Top Ten(49)

“I don’t want to leave it,” he said. “I want you to talk to me.”

Gabby sighed noisily. She hated this, when she knew she was being a brat but couldn’t stop. They were too newly made up to get away with it; she didn’t have the credit, but she also couldn’t totally help herself. “Fine,” she said. “First of all, I don’t want you to think I don’t like Chelsea. I think Chelsea is great, truly.”

Ryan looked extremely skeptical. “But?”

“But,” Gabby said, shooting him an irritated glare, “I just don’t see why I have to, like, log the miles to get to know this person when you’re obviously going to be tired of her in five minutes just like you always are.”

Ryan leaned back against the counter with his arms crossed, looked at her mildly. “First of all,” he pointed out, “that’s kind of a super-shitty thing to say. Second of all, I’m not bored of her. We’ve been dating almost six months. I don’t intend to get bored of her, okay?”

Something about his expression, the smugness of it, riled her. “Okay,” Gabby said. “This is the big one? What are you guys, in love?”

Ryan raised his eyebrows.

“Really?” That took Gabby by surprise. Obviously she and Ryan hadn’t exactly been talking lately, but the idea that he’d had time to fall in love with somebody since the last time they’d had a conversation was . . . startling.

Oh, she did not like it at all.

She got that she was being a little bit of a hypocrite here, obviously—after all, she and Shay had said it, hadn’t they? But this felt different. This was Ryan. In love with someone. Something about it made her want to lift bags of sand until her muscles got big and she could scale the sides of houses like a monkey. Something about it made her want to stockpile food and hide until next year. She realized all at once that she’d thought being friends again would automatically mean she’d go back to being his unequivocal favorite person. It was unsettling to think that maybe she’d lost her seat. “Okay. I take it back, then. I’m sorry.”

Ryan shook his head. “That’s not—look, I don’t want to start this by—” He sighed. “You don’t have to be jealous, Gabs.”

Gabby almost decked him. “I don’t have to be what?” The nerve on him, seriously, to come into her house after all this time and—

“Stop.” Ryan put his hands up, palms out. “Whatever offensive thing you think I’m saying right now, that’s not what I’m saying. I just mean—you’re still my best friend. Even though we didn’t talk for five months. You were still my best friend that whole time.”

“I—” Gabby broke off, knocked back by a rush of emotion with the same intensity as panic that wasn’t panic, not exactly. She felt, horribly, like she might be about to cry. “That makes no sense,” she told him finally, not quite managing to look him in his face.

“Maybe not,” Ryan admitted. “But, like . . . when has anything about our friendship ever made any sense?”

That made her smile; she couldn’t help it. It was relief, she realized, this overwhelming breathless feeling. She was so hugely relieved to have him back. “You were still my best friend too,” she told him. “When we weren’t talking.”

Ryan looked surprised at that, even though he’d said it first. “Really?” he asked. “I was?”

“Yes!” she told him. “Of course you were. Come on.”

“Hey, kitchen people!” Shay called from the living room. “Are you guys fighting? Everybody out here wants to know if you’re fighting.”

Gabby and Ryan made sheepish faces at each other. “No, jerks,” Gabby called back. “We’re not.”

Shay and Chelsea came into the kitchen then, looking mischievous. “Hi,” Shay said, hooking her chin over Gabby’s shoulder. “We want to go out.”

Gabby hesitated. She felt raw and bruised and suddenly exhausted, like she needed to decompress in a dark, quiet room; still, there was something about the tone of Shay’s voice that made Gabby want to give her what she wanted. You don’t have anything to be jealous about, either, she wanted to say.

“Well,” she said instead, “let’s go out.”

Ryan raised his eyebrows but he didn’t argue. “Where?”

“Someplace exciting,” Shay said, then, amending quickly: “Not that, you know, this isn’t exciting. But we want to have an adventure.”

“Colson Pool’s open,” Chelsea offered. “Well, not open, not until Memorial Day. But it’s full. I went and did my lifeguard retrain a couple of days ago.”