WHEN ANASTASIA USED A BASKETBALL party 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 word no.
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’s the source.”
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 replace 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 the book 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.
Kris leans forward to get a better look at Anastasia. “Did Aurora say exactly how he was flirting? Because I’ve been trying to get eyes and ears on that situation for over two years now.”
“I wasn’t flirting. I was talking to her.”
She’s hot, so I would have flirted with her, but she was flustered and it sounded like she’d just gone through a breakup. Didn’t seem like the right time.
“Ah,” Mattie groans. “A conversation first. That’s where I’m going wrong.”
“Aurora said they’re going to head over now.” When we look at Russ, the tips of his ears have gone pink. “She also says thank you.”
“Looks like she said more than thank you, you big ol’ beet,” Kris teases. “Right, what was the book they read this week? Time to google the shit out of it until they get here so I can look educated and appealing.”
Anastasia’s eyebrow rises as she stands from her chair and slings her bag over her shoulder. “You’re going to be a doctor…”
Kris nods. “With a shitload of college loans. I need to replace a wife while I still have this body.”
Anastasia gives one last sigh. “Goodbye.”
MY BEDROOM WINDOW IS CRACKED slightly, which is letting me listen to the laughter outside while I once again attempt to concentrate on my work.
As soon as Aurora turned up with her arms full of blankets, I retreated to the safety of my bedroom to stay out of everyone’s way. The noise outside eventually dies down, and I hear the front door open and close, signaling the end of the meeting.
Five minutes pass and there’s a light tapping at my door. When I pull it open, I’m pleased to replace it’s who I thought it was going to be. “You cut your hair off,” I say.
“What?” Halle responds, instinctively running her hand down the now-shorter length of her brown hair. “Oh yeah. The girl I work with encouraged me to when I went to the salon with her this morning. Nicely, not forcefully or anything. I’ve just wanted to cut my hair for a long time and my e—someone stopped me doing it.”
The blunt ends sit right on her collarbone, dragging my focus across the area and up the column of her neck before I meet her eyes again. “I like it. You look really good.”
She’s flustered instantly, but I don’t think I said anything weird. It was just a compliment; a tame one at that. I step out of the doorway, holding out an arm to usher her in. She complies immediately, sitting on the bottom corner of my bed when I throw myself down onto my normal spot.
Maybe she’s not used to hearing compliments. Although that seems unlikely, because she’s beautiful. Maybe Will Ellington is as shit at being a boyfriend as he is at playing hockey. “Thank you,” she eventually chokes out. “That’s sweet of you to say. And sweet of you to let us use your house. I brought you something to say thank you. I made double in case you happened to show up again, then the pipe happened, and well. Here.”
She holds out a glass container lined with paper towels, and when I open the lid, the smell of fresh cookies fills my room. I take a bite, and they’re just as good as I remember. I’m glad she brought them up here so I don’t have to share with the guys. “Thank you. Want one?”
She holds up her hand in protest. “No, thank you. I’m a little sick.”
Now that she’s mentioned it, her skin is a little paler than the last time I saw her during the day and there’s clearly makeup under her eyes trying to cover dark bags. “What’s wrong?”
“I went to a party last night and I’m not that experienced when it comes to drinking, so I feel like I’ve been hit by a car.”
“I know, I saw you. If you spend more time with Aurora that might happen. She nearly reversed into me yesterday. Have you taken Advil?”
“You saw me?” she says, her voice missing its normal airy tone.
“Yeah,” I say, wiping a cookie crumb from the corner of my mouth. “You were asking Mason Wright for his number. I don’t recommend you call him.”
“Why not?”
“He’s a dickhead.”
She snorts as she laughs abruptly. Cute. “I don’t know why I keep snorting in front of you, sorry. The girls I was with already deleted his number. I didn’t realize you saw that.”
“You looked like you were having fun with your friends, so I didn’t want to approach you. I didn’t know if you’d remember me and I didn’t want to ruin your night by bothering you.”
“Of course I’d remember you,” she says softly. “You can always approach me at a party. It would’ve been nice to see a familiar face, last night was… a lot of new faces.”
“Have you taken medicine, Halle?”
She shakes her head, so I swing my legs off my bed and head to my bathroom to grab the box of stuff I keep for emergencies. It’s mainly full of skin care items, socks, hair ties, etc., but I do have painkillers and things in here, too. She watches as I dig around for the Advil I keep handy for hangovers.
I’ve never known a woman to look so out of place in my bedroom. She seems nervous for some reason and looks like she’s thinking far too hard. Sometimes I struggle with conversations because human beings, especially the women in my life, naturally want to fill silences with something. I watch Anastasia and Aurora do it all the time; it’s like they’ve appointed themselves as guardians of the conversation flow and natural silences are counterproductive to their work. I don’t think Lola’s had a quiet moment in her life, but lately it seems to be because of arguments she has with Robbie. I don’t think they know I know they’re fighting a lot, but my room is directly above his.
I love the silence, but judging by the look on her face, Halle does not. “Is this your girlfriend’s stuff?”
“Someone stayed the night once and the next day got really sick. I didn’t have anything to look after her with and I felt really bad. Since then, I’ve kept stuff in my bathroom just in case,” I explain. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“I wasn’t sure, because I saw you with someone last night and…” Her voice trails off. “Yeah. Anyway.”
“Anastasia. My friend’s girlfriend.” I can’t help but smirk. “Were you jealous?”
My question finally adds a little color to her white skin as her cheeks flush pink. “No, of course not! I just… God, I am so hungover.”
“Of course not,” I repeat, holding out the Advil to her.
“This is a pretty cool thing to do,” she says, shaking two pills onto her palm. She digs into her bag and pulls out a water bottle, throwing back the pills quickly. “Thank you.”
The silence returns. Leaning forward, she swipes a book from my nightstand. It’s the same one I bought last week at the store. The same one I’ve hardly touched. “How’s your leadership reading list going?”
“I read two chapters and gave up. It’s about his whole life, which I guess is fair for an autobiography, but who has that much to say about their family?”
“Not a family guy?” she says, flipping the book over to read the back. “Sorry, that’s so personal! Ignore me, I didn’t think.”
“It’s fine. I love my family. My moms are the best people I’ve ever met, but I could cover it in half a chapter. Max.”
She laughs, and it’s exactly like I thought it would be. Light, pretty, musical. Everything about her is soft. “I have to stop myself from writing super long chapters all the time. So unfortunately, I can relate to”—she flips the book over—“four-time Stanley Cup winner Harold Oscar. I’m sure what he has to say is far more interesting, though.”
“You’re an author?”
“I’m trying to be, but there’s something not clicking right now. I think I’m still trying to replace my style or something. There’s a competition I want to enter but I can’t decide what to write about. I’m, I don’t know, seriously lacking in inspiration I guess. Weirdly, a song came on at the party last night that clearly wasn’t supposed to be part of the playlist and I thought about a plot, but I don’t know if it’ll go anywhere. All my other ideas and drafts don’t feel good enough, so maybe something new is a better idea.”
“I get that. Sometimes I feel like that about a painting if it’s a new subject or technique I’m trying. Stuff we create is personal. You’re probably overthinking it.”
She smiles and rubs her fingers against her temple. “You’re probably right. But anyway, you’re an artist? That’s so cool, I didn’t know that.” She looks around my bare room. “Where’s your work?”
Good question. I shrug. “Never made anything I’ve wanted to stare at every day. I move on quickly.”
“Wish I could relate. I feel like I’ve been dragging around the same ideas for years. It’s a good thing I’m a better reader than I am author; I think I’d lose my mind.”
“I’m a much better artist than reader.” She laughs again. “I can’t concentrate on a book I’m not interested in long enough to get to the interesting stuff. I try really hard and before I know it, I zone back in and I’ve been pointlessly scrolling for twenty minutes. But I don’t even remember picking up my cell phone. It’s infuriating.”
Halle doesn’t give me the weird look people give me when I try to explain how frustrating I replace some things other people replace easy. She just nods. “My younger sister has the same problem. We found it’s because she has ADHD. I help her a lot with her English homework because it’s her least favorite subject, and if she doesn’t want to read the book it’s a battle.”
Battle feels like the right word for how I feel sometimes. “It’s weird, because I can google something and accidentally end up tangled up researching a different thing but read everything that’s ever been said about it no problem. But the one thing I need to do is impossible.”
Halle chuckles, but I don’t feel like she’s laughing at me. I like how easy she is to talk to. “Yep, Gianna is the same. Getting her diagnosis has given her more resources and support, but I dread to think what school would be like for her if we hadn’t pushed her doctors. I spent a lot of time looking up ADHD, and some people go their whole lives not knowing that they’re neurodivergent. Sorry, oversharing.”
“It’s good your sister has support now. I’m going to spend the rest of the day looking up these cookies,” I admit, taking another one from the container. “They’re too damn good.”
“My nana once visited for an entire summer to look after me while my parents were at work and my brother was at football camp. She monitored every step of the process to make sure I perfected it. She said I couldn’t give out shit cookies and then tell people it’s her recipe.”
“Please pass my thank-you on to your nana.”
“Oh, she passed a few years ago. I live in her house, so I have all her personal recipe books and things. I think the cookies are the only thing I don’t completely ruin.”
“She’d be happy with her cookie reputation,” I reassure her, taking another bite. “You’re doing a great job. It’s cool you live there, though, and have her stuff. My grandma was a fancy restaurant kind of lady, so I don’t have recipes, but I do have a list of approved places to eat across the world.”
My mama stopped talking to her parents thirty years ago when their “strict, conservative values” meant they couldn’t accept she was gay, so even though they’re still alive I haven’t met them.
My mom’s parents were both career-focused people who didn’t have her until later in life and they both passed away before I was fifteen. They did everything to make my mama feel loved and included in their family since she’d lost her own. One of my grandma’s favorite things to do was to take us all to eat at her top-ranked places and show off her family.
“Oh, I love that! Also I’m not sure anyone has ever described me being a college junior and living alone in my nana’s house as cool. But I’ll accept the baking praise,” she says, pulling at the sleeve of her cardigan. “Thank you.”
“Why don’t you live with your friends?” I ask, and judging by the way her face sinks, I think that was one of those things I’m not supposed to ask.
“That’s a good question. A really good question, um…” I’m stuck between her telling me it’s a good question and her visible discomfort. I’m about to say she can just ignore it when she finally answers. “I don’t have any friends, really. Ones I kinda had don’t go to UCMH, but everyone dropped me when I split up with my boyfriend anyway.”
She looks embarrassed, but only a couple of years ago I didn’t have friends, either. Now, if anything, I might have too many. They’re hard to keep track of, but I think adding one more won’t hurt. “I’m your friend.”
Her eyebrow tweaks up. It’s an expression I’m used to. It means I’ve caught her off guard. I seem to be forever catching people off guard. “You’re not.”
“Yeah, I am,” I say a little harder.
“That’s not how people make friends,” she insists.
“How would you know? You just said you don’t have any.” The way she visibly flinches guts me. I move on quickly. “We’re friends, Halle. Friends do nice things together. I let you use my house for a book club and you brought me food. I’m not saying you should live with me or anything, but you’re not friendless.”
“Okay, we can be friends then,” she says, her shoulders dropping an inch as she relaxes a little. I don’t want her to be uncomfortable around me, and I do want to be her friend.
“Good. This weekend is our annual preseason party that my roommate said he was too old and mature to throw, so it’s obviously happening anyway. You should come, so I know you mean it when you say we can be friends.”
I think Russ and I are the only people not alarmed about Robbie wanting to party less. The rest of the team, however, particularly the ones who Nate wouldn’t let in and are now older, all feel like they’re missing out on some kind of rite of passage. Robbie didn’t say he’d never throw another party; he said he wants to focus on showing Faulkner what he’s capable of and being more responsible. But obviously nobody listens to anything properly, as I discover every practice, and they just heard “less parties.”
Before Nate and JJ moved out, Robbie viewed multiple places to live on his own this year. He said he wanted to create some distance between Robbie our friend, and Robbie the man hoping to get a faculty position once he’s finished his studies.
Robbie said the only reason he didn’t move out when he wanted was because none of the places that were available were built with disabled people in mind. He said the stress he would have experienced trying to get a landlord to do the bare minimum like improve the building accessibility and safety wasn’t worth it, and he’d look again in a year.
Halle rolls her eyes at my offer, tucking Harold Oscar’s book under her arm as she stands from my bed. “I don’t think so. It’d be weird to go to a party alone, and I have stuff to do. Assignments, my writing project, book club stuff, y’know.”
“You won’t be alone. I’ll be there.”
“You’ll be busy with your friends.”
“We just established you’re my friend.”
She sighs, but it’s different from when Anastasia sighed earlier. “Are you always this… persistent? Convincing? Dare I say, slightly stubborn?”
“I don’t know,” I admit honestly. “I never need to work this hard usually. Most women want to be my friend.”
“I’m sure they do, Henry. I’m going to go, I have work soon, but I’m going to borrow this book, if that’s okay?”
I shrug. “Sure. I’m not reading it anyway.”
“Thanks again for the garden.”
“Thanks again for the cookies.”
She turns to leave, and right before the door closes, I call her. “Halle?”
Her face peeks through the small gap. “Yes?”
“I really do like your hair.”
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