“Yeah,” Gabby said, blushing a little bit without being sure entirely why. “Of course.”
Still, it didn’t take long to become clear that Mr. McCullough was emphatically a Sports Dad: clapping loudly and enthusiastically as long as Colson had control of the puck, hooting with derision at the ref whenever he made a call in favor of the other team. Twice, the Saint Augustine’s couple shot him dirty looks. Gabby had never played a sport in her life other than peewee bowling, but she could not, under any circumstances, imagine her parents caring if she got any strikes or not. Ryan’s dad seemed to care about this hockey game a lot. “His hustle is fucking miserable,” he said to Ryan’s mom at one point, as Ryan skated backward and, Gabby thought, pretty freaking quickly down the rink. “Does his coach talk to him about that? Somebody should be talking to him about that.”
Gabby felt the back of her neck prickle. Not that she was any kind of hockey expert, but Ryan’s hustle looked fine to her. “He got a goal,” she heard herself say. “Before you got here.”
Mr. McCullough raised his eyebrows, like he was just now noticing her. “Are you his girlfriend?” he asked.
Gabby shook her head, irritation barely edging out embarrassment. “We’re just friends,” she said, though Luann had literally just told him that.
“Oh! Right,” Ryan’s dad said. “Sorry.” He nodded at Luann. “My family will be the first to tell you, I’m not always such a great listener.” He grinned again then, self-deprecating. He had Ryan’s smile, wide and easy and a little bit sheepish; just for a moment, Gabby could understand why Ryan wanted his approval so badly.
Colson lost in the end, the other team scoring on their goalie at the last second and a loud buzzer echoing across the rink. Mr. McCullough swore loudly enough that Gabby flinched. Luann put a hand on her back as they edged out of the rink, the crowd suddenly making Gabby a little nervous; they waited for Ryan outside in the Saint Augustine’s lobby, Gabby crossing her arms against the stinging autumn wind every time the front doors opened.
“There he is,” Mr. McCullough said when Ryan finally turned up, putting an arm around his shoulders and squeezing. “What happened to you out there, huh? Your ass was dragging all over the ice.”
He made a freaking goal! Gabby wanted to say again, but thought better of it. Ryan only shrugged.
“Ah, it’s fine,” Mr. McCullough said. “I’m gonna take you to dinner anyway.” He looked at Luann. “You go ahead. I’ll drive him back down tonight, all right?”
“Are you sure?” Luann asked, looking skeptical.
“Jesus, Luann, can I have some time with my son?” Mr. McCullough snapped. “Is that okay with you?”
“You know what, Mike, sure.” Luann held her hands up. “Do what you want.”
“I’ll ride back with you,” Gabby offered, but Ryan shook his head.
“Nah, don’t do that,” he said. “Come to dinner.”
Gabby hesitated. She kind of wanted to go home, honestly: she was tired and peopled-out, and Ryan’s dad’s swings between charm and testiness made her uneasy. She got the distinct impression that the guy didn’t like her, which was unsettling. Parents always liked her.
Still, it was Ryan, and he was asking; Gabby nodded in spite of herself. “Okay,” she said. “Sure.”
RYAN
They ate at a pizza place in a strip mall, fake Tiffany lamps with fruit bowl patterns hanging over all the tables and an ancient Ms. Pac-Man beeping away in the corner. Ryan and Gabby both ordered Cokes, lemon wedges hooked on the sides of the big red plastic cups. Ryan’s dad ordered a beer. “So did Ryan tell you hockey chops run in the family?” he asked Gabby as they slid huge, floppy slices of sausage-and-pepperoni onto their plates.
Gabby nodded. “He did,” she said brightly, in the cheery, artificial voice she used with people she either didn’t know or didn’t like. “Remind me what team you played for?”
“Adirondack Thunder,” Ryan’s dad said, grinning like he always did when his old team came up. “Not exactly the Rangers, I gotta tell you, but we did all right.”
Gabby smiled. She was putting on a good show, but Ryan could tell she was uncomfortable by the way she was shredding her straw paper while she listened, how she was only picking at her food. He couldn’t tell if it was just her usual run-of-the-mill weirdness about being in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar person or if it was something else, something more specific to this particular situation. Sometimes when Ryan hung out at Gabby’s house he could forget that he wasn’t one of them, the Harts with their 1,001 Crowd-Pleasing Party Appetizers and Friends of the Colson Public Library tote bags. Now, though, as Ryan watched Gabby watch his dad dig for a piece of pepperoni in his molar with a toothpick, the differences between their families were thrown into sharp relief. He felt enormously protective all of a sudden, though truthfully he wasn’t sure of whom.