That made her smile. Ryan felt the warm, reassuring curve of it against his cheek. Chelsea nudged him backward, walked him over toward the mattress; he sat down on the edge of it, and she climbed right into his lap. His head didn’t hurt anymore. He couldn’t imagine any part of his body ever hurting again in his life.
“You want to?” he asked finally, plucking at the waistband of her sweatpants; they were lying down now, most of his own clothes in a heap on the floor. His room was dark, the only sounds the hiss of the heater and his own ragged breaths.
“Yeah,” Chelsea said, looking at him seriously. “Yeah, I do.”
“Really?” he asked, unable to keep the shock out of his voice. He’d fully expected her to say no. Then, worried for a second she’d misunderstood what he was asking: “I mean. You want to have sex?”
Chelsea laughed at that, loud and cackling. “Yeah, Ryan. I want to have sex.”
“Oh.” Ryan nodded. “Okay. Good. Me too.”
Chelsea laughed again at that and kissed him. Ryan pulled her sweats down her legs. He’d never actually done this before, though he knew he had a reputation at school, and it wasn’t like he’d done anything to dissuade people. He found it was better to let them think what they thought.
Still, and maybe it was his mom’s vestigial Catholicism in him, but he’d always thought it would be sort of special, the first time he did it. Not that this wasn’t special, obviously—not that Chelsea wasn’t special—but if he was being completely honest with himself, he always kind of assumed it would be with—with—
Whatever.
Ryan rubbed his hands up and down Chelsea’s arms, felt the swimming muscles in her shoulders: she’d challenged him to arm wrestling one of the first times they’d hung out. He’d won, but not as quickly as he thought he was going to.
“God,” he said, looking at her in the sliver of light coming in through the window, “you are so pretty.”
“You’re pretty, too,” Chelsea told him. Ryan grinned.
GABBY
“What about this one?” Kristina called the next morning, holding up a lip gloss down at the other end of the aisle.
Gabby squinted. “It’s very purple, certainly.”
“Is that a no?”
“I think it’s nice,” their mom said, tossing an at-home dye kit into their basket. “Go ahead, Stina, throw it in. I’m feeling generous.”
“Big money, big money,” Kristina chanted, like a contestant on Wheel of Fortune. Gabby couldn’t help but smile. They were at the discount beauty supply store on Route 9, trawling the aisles of pressed powder foundation and organic hair masks while a dusting of snow fell outside. A trip to the beauty supply store was a sort of all-purpose emotional marker in the Hart house—not because Gabby’s mom wasn’t a feminist or thought they all needed a vast arsenal of potions to be beautiful, but because she recognized that sometimes if you were feeling happy or sad or like a piece of shit, it helped to buy eleven different nail polishes for ninety-nine cents each and convince yourself, for a little while, that they were the keys to the life that you truly wanted. She’d taken one look at Gabby this morning and demanded they all get in the car.
“Cheer up,” Celia said now, bumping her in the arm as they considered rows of prettily wrapped castile soaps. Celia was home for winter break for exactly eighteen more days, not that Gabby was counting. “It’s not such a huge loss, all things considered.”
Gabby glanced up at her tone, frowning. “What does that mean?”
“I just mean that Ryan’s, like . . .” She waved her hand vaguely. “You know how he is.”
“No, I don’t,” Gabby said flatly. “How is he?”
Celia rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean,” she said, picking up a big purple bottle of body wash and examining the label. “Like, kind of a giant meathead.”
“Fuck you, Celia.” Gabby felt her whole body jump-start. “Just because you’ve taken one women’s studies course at college or whatever doesn’t mean you know anything about him, or about me, or about our friendship. So you can keep your opinions to yourself, thanks.”
“Easy,” Celia said in that voice she got when she thought Gabby was overreacting, looking a little stung. “I’m just trying to make you feel better.”
“You be easy,” Gabby said hotly. She thought of the word of the day app on Ryan’s ancient iPhone. She thought of his head slamming against the ice the night before. She thought of how calmly he’d talked to her when she’d had that panicker the very first time he’d taken her to a party, and suddenly she wasn’t at all confident that she wasn’t about to burst into tears. She felt fiercely defensive of him, even though thirty seconds ago she would have said the same thing Celia had said to anyone who would listen. Worse, probably. “I’m going to wait outside.”