Daydream (Maple Hills, #3)(53)
“This isn’t over,” I say, pushing my hair behind my ears and positioning my laptop on the arm of my chair.
“I look forward to round two,” he says, shutting his eyes.
I click accept, and Gigi fills my screen. “You took your time.”
“Hello to you, too,” I say back, watching her move through our house. “You’re giving me motion sickness. What’s happening?”
The framed pictures lining the staircase come into view as she descends the stairs. “Your mom wants to talk to you. Can you convince her to let me get a belly button piercing?”
“Uh, no. Is that even legal?”
Gigi sits down on the stairs, leaning into the laptop camera. “With consent from a legal guardian. Please, Halle. I really want one. All my friends have them, it isn’t fair.”
“There’s no way in hell she’s going to give you permission. You should get your mom to take you when she gets home.”
Gi sighs dramatically in the calculated way she does to try to make me feel bad about not helping with her latest scheme. “I already asked her when she called, and she said no.”
This child. “And you think my mom is going to go against your mom why, exactly?”
“Because you’re so persuasive, Hallebear. If you really wanted to you would help me!” Grayson is so lucky that I never put him through this. “Please, please, please. I’ll never ask you for anything ever again.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be delivering me to my mom for something?”
Gigi rolls her eyes, standing from the stairs again, and even through the unsophisticated laptop speaker, I can hear how hard she’s stomping. I can hear the TV and Maisie talking to her dad as Gigi walks through the house before I’m shoved into my unsuspecting mother’s path while she appears to be in the kitchen.
“Oof,” she says. “I’ll bring it up to you when I’m done, Gi.”
I don’t even get a see you later before she—I imagine—storms off. “Hi, Mom.”
Mom puts Gigi’s laptop on the kitchen table and there’s a stab of longing when I realize I’m not going to be home for a while. “Hi, honey. Can you believe that girl wants me to go against Lucia and take her to get her belly button pierced?”
“I can believe that, yeah. What’s up? I have a lot to do tonight and I haven’t looked at her homework yet.”
Mom launches into a recap of Maisie’s dance recital, which apparently is not the thing she wanted to speak to me about, before moving on to how nice it would be if Grayson was traded to a West Coast team. She keeps going and going, so much so that she doesn’t even hear Henry’s loud yawn. “Anyway, Gianna has decided she does want to go to college, and she wants to go on some college tours with her friends. Can you find some time to go with her? She said she wants a college in California since that’s where her mom will be settling when she gets home. A girls’ trip sounds fun! Right?”
When Grayson and I both went off to college, Gianna always said she wasn’t going, even as a little kid. She said she wanted to learn how to look after plants, so our conversations switched to trade schools whenever she’d ask. Everything was good until we realized she hated school because she didn’t have the support she needed, and she incorrectly thought working with plants wouldn’t need much studying.
“It’s far too early for her to be doing college tours, Mom. She’s barely a sophomore. Why can’t she wait until next year?” I say.
“I know, honey. But I don’t want to discourage her. Her new friends are talking about college and it’s got her excited, and if that’s what she wants, I don’t want her to think we’re not supporting her.”
I feel bad for my mom because she’s trying her best to be a good stepparent. I know she worries a lot about doing the wrong thing, and about Lucia thinking that she treats Gigi different from her own children or is less supportive of her goals. “I can, but could we have this talk again after spring break? I could talk to her while we’re on vacation and we can go from there.”
“Sure! Thank you, Hallebear. I’ll let you get back to your study session.”
When I’m back in the familiar surroundings of Gigi’s bedroom, she appears to have gotten over her earlier tantrum. “Well? Did you get her to change her mind?”
Why she’s so intent on piercing herself I’ll never know. “I’m working on it, kid.”
“You are such a bad liar,” she says, rolling her eyes.
When I finally close my laptop, both my own work and Gigi’s work now complete, my head feels like it’s melting. Henry, still claiming to be unwell but also claiming to be hungry, gives me a long list of things he wants when I place an order for takeout to be delivered.
“Do you need attention, sympathy, and a cure?” Henry asks, peeping at me from beneath the forearm he lays across his eyes.
Rubbing my tired eyes with my palms, I nod. “Yes.”
“Come join our pity party,” he says, putting Joy on his chest and shuffling to the edge to create a gap between him and the back couch cushions.
There’s no graceful way for me to get into that space, and when I try, Henry pulls me down onto him so I’m half in the gap and half on him. I’m forever wondering when this level of contact became the norm for us, but I’m scared that if I ask him it’ll stop.