“Hi, Gabby,” Ryan said cheerfully. He had very friendly eyes.
Gabby huffed a breath out, all ambivalence: she wanted to be mad, but there was something about him she found weirdly charming, like he was a scruffy but well-meaning dog in a Disney cartoon. He just looked so pathetic. Also, he was definitely the best-looking boy who had ever been on the second floor of her house, Celia’s ex-boyfriend Greg included. “I have gum,” she offered finally. “You want gum?”
Ryan’s eyes lit up like she’d offered him a brand-new sports car; he nodded, hoisting himself off the side of the tub with some effort and following her down the hallway to her room. He stood politely in the doorway while she fished some Trident out of the pen cup on her desk and handed it over; as he unwrapped it she saw him looking longingly at her Nalgene, and she sighed. “You want water, too?”
“Um, if you don’t mind? That’d be great.”
“Uh-huh.” He was still hovering mostly in the doorway. “It’s okay,” Gabby allowed, holding the bright plastic water bottle out to him. “You can come in.”
Ryan did. She handed him the water and he took a giant gulp without bothering to wipe the lip of the bottle off with his sleeve, like she would have. “Thanks,” he said, setting it back down on her desk.
Gabby nodded. “No problem.”
Ryan smiled. She was expecting him to go but instead he looked around her room for a moment; it made her squirm a little bit, imagining what conclusions he might possibly be able to draw. She’d redecorated that summer as a nod to being in high school now; she’d picked pale gray walls and a big armchair that had come from Grandma Hart’s attic, which she and her mom had reupholstered in a deep velvety blue with a staple gun and a whole lot of swearing. She had a bunch of Annie Leibovitz photos tacked up on the wall above the dresser. She’d never had anyone this cute, boy or girl, in here before.
Ryan’s gaze traveled around for another moment before finally landing squarely on Gabby herself. “So how come you’re up here and not downstairs at the party?” he asked.
Gabby winced. It was a logical question, of course, but she’d hoped he was too distracted by his own gastric drama to think to ask it. She shifted her weight for a moment, trying to come up with a lie that seemed probable. Finally she settled for the truth. “I hate parties.”
That seemed to surprise him: he opened his mouth and then closed it again, like he had honestly never considered that such a thing was possible. “Really?” he asked.
“Really,” Gabby said.
“I love parties,” Ryan told her.
“That isn’t really shocking,” Gabby said.
Ryan nodded like, fair point. For a second she was pretty sure he was going to pull a Celia and explain to her all the reasons why she was wrong to hate parties: that maybe she just hadn’t been to the right parties, that maybe she just needed to try a little harder. She was preemptively getting ready to tell him to get the hell out of her bedroom, but instead he just leaned against the edge of her desk, right next to her grandma’s urn, and said, “So what do you like?”
Gabby wasn’t expecting that. “What do I like?”
“Yeah,” Ryan said, like it was an obvious question. “As opposed to parties, which you don’t.”
“Um,” Gabby said, perching on the arm of the blue chair. “Lots of things, I guess. Usual stuff, movies and whatever. Hanging out with my sisters. And I like to take photos, sort of.”
“Yeah?” Ryan asked, sounding interested. “What kind of photos?”
“All kinds,” Gabby told him. “Mostly portraits, but some still-life type stuff. I have this Instagram—” She broke off all of a sudden, feeling weirdly vulnerable. “Whatever, it’s dumb.” She shrugged. He was easy to talk to, maybe, but there were limits. “I mean, I’m also super good at Monopoly, so.”
That made Ryan smile, but not in a mean way. “Monopoly, huh?”
“You’re laughing,” Gabby said, “but I’m amazing at Monopoly. My family plays every Friday, which I get is probably super embarrassing, but. I dominate.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I do.” Gabby tilted her head to the side. “You should come and play sometime, you’ll see.”
Right away she felt herself blush—where had that come from?—but Ryan just nodded. “Maybe I will,” he said. He crossed his ankles, like he was anticipating being here awhile. “Are there a lot of you?” he asked. “In your family, I mean?”
“Five,” Gabby told him. “Two sisters. I’m in the middle.”