Top Ten(5)

“I don’t know,” Ryan said, hoping with every fiber of his being that the answer was yes. “Are we?”

“You tell me.”

Ryan gazed at her, her tank top and freckled shoulders and her red, smudgy mouth. Jesus Christ, he loved her so much. “Do you want to come in?” he asked, and it sounded a lot more like pleading than he necessarily meant for it to.

Gabby didn’t answer for a second, her blue eyes unreadable in the darkness. Ryan held his breath.

“Yeah,” she said, and it sounded like something beginning. “Yeah, I want to come in.”





GABBY


Gabby felt Ryan take her hand as they made their way down the short hallway that led to his bedroom, putting a finger to his lips so they wouldn’t wake up his mom. His place wasn’t entirely familiar to her: they’d never spent as much time at Ryan’s as they had at Gabby’s house. For all his I’m an open book talk, he could be cagey about it, which she thought probably had to do with how small it was in here: the low ceilings and narrow doorways, the kitchen and bathrooms that hadn’t been updated since way before they were born. To Gabby it had always felt cozy, the millions of photos on the walls in the living room and Ryan’s hockey trophies all clustered on the fireplace mantel, the wallpaper in the kitchen with its print of tiny herbs tied with bows. Ryan’s mom ran her dog grooming business out of the basement, barks and yelps perpetually echoing up the staircase, coupled with the Sleater-Kinney Luann liked to listen to while she worked.

Tonight, though, it was quiet.

“Come here,” Ryan murmured, pulling her through the door at the end of the hallway and shutting it safely behind them. His room was small and a little close smelling, worn blue carpeting and a standard boy-plaid comforter. A ragged poster of Brian Leetch from the New York Rangers was tacked on the wall above the desk. Ryan’s dad had bought it for him when he was still in diapers, Gabby knew. It had literally hung above his crib before he could walk.

Ryan clicked the desk light on now, bright enough that they could see each other’s faces, and Gabby looked at him for a moment: his scrum of messy hair and his friendly brown eyes, the tiny discoloration on the edge of his lower lip where he’d taken a hockey stick to the mouth sophomore year. God, he was so familiar in every way but this one. She couldn’t believe how this night had turned out. “Are we really doing this right now?” she asked.

“I mean, I think—” Ryan looked sheepish in the half dark, and suddenly very young. “If you—?”

Gabby nodded. It wasn’t like she’d never thought about it. Of course she’d thought about it, starting the very first night they’d met freshman year, but so many things—so many moments, so many people—had happened between then and now that Gabby had very nearly forgotten. It was like how she’d wanted a pet zebra when she was five: back then she’d imagined in great detail its personality and what she’d feed it, the adventures the two of them might have. But she never thought she’d actually get a pet zebra, not really, and now, at eighteen years old, she didn’t even want one anymore.

Except, apparently, she did.

Gabby kissed him again then, urgent. Ryan slid his hands down her back. She pulled his shirt up over his head, shocking herself with her own boldness; his chest was smooth and start-of-summer pale.

“Wait wait wait,” Ryan said suddenly. He was gasping, which surprised her. Gabby wasn’t used to him like this. He was such a lion of a person it was strange to feel like she could undo him, like she held that kind of power in her two shaking hands. “Are you too drunk to make good decisions?”

Gabby shook her head, laughing a little. “I’m not drunk at all, nerd,” she told him. “I drove, remember?”

“Oh yeah.” Ryan smiled. “Okay, good.”

“Are you drunk?”

“No,” Ryan said immediately. “Definitely not.”

Gabby raised her eyebrows. “What is that, then, the first time all week?”

“You’re a rude person,” Ryan said, and kissed her again. He walked her backward across the carpet, pulling her shirt up and tossing it onto the desk chair. For a moment, he only just looked. Gabby squirmed a bit, surprised and a little embarrassed by the expression on his face. He was gazing at her—there was no other word for this—adoringly. She hadn’t thought Ryan had it in him to look at anyone like that, really, but especially not her.

“Stop staring,” she ordered, nudging him roughly in the arm.

“I can’t,” Ryan said. Then: “Wait, really?”