To his relief, Chelsea smiled again. “I do recall that,” she said, looking placated; she reached out and squeezed his hand. “Let me just make sure it’s okay with my parents. They might give me a hard time about the weather.”
The snow had mostly stopped, actually, so her parents agreed that she could drive Ryan home as long as she didn’t take any detours. “Straight there and back,” her dad said, eyes on Ryan again as he shut the storm door behind them. “Home by usual time.”
“Definitely,” Chelsea promised. “Usual time.”
Chelsea’s car was always full of garbage, which Ryan found sort of improbably charming—like she was so hyper-efficient in the rest of her life that the overflow all ended up here, in the form of empty Starbucks cups and CVS receipts and her second-favorite pair of sneakers. He barely knew her yet, Ryan understood that intellectually. But he felt like he did.
“So,” Chelsea said as she pulled out of the driveway. “You wanna tell me why you’re being such a huge freak right now, or not so much?”
Ryan huffed out a noisy sigh. “I’m not being a huge freak,” he protested. “Whatever, I’m being a regular-sized freak at most.”
“Okay,” Chelsea said calmly, no argument, then proceeded to be absolutely silent until he broke. He told her everything—just like he’d come here to do, if he was being honest with himself; just like he’d known he would deep in his brain stem from the moment he’d set off from school on foot. “And I’m fucked,” he said finally, working himself back up into a dark, satisfying rage about it. “They’re definitely going to pull me. I’m going to sit on the bench the rest of the fucking season, all because of her.”
When he was done, Chelsea was quiet for another moment, like she was thinking. “Do you think you have a concussion right now?” she asked.
“No,” Ryan said with a bombastic certainty that wasn’t 100 percent genuine. “I don’t.”
Chelsea seemed to take him at his word. “Gabby’s not a sports person,” she pointed out. “I’m not saying that as a knock against her; it’s just true. So there are things she doesn’t get. And from what you’ve said, she has zero tolerance for discomfort of any kind, physical or emotional, so I can see why she would have freaked. Having said that, what she did was super obnoxious and overstepping and doesn’t take into account all the ways that your life is different from hers. And you’re right to be pissed off.”
Ryan wasn’t expecting that. “I am?”
“Yeah,” Chelsea said. “Absolutely. I would be.”
“Oh.” Ryan thought about that for a second. It was strange how having such a smart, rational person repeat his argument back to him—not solve it, just repeat it back—calmed him down almost immediately. Like her giving him permission to be angry meant he didn’t have to clutch the feeling quite so hard. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Chelsea pulled into his driveway; Ryan looked up at the darkened house. His mom had forgotten to leave the porch light on again—she was out on a date with Phil the Dachshund Guy, who she’d been dating for a year now but who still insisted on calling Ryan buddy in a way that was frankly embarrassing for both of them. It was their anniversary, he remembered suddenly. She’d asked him if he’d mind if she missed his game.
“Well,” Chelsea said finally. “Last stop, huh?”
Ryan gazed at her for a moment in the glow of the dashboard. He liked her so, so much. He liked her smile and how scarily good she was at math and most of all the sturdiness of her, like here was a person who knew exactly who she was in the world and how she fit in there. He more than liked her, potentially. He’d never felt like that about somebody he’d hooked up with before.
“You want to come in?” he asked.
They were kissing by the time they made it up the front steps and through the doorway; Ryan had her shirt off by the time they passed through the living room. He led her fast through the hallway like he always did when anybody new was in his house, not wanting to give her too much time to look around and see how shabby it was. He kicked the door shut tight and went to work on her bra.
“I’m gross,” Chelsea warned him as he fumbled at the clasp of it, his mouth on her collarbone and one knee between her thighs. “I’m still all snotty. I didn’t even shower today.”
“You’re not gross,” Ryan promised her. Even if she had been, he definitely wouldn’t have cared. “Jesus Christ, Chelsea, are you ever not gross.”