Top Ten(17)

“I don’t know,” Ryan said, not quite looking at her. “Anyway, that’s kind of over, so. I’m probably the wrong person to ask.”

“You and Felicity?” Gabby smirked. “That was quick.”

Ryan shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal,” he said, busying himself scooping the ball out of the return and handing it over. The truth was, he and Felicity had gotten in a fight about Ryan skipping Felicity’s friend Kyla’s birthday party last weekend to go hang out at Gabby’s, but Ryan didn’t necessarily want to mention that part. It felt too close to admitting . . . something.

Ryan wasn’t sure when he’d first realized he liked Gabby as more than a buddy to play Monopoly and rag on people with. He thought maybe he kind of always had. The tipping point could have been that horrible trip to Albany last fall, he guessed, or maybe the very first night in the yard outside Remy Dolan’s house, but just as likely it had been a slow shuffle over the last year and a half, a dozen different nights on the sofa at her house or drinking Cokes at the pizza place in Colson Village after school on the days when he didn’t have practice. At some point things had just . . . changed.

In any case, Ryan thought as he watched her approach the lane again, it didn’t actually matter when it had happened; Gabby had never shown one speck of interest in him that way, and the last thing he wanted to do was screw up their friendship by making things weird. He’d never had a friend like her before. She was a really good question-asker. She remembered all the weird, random stuff he said. She had an opinion about literally everything: the best way to eat eggs (soft scrambled with heavy cream, like her dad made them on the weekends), pigtails on grown women (inappropriate at best, creepy at worst), and the proper way to organize a locker (books in the order you had classes, or what was even the point?). He wasn’t sure how much of it was the fact that she was a girl and how much of it was just the fact of Gabby herself, but either way, Ryan had never been so interested in another person. He’d never been so curious about what someone might say.

Now he dug a handful of fries out of the red plastic basket on the table, then wiped his greasy hands on the seat of his jeans and got a ball of his own out of the return. “My mom has a boyfriend,” he announced, letting go a little crookedly.

“Really?” Gabby asked, both of them watching the ball swerve down the waxy lane toward the pins; it hit six, which was better than nothing. “Who?”

“This client of hers who brings his three dachshunds in to get groomed all the time,” Ryan told her with a grimace. “She thinks I don’t know.”

“Huh.” Gabby tilted her head to the side, considering. “What’s that like?”

“I don’t know.” Ryan shrugged, bowled again. The ball veered into the gutter almost immediately, and he swore under his breath. “It means my parents aren’t getting back together, which I guess I sort of knew.”

“Did you want them to?”

Ryan hesitated. It was no secret that Gabby wasn’t his dad’s biggest fan. Finally he shrugged again, residual months-old embarrassment prickling up the back of his neck. “I mean, no.”

Gabby wasn’t buying. “It’s okay if you do,” she said, nibbling delicately on the end of a french fry: she liked the extra-crispy ones only, ketchup on the side. He’d made the mistake of putting it on top once and she’d basically called him a serial killer. “They’re your parents.”

“I don’t,” Ryan insisted. “I just think it’s weird for one dude to have three little dogs, is all.”

“More than two of any animal is hoarding behavior,” Gabby agreed, then grinned. “I mean, I say that now. You can ask me again when I’m seventy and living alone in a mansion somewhere with my hundred ferrets.”

“All named after famous photographers, and which you dress up for holidays in little ferret clothes.”

Gabby’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, maybe paint a little less of a picture, how about.”

“I’m kidding,” Ryan said, handing her the ball again. “You’re definitely more cat lady than ferret lady.”

“You know what?” Gabby started, but she was laughing. She had a great laugh, this loud, unselfconscious cackle. Ryan always felt like the funniest guy in the universe when he got it out of her.

“Just bowl,” he told her, sitting back in the molded plastic chair and watching as she considered the pins in front of her. She’d gotten her hair cut earlier that week, so that it only brushed her shoulders. It made her eyes look bigger and, weirdly, more blue. Just for a second, he let himself imagine what it would be like to reach out and tuck it behind her ears.