Daydream

It was at the wedding, after too many gulps from a wine bottle we’d stolen from one of the tables, that we had the kiss that sparked this whole mess.

It was exciting at first, and those two weeks before we went back to school, I saw our relationship in a whole new way. Will had always been popular, and as much as I despise admitting it now, I felt special that he wanted to date me.

He was the captain of our high school hockey team, a future NHL star according to those in the know. He’d always been handsome and charismatic; he could get himself out of any situation with that charming smile of his. College had only increased his confidence, and during my visits throughout our freshman year, it was clear he was as well liked there as he had been back home.

So, all things considered, why wouldn’t I want to date him when everyone else did? He was my only friend. It made sense, right?

I was captain of nothing, with no need to get myself out of any situation because I wasn’t doing anything of interest. There isn’t a long list of complimentary adjectives that follow when people talk about me. So yeah, I was a little flattered.

Our parents were elated, naturally. Their dreams of wedding planning and shared grandchildren felt that much closer, and it didn’t matter that I was going to be in Maple Hills and he was going to be in San Diego. It’s only two hours away, and they were certain we’d be totally fine because I could arrange my schedule around Will’s hockey commitments.

No. Big. Deal.

Their confidence gave me confidence, which was something I desperately craved after that initial buzz wore off the first time Will asked me to have sex with him. I told him I wasn’t ready, and he said I was intimidated by all of the girls he’d slept with, but that I didn’t need to worry. I, through a horrified grimace and the strongest urge to vacate the building, told him I didn’t care about who he’d been with before and his sex life had no bearing on us taking that step or not.

I wanted butterflies and the unexplainable need to pop my foot up delicately when we kissed, but I got wasps. Nasty, uncomfortable things that stung me every time Will would slip his hand beneath my T-shirt. My gut told me something was wrong, but my heart told me I just needed to give it time. My head told me I already had all the answers, but I was just too much of a chicken to listen to them.

“Halle? Will you get out of your head for long enough to have a fucking conversation with me? Jesus,” Will says harshly, raising his voice enough to wake Joy. She saunters across the table, brushing her tail along my chin before lying back down in front of me. The oven timer beeps, and Will mutters expletives under his breath while I turn it off and take out the croissants I now have no desire to eat.

“Nothing about this makes me feel happy. I feel like you’re annoyed at me for saying okay instead of what? Screaming at you? Sobbing?”

He scoffs, bringing his coffee mug to his lips, smothering whatever he muttered. I’ve always hated the muttering. “I’m annoyed about all the shit I’m going to get for being the one to break up with you, when you’re just too much of a fucking people pleaser to do it yourself.

“I’m going to be the world’s biggest asshole for doing something you’ve been too much of a coward to do. It isn’t fair. I want you but you don’t want me, so I have to be the bad guy.”

I was wrong. There are adjectives that follow when someone talks about me. Just not complimentary ones, I guess.

“I’m not being a people pleaser. I was trying to give us a chance to work things out. It’s not like I wanted to suck at this.”

“I wish you wanted to suck. Maybe that’d solve our problems,” he mutters just loud enough for me to hear.

It’s like he’s poking a tender bruise. A metaphorical one that’s there because of him in the first place. I want to roll my eyes and tell him how childish and pathetic he’s being, but in reality, he’s finally found something in this awful conversation that makes me hurt.

I don’t know why my sexual urges disappear as soon as he’s in the equation, and I really wish I did. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of letting him know he’s gotten to me, so I sigh and cock my head. “You’re being an asshole.”

He folds his arms across his chest as he sinks into his chair to shrink himself. Pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, he lets out a noise that’s somewhere between a sigh and a groan. “Sorry, that was low. I just”—he sits up straight again, his restlessness a contrast to his normal easygoing nature—“can’t help but think things would be better if it actually felt like an adult relationship. I don’t know how you can know you hate sex if you won’t even try. I’ve been so patient with you, Halle, haven’t I? More patient than another guy would be.”

His need to break up with me right now suddenly makes more sense, given I said I still wasn’t ready to have sex with him last night. If patient means stopping when I say stop, then yes, Will has been patient. If patient means repeatedly bringing up sex and interrogating me about my thoughts and feelings but becoming moody when I once again say I’m not ready, then sure, he’s been patient.

I’m pretty sure neither of those things could be construed as patience, but I don’t have the energy to delve into my mostly solo sex life during breakfast.

“We’re two adults in a relationship—that’s what makes it an adult relationship.” As I’ve said a million times before. “And oh my God, for the last time, I never said I hate sex. I’ve only said I’m not ready and we compromised, I did the other stu—”

“Oh, because calling it a compromise makes me feel really great. Thanks.”

I want to bash my head on the table. “Look, we’re getting off topic. We can tell our parents it was a mutual decision. No bad person, mutual.”

He shoots me a disbelieving look. “Like they’ll buy that. What about Thanksgiving? Christmas? The vacation at spring break? You’re naïve to think they’ll drop it.”

I can’t pretend it’s a stretch for him to be worried about how our parents might take the news. It’s the thing I’ve been worrying about, too. Maybe he’s right; maybe I am a coward and too much of a people pleaser, and I’ve forced his hand to save myself.

The summer we just shared back home made it very clear that without our hobbies or our family commitments to fill our time, we’ve outgrown each other. Will wants adventure with his friends until he starts his professional career, and I want to be a published author by the time I’m twenty-five. We’re both driven, we’re just driving in different directions. When you add the tension caused by my unwillingness to drop my panties on demand, this breakup was the only thing inevitable about us.

If I had any friends that I didn’t share with Will, I’m sure they’d wonder why we were together in the first place. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot over the past year, and the answer didn’t paint me in a very good light.

I bounced between everything from being a people pleaser like I’m so commonly called, to having a late rebellion phase against my older brother, Grayson. He always hated Will, claiming he was too arrogant and our friendship was too one-sided. I was too well behaved to rebel about anything else going on, so not listening to my brother was as rebellious as I got. Even then, my rationale felt a little far-fetched.

In the end, I couldn’t escape the truth: loneliness. Because if we split, who would I have?

Sure, our relationship wasn’t perfect, but he called me every day and he wanted me around.

“I’ll say I have the strongest urge to spend Christmas with Dad and Shannon. I think my brother will be there so I can use him to make it more believable. By the time we’re both home in March for the spring break trip, everyone will be over our split.”

“You sure?” he asks. I just offered him the best get-out-of-jail-free card in existence and he can’t even hide the happiness. God, this is nauseating.

“I’m totally sure.”

I watch as he relaxes. “If you’re not coming home, I also don’t think you should come to my games anymore.”

Albeit not unexpected, I wish he’d broken up with me before I decided to give up my book club and rearranged my class schedule to give me time to visit for his games.

I say decided, but since we’re not together now I guess I don’t need to spin things to make Will look better anymore. I can admit that Will begged me to all summer, even though I repeatedly said I didn’t want to, until I finally gave up arguing after he said that all the other girlfriends make the effort. I did it as soon as the school year restarted. I hated letting the bookstore down on such short notice, but they were so sweet about it, and one of their booksellers is excited to take over.

“Yeah, that’s fine. I don’t want to make our friends feel like they need to pick a side, and me not being there will probably make that easier.”

If I didn’t know Will as well as I do, I might have missed the way his eyebrows pinched together and he started to pout, but it was definitely there. That look of incredulity. “Ha, yeah.” He scratches at his jaw. “Everyone’s been telling me to end things for a while, so I don’t know how they’d be if you were there. Awkward, probably.”

For the first time since he uttered, “I think we should break up,” I feel like crying. Even though to me it was obvious that something wasn’t right between us, the idea that all his college friends have been weighing in and collectively decided he should end things makes my stomach twist.

I’ve always made an effort to go to the games I could drive to, even before we were a couple. I wore his jersey, sat with the other girlfriends, cheered him on. I looked up their interests, tried my hardest to fit in while they talked about people from their college I didn’t know, because my friends have always been Will’s friends. Even as kids, he was always introducing me to someone new.

His words are still stinging as I watch him finally finish the rest of his coffee. He looks so unbothered, yet I’m fighting the desire to find the nearest field and bury myself in it. “Not my friends anymore, got it.”

“They were never really your friends in the first place when you think about it.” He’s staring at me, waiting for me to say something, like he didn’t just throw my biggest insecurity in my face as casually as asking for the weather. “Do you ever wonder if you’d have your own friends if you didn’t live in a fantasy world?”

“God, you sound like your parents right now. People can enjoy reading and still maintain a healthy attachment to reality, Will,” I drawl. “I’m not a social pariah because I like fiction. Nobody has ostracized me from the Maple Hills social calendar because I read romance novels. Maybe if I spent more time in Maple Hills instead of following you around, I’d have my own friend group here.”

He snorts, and he’s one more arrogant action away from getting a croissant launched at his head. “Maybe if you were as invested in our relationship as you are in ones that aren’t real, I wouldn’t have just wasted a year of my life.”

It’s incredible how one conversation can change how someone looks to you. “I think you should head home now.”

“Don’t be so sensitive, Hals.” He stands from his seat and walks to my side. The arm that drops onto my shoulder feels ten times heavier than it should, and his kiss to the crown of my head burns like acid. “I’m just putting myself first. Doing things for me, y’know. It’s a fresh year and I deserve a fresh start. Hockey is get—”

His voice rumbles on in the background, but I can’t bring myself to listen properly because it’s taking every shred of my self-control not to launch into a rant about how I do know, because I’ve also been putting him first for as long as I can remember. Putting everyone first, in fact.

I’ve spent my entire life being encumbered by the tasks and responsibilities other people don’t want. I make sacrifices without question because that’s what I’ve always done, and at this point, it’s hard to know if it’s a true desire to help or just habit.

As my family blended and grew through my parents divorcing and remarrying other people, my list of people to help grew, too. Even though Grayson is the oldest, everything has fallen to me. For as long as I can remember, all I’ve heard is, “Oh, Halle won’t mind helping,” and not once, “Halle, do you mind?” or, “Halle, do you have time?”

I don’t remember opting in, and I’m tired.

I’d love to say my issues with people pleasing are limited to the people I love, but I know they’re not. Whether it’s Will, his friends, his parents, neighbors… strangers…

It feels like every single person who has ever come into contact with my life has somehow wriggled their way above me on my list of priorities, and look where it’s gotten me.

Single, no friends, no hobbies, and a schedule perfect for being the ideal hockey girlfriend but little else given I now have nothing to fill that time with.

I’m tired of being a passenger in my own life. So if Will is going to spend junior year doing things for himself, so am I.

Chapter Two HENRY

IF TIME TRAVEL WERE REAL, I’d use it to go back and convince Neil Faulkner to turn down the opportunity to coach college hockey.

Despite my best intentions, and twenty long years of practice, I’m not always on the pulse when it comes to understanding people’s motivations. I am, however, usually on the pulse of not getting on Coach’s bad side. Which is why a knot of anxiety appears in my stomach the second I hear my name being yelled in Faulkner’s gruff bark.

“Ooooooooo.” Bobby’s best attempt at sounding like a cartoon ghost causes a wave of laughter to rip through the half-full locker room. He misses the glare I shoot at him as he pulls his Titans T-shirt over his head. “Someone’s in trouble. Whatcha done, Cap?”

“No idea,” I mutter back as I pull my sweats up my legs. “Play hockey. Breathe. Exist. The possibilities are endless.”

“It’s been nice knowing ya, brother,” Mattie says, patting me on the back as he passes in the direction of the showers. “Don’t tell the others, but you were always my favorite.”

“Am I a joke to you?” Kris shouts, launching what looks like a dirty sock at him. It bounces off the back of Mattie’s head, ruffling his jet-black hair, and rolls beneath a bench.

And just like that, my tolerance for my teammates has reached its limit for the day.

“I’m sure it’s fine.” Russ attempts to reassure me, rubbing his towel against his wet hair. “If you’re not back when I’m ready to go, I’ll wait for you at my truck.”

We’re only a few weeks into the new school year and I already feel like what I imagine being run over is like. During the summer I spent a lot of time googling what makes a good captain, and while I don’t feel like I have the exact answer, I’m trying to put into practice the few points I picked up. I’m the first one here and the last to leave. I’ve been making the effort to encourage the new, less confident players. I’m trying to be positive, which means not always saying the first thing that comes to mind. Being open to trying new things when it’s in my nature to stick to what I know. I’ve been doing my full workout instead of letting myself get distracted by the perfect playlist. I don’t spend practice daydreaming.

I’m doing a lot of things that go against my natural instincts, basically.

I didn’t even drink at Anastasia and Lola’s joint birthday dinner because I fell down an information wormhole about the ties between sports performance and alcohol consumption.

So the fact that Faulkner is angry with me about something when I’m trying really hard to do a good job makes me more than a little nauseated. My fist knocking against Coach’s office door seems to echo around the room. “Come in,” he yells. “Take a seat, Turner.”

He points toward one of the worn mesh fabric seats opposite him and I do as I’m told. It’s through me trying my hardest to pay attention to this man that I can clearly identify his three main states of being:

He taps his pen against the desk repeatedly, the plastic making a sharp clicking noise against the wood. It takes everything in me not to lean across and take it away from him to stop the noise. “Do you know why I called you in here?”

“No, Coach.”

He thankfully puts the pen down and pulls his computer keyboard toward him. “I just received an email requesting a phone call to discuss you, because you failed your paper in Professor Thornton’s class, and instead of going to Thornton to find a way to fix it, you went to your academic adviser to try and get out of his class. Do you have anything to say for yourself before I dial this number?”

Every single word I’ve ever learned evaporates from my head other than oh shit.

“No, Coach.”

He runs his hand across the top of his head like he’s brushing back a mane of hair. I’ve always wanted to ask why, considering he’s bald, and according to the game tapes we’ve watched, has been bald for the past twenty-five years. Despite encouragement from some of the guys, Nate told me not to ask him that unless I wanted a world of misery, which I don’t. But the question plagues me every time I watch him brush away his nonexistent hair. “Okay, then.”

His chubby fingers practically poke a hole through the handset as he punches in the number and rests the phone between his ear and shoulder. I have no choice but to listen while he introduces himself then ums and ahs through the call. Nate always told us that Faulkner can smell fear, so you should never show him your weaknesses. Admitting I fucked up the semester before I’ve properly started it feels a lot like weakness.

He puts the phone down and stares at me so intensely it feels like he’s staring at my soul.

“Ms. Guzman said she reminded you three times to schedule your appointment to register for your classes—”

“That’s true.”

“—and by the time you tried to register, the class you wanted was full. So you picked Thornton’s class thinking you could get on the waiting list for something else and drop him during swap week.”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t add yourself to the waiting list and you didn’t try to drop it during swap week.”

I intended to. I truly did, but I’ve been so busy worrying about following Nate and being a good captain that everything else took a mental backseat. Every obstacle let me push things off, and I kept telling myself I’d fix it until it was eventually too late.

“Also true.”

“So, you mean to tell me,” he says, then pauses to take a long sip from his coffee mug just to make me extra miserable. “That despite ample opportunity to rectify the situation yourself, you didn’t, and now you’re here, disturbing the few sweet hours in a day where I don’t have to look at your face, expecting me to help you?”

I want to point out that he invited me in here and I went to the adviser who is specifically employed to support student athletes for help, but I suspect he’d take that as well as he’s taking me failing one assignment. “I guess.”

“What’s your grievance with Thornton?”

I think back to what Anastasia and I workshopped ahead of my visiting Ms. Guzman. I repeat her words like a parrot. “His teaching style and my learning style are incompatible.”

“You’re going to have to give me more than that, Turner.” Faulkner sighs, leaning back in his chair. He clicks his mouse and stares at his computer. “You’re excelling in everything else, and I know you’re a hard worker. So what is it with this class that makes you think you need to quit?”

I’m trying to remember how I explained it to Anastasia and Aurora the day I came home from my first session with Thornton. I ranted for five minutes and then had to lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling for an hour. “I need to take a writing intensive class to meet the requirements of my major. Professor Thornton’s syllabus is known for being a lot of reading and researching—it’s why nobody wants to do it. He essentially teaches world history; it’s barely even about the art. I struggle to focus on the material because there’s so much that’s irrelevant to what he wants… I think.

“And I don’t love reading things I’m not interested in. I struggle to stay focused. I also don’t understand what he wants most of the time. I’ve found myself in information black holes to only end up in the wrong place anyway, and then of course, failing.”

Faulkner sighs again. I wonder if he does it at home or if it’s something he reserves for this office. I wonder if it gives his family the same sinking feeling it gives me. “It says here you have a similar kind of class with Professor Jolly and you’re not trying to drop that.”

Jolly is a borderline hippie and believes the history of art should be something you learn about and feel in your soul. She hates the idea of grading people on how they interpret and enjoy learning about art, so her class is final exam only, and that’s just because the department makes her. It’s impossible to fail as long as you show up, and she doesn’t have a class cap, meaning I could get in even though I signed up for classes later than everyone.

I love Professor Jolly’s class not only because it’s actually interesting, but because I understand what she wants from me. What I learn helps me with my practical work, and I don’t leave her class feeling unprepared and lacking direction like I do with Thornton. It would have been the perfect solution, but it doesn’t meet the requirement. “I work better under the pressure of an exam.”

Faulkner starts tapping his pen again. “Have you talked to Professor Thornton?”

Professor Thornton is even less interested than you are, I want to say. “He was unwilling to hear me out.”

“It’s out of my hands,” he says, giving me an uninterested shrug. “Should have come to me sooner so I could have helped you.”

Be more organized. Come to me sooner. I don’t know how to explain to someone who doesn’t live inside my head that they could have physically carried me to the office or glued a laptop down in front of me and I’d have still found a way to avoid the task. “What happens when I fail the class?”