Page 46 of Daydream

“I’m not,” she says as she begins to fully sob. “Everything is fine.”

I guide her into the living room, and she’s compliant as I take a seat on the couch and pull her onto my lap. “Why are you crying? Did something happen?”

“I thought you wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore,” she blurts out. “I thought you were mad at me.”

This is not what I expected her to be upset over. “Why wouldn’t I want to be your friend anymore?”

I wipe the tears rolling down her reddened cheeks with my thumbs. She looks so sad. “I was pushy and weird last night. Itried to interfere with you and your friends. I know I overstepped, Henry.”

“No, you were right. I should have said something to Russ; he has a complicated situation with his family, and I don’t know how to handle it sometimes. Usually, I just listen to him rant, and I don’t need to give advice. I’m going to talk to him about it. You didn’t overstep.” New tears form and I watch her carefully while she avoids looking at me. Gripping her chin lightly, I tilt her face in my direction. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Our friendship is so new, and you were right, you know your friends better than I do, and the thought of losing everyone and having no friends agai—”

“Friends are allowed to have different opinions on how to handle things, Halle. It doesn’t make me not want to talk to you anymore, and even if something did happen, people don’t want to be your friend because of me. They like you as you are all on your own.”

I hold my arm up, and after a moment of deliberation she leans into my body, letting me wrap my arm around her. Her head fits perfectly in the crook of my neck.

“I don’t know why I’m crying so much,” she mumbles. “I just woke up feeling so depressed and anxious, and now you’re here and it just won’t stop.”

“You’re being dramatic because you have a hangover, Halle.”

“I’m not being dramatic,” she immediately replies before I feel her body start to shake gently. Shit. “Not on purpose.”

Stroking her hair gently, I hold her tight with my other arm. “Alcohol is a depressant. It’s why you feel so shit when you’re hungover. Does this happen every time you drink?”

She shakes her head; the smell of her shampoo radiates from her hair. She smells like vanilla. “Only if I drink a lot. I don’t think I like it.”

“Then why do you do it?” I know she’s crying again before I hearit from the way her body moves. I hate it. “Shh. You’ll feel better once it’s out of your system. Just stop crying.”

Sniffing, she wipes her eyes with her cardigan sleeves. “I don’t want people to think I’m boring and stop inviting me to things. I never drank at parties when I was with Will, and they definitely thought I was boring. And it makes me feel more confident, and I like it for the first couple of drinks, but then if I go further, I end up feeling like this the next day. I worry everyone hates me while I also feel like death.”

“You really skipped those peer-pressure talks in high school, huh? Let’s not talk about Will, because thenI’llfeel like death and won’t be able to take care of you.” I finally get a short laugh out of her, and the relief is immense. “Halle, nobody with more than two brain cells thinks anybody is boring for not drinking when they don’t want to. Don’t do something you don’t like for other people.”

“I know. Nobody is pressuring me. It’s just in my head, and logically I know I’m being ridiculous.”

“Sometimes you can’t trust your head to think the right thing, especially when you drown it in tequila. People likeyou, sober you, not the extra-confident version when you’re buzzed you. Getting a new group of friends all at once is a lot, but you don’t need to change for them.”

“Oh,” she says. We sit in silence, and there’s thankfully no more crying. I rub my hand up and down her outer thigh and try to remember when being this close started to feel so natural. Minutes of quiet continue, and I think she’s fallen asleep until she speaks quietly. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course you can.”

She sits up to look at me, her butt sliding off my knee into the gap between my thigh and the couch end. Her legs stay draped over mine and my hands settle on her shin. “If you aren’t mad at me, why didn’t you stay over last night?”

“When I’m overwhelmed, I need to be on my own to process everything and sleep it off. I’m sorry, I could have explained that to you. I will next time.”

She nods. “That makes sense. Sorry for asking, and for being needy or whatever. It was just when you didn’t want to stay, and you hadn’t actually invited me, so I thought that maybe you hadn’t wanted me there, and the girls sa—it doesn’t matter. Thank you for explaining.”

“I didn’t invite you because I wasn’t going. I only went because I wanted to see you.” I chuckle when her eyes widen a little. “I don’t even like Take Back December. And Russ’s brother is a dick, as you now know. What did your friends say?”

She leans back into me, burying her face in my chest like it’s the most instinctual thing for her. She mumbles into my T-shirt, “Ifyouwantedtoyouwouldbutisaidwe’renotlikethat.”

“Huh?”

She looks up so I can see her face and her cheeks are flushed again. “That if you wanted to you would. But I said we’re not like that. And now I know you weren’t even going so I feel silly.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s like when guys don’t make an effort for stuff people say oh, if they wanted to they would. Because people always remember to do the things for people that are important to them. So if they don’t make the effort, it’s just not a high priority for them. It’s just because you said you forgot to invite me to your game, then you didn’t invite me to this and, I don’t know. It isn’t a big deal, they were just talking while we were getting ready.”

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