Top Ten(2)
“It was a special occasion,” Ryan informed her, his skin prickling in a way that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Ugh, this was stupid, dangerous ground. “Come on,” he said, standing up too quickly in an attempt to shake off whatever dumb old feelings were bubbling up, ghosts of crushes long past. It was because of graduation, probably, because things were changing. It didn’t actually mean anything. “I want more cake.”
The party wound down past four o’clock, the crowd starting to thin, Mrs. Hart pressing leftover potato salad and slices of six-foot Italian sub on everybody to take home. “You driving to the thing at Harrison’s tonight?” Ryan asked Gabby as her mom handed him a Tupperware full of magic bars. “Or do you want me to?”
Gabby grimaced. “We’re going to the thing at Harrison’s tonight?”
“Yes, dear.” Ryan smiled at the familiarity of it. This was their routine: she dragged her feet about going out places, and Ryan either convinced her or didn’t. Today, he was hoping he could.
She was an easier sell than he was expecting, actually. “Well,” she said, lips twisting, the sun catching the golden threads in her hair. “I suppose.”
“What are you guys going to do at college?” asked Celia, appearing behind them holding a crumbly brownie on a napkin. She was home from Swarthmore for the summer, where she was learning to be a psychologist and also to act like she knew more than anyone else, although she basically already had a PhD in that last part. “Without each other to chew your food for you, I mean?”
“Oh, come on now, I chew my own food,” Ryan defended himself. “It’s only gum Gabby helps me with.”
“And only if it’s been sitting around a long time,” Gabby put in. “Soft gum he can chew all on his own.”
Celia rolled her eyes at them; Gabby only grinned. But as they said their good-byes, Ryan felt a tiny nip of something unfamiliar, a creeping unease curling up in his stomach like a snake lounging on a rock. He looked at her once more across the yard, lifted his hand to wave at her.
“Pick you up at nine!” Gabby called.
GABBY
It was more like nine thirty by the time she’d gotten to Ryan’s—she’d had a little bit of a wobble over whether her hair looked greasy, had needed a generous sprinkle of dry shampoo and half a dozen reassurances from her sisters before she made it out the door—and Gabby stuck close behind him as they headed up the front walk. The party was at Harrison Chambers’s house, a center-hall colonial full of china cabinets that held enough breakables to make her faintly nervous. The whole senior class had been invited, and from the looks of things most of them had actually showed: bodies crowded the hallways and the stairwells, perched on the arms of couches and sprawled cross-legged on the shag rug in the den. It was hot inside, despite the AC cranking. It felt like there were too many people breathing the air.
“You okay?” Ryan murmured, quiet enough so only she could hear him. Gabby nodded. It was rare for a party to throw her into panic mode anymore, though it still happened sometimes. Lately, for the most part, the anxiety that had plagued her since she’d exited the womb was more of a low simmer than a full-on boil. Which wasn’t to say she didn’t still freak out for no reason on occasion: two days ago she’d had a grade-A panicker in the shower curtain aisle of Bed Bath & Beyond, though she hadn’t told anybody about it. She’d had to sit on a pile of bath mats with her head between her legs while she waited for it to pass.
“Come on,” Ryan said now, wrapping his hand around her wrist and squeezing, as if he suspected he wasn’t getting the full story but wasn’t going to push for it. “Let’s go outside.”
For all the time they’d spent together in the last four years, she and Ryan still didn’t have a ton of friends in common, but the ones they did were camped out on a hammock at the far corner of the backyard: Nate, who’d worked with Ryan at the hot dog hut; Sophie and Anil, who’d been together since they were freshmen. Even Michelle had shown up, though she and Ryan had never quite become the great pals Gabby had once hoped; she was sitting on the grass next to her boyfriend, Jacob, who was wearing skintight jeans and a blazer even though it had to be eighty degrees outside. Jacob always smelled a little bit like BO.
“I’m gonna get beers,” Ryan told her, waving at another guy from the hockey team. “You want a beer?”
“Sure,” Gabby told him, though she didn’t intend to drink it. Sometimes it just helped her to have something to hold. She settled back against an old tree stump, knowing that it would probably be the better part of an hour before Ryan came wandering back; he’d get distracted talking to this buddy or that teammate, catching up with some girl who was in his algebra class sophomore year who he forgot he always thought was really interesting.