Top Ten(37)

“Come here,” Ryan said suddenly. It was the first thing either one of them had said since they got off the bus; he’d been keeping his distance, staring out at the cars whizzing by, but when Gabby glanced over in his direction she found his dark gaze was fixed on hers.

Gabby glared back. “Why?” she demanded.

“Because you’re freezing.”

“I am not.”

Ryan rolled his eyes, shrugging out of his varsity jacket and holding it out to her. “Here,” he said. “Take this.”

Gabby scowled. “We’re not good enough friends for that,” she snapped.

Ryan sighed noisily, coming closer. “I’m sorry,” he said, draping the jacket over a guardrail and reaching for her arm. “Come on, you know I didn’t mean that.”

Gabby jerked her elbow away. “Didn’t you?”

“No!” he said, eyes widening like he was honestly horrified. “Of course not. Of course we’re good enough friends for you to be honest with me about stuff. You’re probably the only friend I have who would be that honest, actually.”

“Clearly not.” Gabby didn’t want to be having this conversation. She wanted to go home and get in bed and never see him again in her life. “Look,” she said, voice shrill and brittle. “Obviously our whole friendship was a sideshow to begin with. It was weird while it lasted, and now it can be over and we can all go back to our regularly scheduled programming. Sound good? Here, we can start right now, even.”

She was about to stalk away, but Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean it’s a sideshow?” he asked.

Gabby scoffed. “Oh, come on. Look at us, Ryan.” She gestured widely. “Do we honestly strike you as people who should logically be hanging out together every weekend?”

“I don’t get it,” Ryan said, sounding oddly wounded. “Why? Because you think I’m such an idiot?”

“Because I—” Was he serious? “No,” she said, annoyed and embarrassed that she had to explain it. “Because you’re the jock fucking mayor of Colson High School and literally no one there would notice if I fell off the face of the earth.”

“I’d notice,” Ryan said immediately.

Well. Gabby opened her mouth and closed it again. She didn’t know what to say to that. She hugged herself and staring out at the highway. She felt like an exposed nerve.

“Gabby,” Ryan said. “Come on.” He looked at her for a second. “Do you honestly think I just can’t get enough of Monopoly? Do you think that’s why I keep showing up to your house every week?”

Gabby hadn’t thought about it, really. She hadn’t wanted to let herself. Even after all these months there was a part of her that felt like if she ever looked too hard at their friendship it would turn out to be a hologram, something she’d made up to distract herself from her own loneliness and fear. “I don’t know,” she finally said.

Ryan laughed at that. “Monopoly is boring as all hell, Gabby. I keep coming over because I like hanging out with you. And I think you keep answering the door because you like hanging out with me, too.” He shrugged. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t actually spend a lot of time thinking if it makes sense for me to logically hang out with somebody or not. I usually just think about if I like them.”

Oh, for god’s sake. “You realize that not thinking about popularity is a luxury you only get if you’re already popular,” Gabby muttered. Still, she felt about two inches tall. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that the world might be a better place if more people looked at it like Ryan did.

“I got defensive, is all,” he said now, sitting down on the guardrail and stretching his long legs out in front of him. “That’s why I said it. It’s complicated with my dad, okay? I mean, clearly it’s complicated with my dad. But he’s still my dad.”

“I know,” Gabby said quietly. After a moment she perched on the guardrail beside him, the chill from the metal bleeding right through her jeans. “I’m sorry. I should have minded my business.”

“No,” Ryan said. “That’s the point. I don’t want you to mind your business.”

Gabby looked over at his profile in the darkness, surprised. “You don’t?”

“No,” he said. “Look, I don’t always understand why we’re friends either. I know you think I’m a clown. But I don’t want to go back to our regular programs, or whatever you called it. I don’t want to not be friends with you anymore just because we had a fight.”