Top Ten(23)

“See?” Gabby said. “I told you.” She had her arms crossed now, spoiling for a fight. “What is that girl’s issue with me?”

Ryan sighed. His head was throbbing. It felt like a lot of effort to make up a lie. “She got mad that you and me spend so much time together on the weekends,” he explained, feeling his cheeks get a tiny bit pink at the admission. “She thought it was weird.”

Gabby’s eyes narrowed. “Weird how?” she demanded. “Like I’m personally weird, or—”

“No,” Ryan said, sounding more irritated than he meant to. “Like you and me are—you know.” He broke off, shy all of a sudden, and then he just said it. “More than friends, or whatever.”

“Like we’re more—” Gabby broke off, eyebrows crawling. “Oh. Oh.”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, scrubbing an embarrassed hand over his head. It wasn’t how he’d wanted to bring it up with her. He hadn’t planned on bringing it up with her at all, really, but if he had to then the middle of a crowded party was basically the worst possible venue. He could feel the anxiety radiating off her like a cartoon force field. Still, he was in it now. There was nothing to do but forge ahead. “I guess—”

“Yeah,” Gabby interrupted. “Well.” Her hands fluttered in front of her like a pair of demented birds. “That’s ridiculous, obviously.”

Ryan took a deep breath. “Is it?”

“I mean.” Gabby’s eyes widened. “Yes, right?”

Ryan couldn’t read her expression, exactly, but something about the uncertainty in her voice sent him straight into DEFCON One. “I mean, of course it is,” he said quickly. The party was still clattering all around them, somebody’s loud laughter and that dumb song about chicken fries; he had to speak up to be heard. “God, yes.”

Gabby frowned. “Right,” she said, looking a little taken aback. “That’s what I thought. Because obviously you would never—”

“Of course not,” Ryan said, shaking his head to try and clear it. This conversation had veered into dangerous territory somehow when he wasn’t paying attention, and he wasn’t thinking fast enough to steer it back to safer ground. “You’re my friend.”

Gabby looked at him then, her expression perfectly, terrifyingly even. “Am I?”

Ryan blinked at her, his vision doubling for the briefest of seconds before she snapped into focus again. Crap, his head really hurt. “Of course,” he said. “What else would you be?”

“I don’t know,” Gabby said, and it looked like she was going to say something else entirely in the moment before she shook her head. “Maybe we should just hang out apart tonight, okay?”

But you don’t know anybody, Ryan didn’t say. He had no idea what was happening here, how this fight had even started. What they were even fighting about. But by now he knew better than to argue. “Okay,” he said, nodding. “Yeah. Whatever you want.”





GABBY


Gabby realized what a moron she was being pretty much as soon as Ryan disappeared into the dining room, leaving her utterly alone in a sea of people she neither knew nor liked. After all, he’d been right: of course there was nothing between them other than friendship. She didn’t think there was any reason for him to sound so completely horrified by the proposition, but it wasn’t like he was wrong. And if occasionally over the last year and a half she’d thought he was maybe, possibly flirting with her—and if she’d maybe, possibly hoped that he was—what the hell did she know? He was probably like that with everybody. And it wasn’t like she had anything to compare it to. The only time she’d ever been flirted with was—never.

She wanted to take off and run all the way home as fast as her unathletic legs could carry her. She wanted to hide under her bed. Still, it felt like she was too deep in it now, like she’d picked this hill to die on and now she had to . . .

Well. Die, probably.

She made herself do a lap of the first floor of the house, trying to convince herself that nobody was looking at her and wondering why on earth she was wandering around by herself like a huge pathetic loser. Eventually she spotted a couple of girls from her global studies class hanging out in the hallway, forced herself to walk over and say hello.

“Hey, Gabby,” said one of them, an Indian girl named Anita with dark eyeliner and a curious expression. “What are you doing here?”

In her head, Gabby knew it was a benign question—a friendly one, even—but she might as well have told Gabby her fly was down. What was she doing here? Still, she forced herself to smile: “I came with Ryan,” she explained, then immediately winced at how high and reedy her voice sounded. God, what was wrong with her? She was like an alien from outer space trying to approximate human behavior.