Page 14 of Daydream

Chapter FiveHENRY

WHENANASTASIA USED A BASKETBALLparty last night to back me into a corner and tell me she was going to come around today to make sure I study and stay on track academically, I thought she was kidding.

I thought it was weird when she showed up to the party, particularly because I was there to avoid her coming over to try to help me. The woman doesn’t know how to accept the wordno.

But as I listen to her sigh for the twelfth time, while not breaking her typing speed, I realize she wasn’t kidding, and I’m somehow in a study group with the least productive people I know. “It’s not a valid source, Kris,” she says when her long sigh ends.

Kris is still spinning his pen around his finger, like he has been for ten minutes. “What do you mean it isn’t a valid source? It’s Wikipedia. It’sthesource.”

Anastasia finally takes her eyes off her laptop to glare at him across the dining room table. “Stop being antagonizing or I’m banishing you from study group. You freaking know it isn’t a source, Kris. You’ve been writing essays for as long as I have. Work or leave. They’re your options.”

I wish she’d banish me from study group. I love her; she’s my best friend, but she doesn’t understand that forcing me to try to do something makes me not want to do it. Plus, she’d have to banish my teammates from far more than study group for them to stop antagonizing me.

“You’re grumpy today, Allen,” Mattie says, probably not as carefully as I would have given the scowl on her face. “You need a hug?”

She looks down at her laptop again, shaking her head. “Not from you. Just study, okay? I need to head to the rink in literally two minutes and I only have two more paragraphs to write.”

The guys look to me like somehow I’ll know what’s wrong with her. I want to ask her if she means a hug from me, because it’s not really something we do, so I’m not sure what the signs are. Before I can speak, Russ nudges me with his foot and my cell phone lights up on the table beside my textbook.

RUSS

She misses Nate.

I miss Nate, too. Definitely not in the way she misses him, but it’s been an adjustment without Nate, JJ, and Joe around. I’m grateful that she’d find time for me in her busy schedule, but maybe she needs to study with me more than I need to study with her.

I was going to tell her this isn’t helpful to me, but now I don’t think I will, because I don’t want to upset her. Anastasia cries a lot, and usually Nate would handle it, but I already took over the captaincy from him. I don’t have the energy to be someone’s pseudo-boyfriend as well, no matter how much I like them.

There’s an unusual silence in the den as we all sit around the dining room table, mostly pretending to work. Even though he’s angled his laptop away from me, I can still see that Bobby is playing Tetris. Russ’s cell phone starts vibrating against the table, and he immediately looks embarrassed when the guys start booing him.

“Sorry, sorry,” he mutters, standing quickly to take the call outside on the patio.

His interruption is a welcome distraction from the line of this book I’ve read four times. Professor Thornton’s class continues to be as terrible as I originally determined.

The French doors open and Russ reenters, pushing his cell phone into his pocket. “Rory is coming to study with us, if that’s all right with everyone.”

“You know you live here and we don’t, right?” Bobby asks, looking up from his game. “You don’t need our permission for your girlfriend to come over.”

“I thought she was going to book club,” I say, wishing I’d asked her to get me some cookies.

“Halle texted everyone to say a pipe burst and they’ve had to close the store to repair the damage, so it’s been canceled.”

It was frustrating when I met Halle a couple of weeks ago and on the way to get food Aurora could tell me basically nothing about her. When I suggested she was a lousy friend, she argued that Halle keeps to herself and she’d love to know more about her, which makes two of us.

“Tell her to bring everyone here. They can set up in the garden, just get everyone to bring a picnic blanket or something,” I say, closing my textbook, officially giving up for now.

Mattie shuts his laptop. “I support this vision.”

Anastasia scoffs. “You’d support anything that gave you a five-to-one ratio of women.”

“It’s actually more if you consider Russ has a girlfriend and Robbie is both taken and not here.”

“Are you sure?” Russ asks, reaching for his phone. “Is having a houseful of strangers not very distracting and counterproductive to finishing your essay?”

“Does this have anything to do with you having a crush on thebook club girl?” Anastasia asks, causing overdramatic gasps from my friends.

I roll my eyes at how childish they all are. “I don’t have a crush on her.”

“Rory said you were flirting with her,” she counters, shutting her own laptop and tucking it into her bag.

---