Gabby tilted her head a bit, halfway between a nod and a shake. “I think so? Getting there, at least.” She shrugged as they crossed the parking lot, pulling her hands up into her sleeves. “I’m sorry. I feel stupid that I made you pick me up. And, you know.” She gestured vaguely. “About the rest of it.”
The rest of it. Ryan felt a strange, unfamiliar heat creeping up the back of his neck. He’d been waiting for the right time to bring it up, to tell her . . . whatever it was he was going to tell her.
Apparently, that time was never.
“Already forgot about it, remember?” Ryan made himself grin, turned away as he opened the car door. “Anyway, not like I had anyplace else to be.”
“You really don’t want to talk about what happened with Chelsea?” Gabby asked as she settled into the passenger seat. “What did you guys even fight about, huh?”
“It was stupid,” Ryan said, “like I told you. Nothing worth crying over.”
“Seriously?” Gabby frowned. “You’re supposed to be the open book in this friendship, remember? I’m the one who just spilled her guts all over like a garbage person.”
“Yeah.” Ryan shook his head. He’d fucked things up with Chelsea, he knew that. There was no way to recover. It was like she’d dug out some part of him that he’d fully intended to keep buried for the rest of his days, and for what? He looked at Gabby. This was going nowhere, clearly. He was stupid for imagining that it might have. “Well.”
“Well?” Gabby echoed. “Well, what?”
“Gabby,” he said, more sharply than he meant to. “Let it go, okay?”
Gabby looked surprised. “Okay,” she said. “Sorry.” Then, her voice artificially bright, “Ice skating, then?”
And—yeah. Ryan just did not have it in him. “You know,” he said, “I’m kind of tired. I might just go home and crash.”
Gabby glanced down at her hands, face flushing in a way that made him feel sort of like an asshole. “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Yeah, totally. Of course. I should probably let Michelle know I’m back, anyway. She was cranky about not having anything to do this weekend.”
Back at his mom’s house he tried to nap but couldn’t settle; he made himself a sandwich but didn’t really feel like eating. Finally, he did what he always did when he was feeling shitty and wanted to forget about it: he looked for a party.
It was a Sunday in December and slim pickings, but his buddy JP was driving down to Golden’s Bridge to hang out with some of his brother’s friends; Ryan caught a ride in the passenger seat of JP’s Civic, rolling the window down so it was too loud to talk. The whole thing was kind of a dodgier affair than Ryan was used to: a low-slung ranch with a scruffy lawn and dingy curtains over the windows, the sweet reek of pot smoke heavy in the air. In the yard was an ancient hot tub of indeterminate cleanliness, a dog prowling back and forth across the porch.
He probably would have bailed out early under normal circumstances, but tonight the whole thing struck him as kind of fun, exactly what he needed to take his mind off . . . whatever it was he was trying to take his mind off, exactly. See? Ryan thought as he dug another beer out of the fridge, pleased with himself. It was already working.
“Well, hey, Ryan,” said a girl’s voice behind him, surprised and cheerful; somebody nudged at his lower back. “What are you doing here?”
Ryan turned around, a little unsteady: it was Michaela Braddock, wearing tight skinny jeans and a sweater that showed off her excellent cleavage. Her dark hair hung in ringlets down her back. She smiled at him, tilting her head to the side a little the way girls did when they were being flirtatious. Ryan smiled back.
“I am considering getting in that hot tub, Michaela,” he said, although he hadn’t been until right this moment. Gabby was never going to want him, that much was obvious. But plenty of other girls did. It was time to start acting like it. “What about you?”
NUMBER 3
THE MEET CUTE
FRESHMAN YEAR, FALL
GABBY
“Can I put Grandma in your room?” Celia asked late Saturday afternoon, coming into the kitchen with the heavy copper urn in her arms.
“Seriously?” Gabby asked, a jar of peanut butter in one hand and a spoon in the other. “This is the kind of party where you need to hide Grandma? I thought you were having like five friends over.”
Celia shrugged and set the urn down on the counter. “It got a little bigger once people started hearing about it,” she admitted.
Gabby swallowed her mouthful of extra-crunchy. “Mom and Dad are going to kill you.”