“Yeah.” He shrugs. “You’ve been through a lot, and I know you need time to process but, you need to have fun too.”
Something in my chest eases a little at that. Not because of what he says, but because he leaves it there.
That’s what I like about Liam. He knows I’ve been in a place this week—my brain tangled up in too much noise, too many feelings, too mucheverything—and instead of cornering me with questions, he lets me exist until I’m ready to talk.
It’s rare, and I don’t think he even realizes how much it matters.
“Me too,” I admit. There’s a beat before I add, “Emma actually made me call my therapist the other day.”
Liam glances up from his fries. “Yeah? How’d that go?”
“Better than I expected.” I adjust myself on my barstool a little. “Dr. Hale explained this whole thing to me about internal and external sensory processors.”
Liam blinks. “I’m sorry, what?”
A small laugh slips out. “Okay, so basically some people process stress and stimulation differently. Noise, touch, movement, routines, all of it. She said sometimes your nervous system gets so used to operating one way that you stop noticing how much it’s affecting you.”
Liam nods slowly, following. “I can one hundred percent understand that.”
“She introduced me to behavior plans and sensory diets too,” I continue. “A sensory diet is not dieting-dieting. More like intentionally giving your brain and body the kinds of input that help regulate you.”
“Like routines?” Liam offers.
“That’s it,” I nod. “And movement. Quiet. Certain textures. Grounding stuff, like the fidget ring I have. Whatever helps your system feel balanced instead of overloaded.”
“And what are behavior plans?” Liam asks, flipping his hand in the air to punctuate each word.
“Basically figuring out what helps before things get bad. Recognizing patterns and having tools already in place instead of waiting until you’re completely overwhelmed.”
“Huh.” He leans back a little. “Actually…that makes a lot of sense.”
“Yeah.” I glance down at my hands. “But habituation was another new term for me, and honestly, that was the one where the penny kind of dropped.”
Liam tilts his head. “How so?”
“Dr. Hale explained it like…your brain gets used to whatever environment you keep putting it in.” I shrug lightly. “So if you spend enough time operating with constant noise, pressure, and adrenaline, eventually your system starts treating that like your baseline.”
“And that’s what was happening to you, huh?” Liam asks.
“Yep. Everything was stacking up so gradually I didn’t even realize how overloaded I was getting anymore.” I rub my thumb against the edge of the basket absentmindedly. “The crowds, the noise, the pressure, constantly needing to track everything happening around me…” I shake my head once. “I stopped noticing I was drowning in it because my brain had gotten so used to carrying it.”
“Hockey kinda trains us for that, though,” Liam says, gesturing vaguely with a fry. “You get so used to functioning in chaos that when things get quiet…”
“You don’t really know what to do with yourself.”
“Exactly.”
For a second neither of us says anything, and weirdly, it doesn’t feel awkward. It just feels good to say it out loud to someone who gets it. A friend who gets me.
Liam nods once like that settles it, then points his fries at me. “I’m hitting the bathroom before Owen inevitably finds us. He texted a few minutes ago to say he was almost here.”
He hops off the stool and disappears toward the back hallway just as the song overhead changes to “Midnight Rain” by Taylor Swift.
The song wraps around the low buzz of conversation inside the bar, and I barely notice it at first until my attention catches onthe display screen queue mounted near the wall beside the bar. A few moments later, a new song rolls in. “Somewhere Only We Know” begins and my head lifts automatically.
Something about it tugs at me. Not enough to fully catch hold yet, but enough that I find myself looking up at the screen to study the queue again.
“You know what Campbell needs?” Liam gives me a jump-scare, interrupting my thoughts as he settles back onto the barstool beside me. “A hobby that doesn’t involve making us skate suicides.”
