, but he still has a duty of care. It’s why he wouldn’t leave you the fuck alone on the bus. Shit’s hard, but it’s not supposed to ruin your fucking life.”

This is the exact reason I stay in my room alone. Halle has what looks like guilt written all over her face. Maybe she didn’t know this would be the outcome when I asked her to help me and she involved other people. People who want answers and want to help and want me to act in a certain way.

I want to walk away and lock my bedroom door. That’s what my body is telling me to do. Fight or flight, and it’s immediately picked flight. It’s too hard to say how I feel in a way that will appease everyone’s worries when I don’t even know how I feel to be able to assemble a suitable response.

Overwhelmed doesn’t convey how I feel anymore when I know that this anxious weight of impending doom is going to be with me until I graduate or until Faulkner realizes asking me to be captain was a massive mistake and I let everyone down.

Russ is rustling the chip bag again and the TV is playing and Robbie is tapping his fingers against the side of his beer bottle and Halle’s finger lightly brushes my knuckles by accident and it’s like tiny bugs crawling across my hand and I can’t think.

I can’t think.

“Do you want to go upstairs?” Halle asks, her eyes flicking to where I’m rubbing my knuckles repeatedly trying to stop my hand feeling disconnected from the rest of my body. “Go if you need to.”

I nod, and the idea of answering her properly feels entirely impossible as I step around her and head to the stairs. As soon as I enter my bedroom, I throw myself onto my bed facedown, bury my head in my pillow, and let myself pass out.

I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I’m out for, but when I wake up, there’s a lukewarm cup of tea and a selection of snacks next to two Tylenol on my bedside table.

Telling Halle not to be embarrassed about things is second nature to me, and yet I can’t shake that same feeling as I take the pills and stand to head downstairs.

Russ is watching TV on his own when I reach the living room, and I can’t see or hear Halle or Robbie. He doesn’t say anything when I sit at the other end of the couch; he lowers the TV volume. He’s watching Halle’s baking show with the British people.

“Halle put it on,” he says.

“How long ago did she leave?” I ask.

“Couple of hours ago. She took Robbie to Lola’s, so it’s just us tonight. You hungry?”

As much as I don’t blame her for leaving when I wasn’t awake to keep her company, I’m now in an even worse situation with Thornton’s essay. “We didn’t study. I’m going to fail because I have nothing to submit.”

Russ doesn’t take his eyes off the TV. “Robbie spoke to Coach and told him you aren’t feeling yourself. Coach said he’d submit a request to get you a day extension for your essay. Unspecified medical grounds or something. You can hand it in on Tuesday and Halle is going to help you tomorrow. Do you want pizza for dinner?”

“Unspecified medical grounds?”

“Yup. Would it be better for you if I made the decision about dinner? Is there anything you specifically don’t want?”

Russ finally looks at me and it’s my turn to concentrate on the TV. I nod. “Nothing messy.” He immediately grabs his cell phone from the arm of the chair to order something. “Thanks, Russ.”

“You got it.” He hands me the TV remote, but I have a soft spot for this show. “Is there anything else I could do tonight to help you get to tomorrow?”

It’s a weird way to word a question, but one of the things Russ has learned since his dad started working through his addiction is that all you need to do is take one day at a time. He’s careful with his word choices, but I like it.

“No. There’s nothing you can do.”

“Let me know if that changes, okay?”

That’s all he says until our food arrives and we sit together eating, watching Halle’s baking show, and I don’t have to think about anything all evening.