Gabby didn’t know how to tell her that absolutely nothing about this night had been funnest; six months ago, she wouldn’t have needed to say it at all. She thought longingly of last summer, of all the slow, hot nights they’d spent watching dumb movies on Netflix and cooking complicated dinners at Shay’s house. She’d always thought Shay had liked that stuff, that she’d been having just as much fun as Gabby had. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure. “I don’t have an ID,” she finally tried.
“You don’t need one. Adria!” Shay called. “You ready?”
They stood in line for close to an hour in the bitter cold, Gabby stamping her feet and tucking her gloveless hands in her armpits to warm them. “It’s not usually this long,” Shay said, with the confidence of somebody who came here a lot. Gabby nodded silently, picturing it even though she didn’t want to—the girls Shay probably danced with, how much fun she probably had. She had a whole new life here, Gabby realized for what felt like the millionth time since she’d gotten into the city that afternoon. It hurt exactly the same every time she thought it.
Inside the club was dark and hot and crowded, music so loud Gabby could feel it in her teeth. “Are you okay?” Shay yelled over the insistent thump of a Destiny’s Child remix. Gabby wasn’t, but there was definitely no way to communicate that at this particular moment, so she just nodded, and the grin Shay shot her in return was almost worth the hassle of this whole stupid night. “Come on,” Shay called, taking her by the hand and pulling her through the crowd, expert. “Let’s dance.”
That part was better. Gabby kind of liked dancing, improbably; if she focused on Shay’s body, on the movement of her own hips, she could almost block the rest of the world out. Maybe she could do this, she thought—just give in to the sensory overload of it, the noise and the heat and the strangers. Maybe she wasn’t hopeless after all. She held tight to Shay’s hands, twirling around to what she thought was the Spice Girls; she was just starting to relax when a girl with the most perfect waterfall of blond hair Gabby had ever seen scooted her tall, willowy self right in between them.
“Wait,” Gabby tried to say, but her voice didn’t carry; in what felt like half a second, she’d been pulled away by the current of the crowd. Shay glanced back at her over the blond girl’s shoulder, holding her hands up with an exaggerated grimace, mouthing, Sorry! Gabby was not not not going to cry.
Instead she edged her way through the crowd until she found a low leather stool nobody was sitting on, plopping down and trying to look like she belonged. It was exactly like every party she’d never wanted to go to with Ryan, only a hundred thousand times worse.
Gabby dug her phone out of her jeans pocket, trying to look busy. She checked Instagram—a couple dozen new followers, a few hundred likes on the picture she’d taken of a water tower that afternoon. At least strangers on the internet thought she was okay. She scrolled through her texts until she got to Ryan, thumb hovering above his name but not clicking. He was with Chelsea; the last thing he probably wanted or needed was her texting to complain. It was selfish to even be considering it.
You asleep? she keyed in, hitting send before she could talk herself out of it properly. If he was busy, she reasoned, he could always just not reply.
To her surprise, the thought bubble appeared not ten seconds later. Nope, he said. How’s it going?
Not super, she texted back. Admitting it felt like a dam breaking. Gonna get an early train back, I think. How’s your night?
Ryan texted back a row of skull emojis.
Huh. Bad?
Pretty bad.
What happened?
Long story. Still in town. Can be there in twenty minutes if you wanna bail?
Gabby glanced around the club, the crush of limbs and hair and sparkly outfits. The lights were strobing and swirling in a way that made it hard to focus; the thumping bass blaring from the DJ booth made it impossible to think. And out in the middle of it all was beautiful Shay, her head thrown back laughing, 100,000 percent exactly where she wanted to be.
It felt like Gabby’s heart had vacated her body. It felt like someone had put a stone in its place.
Yeah, she keyed in, come pick me up.
RYAN
Gabby was standing on the corner like the Little fucking Match Girl when Ryan pulled up to the curb twenty minutes later, hands shoved up into her armpits to keep warm. “It’s you,” she said, opening the dinged-up passenger side door of the car.
Ryan grinned ruefully. “It’s me,” he agreed.
“What happened?” she asked, buckling herself in and turning to look at him, her face cast in pinks and yellows from the neon lights outside. “With Chelsea?”