Top Ten(45)

“Yup,” Ryan lied easily, fixing her with his most dazzling smile. Gabby shook her head.

The alley was mostly empty at this time of day, a couple of harried-looking moms with kids rolling balls down the lanes at a glacial pace. It smelled like it always did, like air-conditioning and the concession stand and underneath that like socks. “Food?” Gabby asked.

“I just ate lunch,” Ryan told her. “So, yes, definitely.”

Gabby smiled at that, digging some bills out of her back pocket and getting their usual without asking, which made Ryan a little sad without totally understanding why. It was the same kind of feeling he got when he saw his parents smiling at each other in his baby pictures.

They didn’t say much as they bowled, just a little idle trash talk. Ryan figured it ought to feel awkward, but it didn’t. Gabby kicked his ass, predictably; he bought her a twenty-five-cent bouncy ball from the machine by the exit to say congrats.

“New car, huh?” he asked as they walked out to the parking lot, Gabby hitting a button on her key ring and unlocking a black Nissan sedan. He’d noticed on the way over here, obviously, but hadn’t said anything.

“Well, my mom’s old car,” Gabby explained hastily—thinking, no doubt, about the fact that Ryan would probably be bumming rides off people until he was thirty, with the exception of the rare occasions he could convince his mom to lend him the Dogmobile. “She’s got a new one. I’m only driving it because Celia’s not allowed to have one at school.”

Ryan nodded. “How is everybody?” he asked. “Your family, I mean.”

Gabby smiled at that. “They’re good,” she told him, filling him in on Kristina’s dance recital and her mom’s book and the Parmesan cheese straws her dad and Shay had made for Monopoly last week.

He’d been wondering about that. “So you and Shay still, huh?” he asked, sitting back in the passenger seat and trying to sound casual. “Where’s she going to school in the fall?”

“Columbia.” They headed through Colson Village, past the bank and the bagel place and the fussy little cheese shop. “So not too far.”

“Are you guys going to stay together?”

“Yup,” Gabby said, no hesitation. Ryan told himself there was no reason to feel a tiny bit disappointed about that. “And you and Chelsea still, yeah? She always seemed, like, really nice.”

“She is,” Ryan said. “You guys would like each other.” Actually he had no idea if that was the case, but clearly Gabby was trying, and it seemed like the right thing to say. “Her family rents a place in the Poconos at the start of every summer, which is cool. I think I’m going to go with them this year.”

“Ugh, summer plans.” They were stopped at a red light, and she banged her skull lightly against her headrest. “Mr. Chan thinks I should do this photo thing.”

Ryan looked over at her. “What kind of photo thing?”

“Like with professionals and stuff. But it’s all the way in California and sounds kind of like a misery, so.”

“But you want to do it?”

“No,” Gabby said as the light turned green; she hesitated for a moment before stepping on the gas, then sighed. “It’s just—well. I mean. Sure, in a perfect world. Yes.” She huffed out a wry, quiet sound then, not quite a laugh. “I haven’t said that out loud to anybody else, you know that? I haven’t even really thought it. But you show up, and five seconds later I’m, like, falling all over myself to—” She broke off. “Anyway,” she said, clearing her throat. “I’m not going to go.”

Ryan’s heart did something strange and complicated inside his chest then, a feeling like both swelling up and cracking at once. He thought he should probably push her, ask what exactly was keeping this world from being perfect, but he was so relieved that she was talking to him at all that he didn’t want to risk ruining it. “I’m glad you told me about it,” he finally said.

It was late afternoon when they got back to his mom’s house; they sat there for a moment with the engine off, Gabby’s hands still on the wheel. “Can I ask you what happened, with your head?” she asked him. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me. But.”

Ryan took a breath. “I sat out the season,” he said, trying as hard as he possibly could not to sound like he blamed her. “I’ll start again in the fall. Coach is supposed to talk to some scouts for me. Hopefully there’s still a spot for me at a school somewhere.”

Gabby nodded. “I know you wanted me to say I was sorry,” she said. “And I am sorry for how it all went down.”