Page 51 of Daydream

“You’re being very quiet,” she whispers.

“It’s my brand.”

“What’re you daydreaming about?”

You. Always you.“Telling Bobby that he has to give up his seat in your car because of your massive duck and it’s friends.”

She starts laughing, and it’s the only sound I’d choose over quiet. “I’ll let him name them. Is it maybe time to join the group aspect of our group date?”

“What if I said I enjoy not having to share you?”

She swivels in my lap to look at me properly, and her ass pressed against me reminds me how long it’s been since I had sex. “I’d say share me now and have me to yourself again later. I need to write but you can stay tonight… if you want to, that is.”

I’m not always great at reading facial expressions, but I feel like I can read Halle pretty well. She looks hopeful, and I know it’s everything to do with wanting to get to know people better. Halle thinks she’s an introvert, but she isn’t. I’m an introvert. Sure, she likes doing things like reading and writing, which are solitary activities, but she’s her happiest surrounded by people.

I can only imagine how difficult the past few years have been for her. Desperately craving connection only to be left alone or unappreciated by people who don’t get her.

“I want to stay,” I say. “Let’s go hang out with other people then. But just know, I’m only doing it to further your romantic experiences.”

“I think there are definitely other things we could be doing to further my romantic experiences besides hanging out with Kris and Bobby, but I’ll take it.”

The breeze is blowing her hair, sun bouncing off the high points of her face. I reach out slowly, using my finger to tuck the strands dancing across her cheek behind her ear. She looks so beautiful; I wish I could capture her right now, but even with a paintbrush or pencil in my hand, I fear I wouldn’t do her justice. I wonder if she’d believe me if I told her.

She should be told. She should hear it every single day, but would she like it if I was the one saying it to her?

“There are,” I say. “I could give you a list.” My eyes flit to her lips. Anastasia’s voice plays in my head, repeating that the pier would be a romantic place for a first kiss. Does Halle want to be kissed? I’ve never been so unsure before. “You look beautiful right now. Is that okay for me to say?”

The hand of the arm around me cradles the side of my neck. She shifts slightly in my lap. “Do you really mean that?” I nod. “Then it’s okay for you to say.”

I wonder how many other complimentary things it would be okay for me to say. We’re so close our noses could touch if we leaned forward slightly. She smells like cotton candy and the vanilla of her hair products. I inch closerslightly. “Halle…”

“Henry,” she says quietly in the only way I want to hear her say my name from now on. I cup her cheek and her free hand covers mine. Her eyes look past me. “We have an audience.”

Whipping around to check where she’s looking, I see our friends standing with ice cream cones thirty feet from where we’re sitting. As soon as they realize we’ve noticed them they start walking toward us, when all I want to do is to yell at them to disappear.

Halle removes her arm and puts her hand in her lap with the other. I want to disown my friends. Bobby takes a long, unbothered lick from his ice cream as he stops in front of the bench. “Tell me that duck is not sitting next to me in the car.”

Chapter SixteenHALLE

WHENHENRY ASKED IFI wanted to grab lunch with him after class, it didn’t occur to me that I wouldn’t feel cool enough walking through the art building.

The same way Grayson stole all the athletic genes, Mom saved all the artistic genes for Maisie. Sure, I can string a sentence together—sometimes—and read a five-hundred-page romantasy book in a day, but as I take in the creations around me, it doesn’t quite feel the same.

Following the directions Henry gave me, I find the sculpture studio easily, and as much as I hate to admit it, I’m slightly disappointed to find him already sitting there with his bag ready to go. He looks up from his cell phone as I approach, smiling in a way that makes me believe he’s truly happy to see me.

“I was hoping you were still with your professor so I could find your work,” I say, pouting playfully as he stands, throwing his bag over his shoulder.

He puts his arm across my shoulder in the super friendly way we are with each other. That super friendly way that doesn’t make me question my entire existence one bit. “You’re sixty seconds too late, Cap. I just finished.”

He’s using his arm to guide me toward the exit. “Are you really not going to let me look? I’m mad that you won’t show me your work.”

“Aw,” he says, but there’s nothing sympathetic about his tone. “You’re going to have a really tough time being mad forever, huh?”

I’m still being guided away like the puppet I am when it comes to this man’s hands. “I’ve never wanted to see something so bad in my life.”

“I draw for you all the time.”

“You drawonme all the time. Or drawmeall the time. It isn’t the same—I already know what I look like.”

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