Top Ten(78)

Ryan nodded. “That always sounded fun to me, house full of people.”

“Is it just you?”

Ryan nodded. “Just me.”

“Get lonely?”

“Nah,” Ryan said, and grinned. “I’m really popular.”

Gabby rolled her eyes at him, but she was laughing in spite of herself. “Yeah, I bet you are.” She liked him, she realized. She tried to remember the last time she’d warmed so quickly to another person, and couldn’t. It was kind of embarrassing.

Ryan nodded at her book splayed open on the bed, the Tudor thing. “Are you reading that?” he asked.

Of course she was reading it; what did he think it was doing there? Still: “It’s for school,” she lied, as if doing homework on a Saturday night while a party raged one floor below her was somehow less dorky than reading because she wanted to. She blew out a breath, then, annoyed at herself, amended: “It’s not, actually.”

Ryan shrugged. “Whichever.” He reached over and picked it up, scanning the back for a moment before looking up at her seriously. “I’m sure this will come as a shock to you, Gabby, but I am not a huge pleasure reader.”

Gabby hid a smile. “You’re not, huh?”

“I mean, some things,” he said. “I know how to read. There are some sports books I like. Magazines, sometimes. And, you know, the backs of cereal boxes in the mornings.”

“BuzzFeed lists,” Gabby put in.

“Hey, I love BuzzFeed lists!” Ryan protested, bouncing off the edge of the desk and plopping himself into the seat of the chair she was roosting on; Gabby moved her feet to give him room. “Twenty Times Kim Kardashian Showed Her Butt Crack Getting out of a Limousine. Or like, Seventy-One Things That Will Only Have Great Meaning to You If You Were Born in March of 1996.”

Gabby looked at him with great skepticism. He was sitting close enough that she could smell him; she braced herself for pukey unpleasantness but instead he just smelled kind of warm. “Are you being extra dopey right now so that I’ll forget you barfed in my bathroom?” she asked.

Ryan shook his head. “I think I’m this dopey all the time,” he said, leaning back against the chair cushion. His solid-looking shoulder brushed her knee. “I’m not kidding though; I do really like those lists. I make them in my head sometimes, if I’m bored or whatever.”

“You do, huh? Like what?”

“Top ten things about this party,” he said immediately. “You’d be on that one.”

Gabby threw her head back and laughed, except then she slammed her skull on the wall behind her, and she would have actually died of embarrassment only Ryan was laughing, too.

“Shit,” he said, reaching up with his nontaped hand and rubbing the back of her head, gentle circles. “You’re gonna have a bump.”

“Probably,” Gabby agreed, though she found she didn’t actually care about that, not really. Was this flirting? she wondered. It must be, right? This must be what normal people did when they weren’t hiding in their bedrooms like hobbits. “I’ll live.”

“I hope so.” Ryan grinned.

He was a hockey player, Gabby reminded herself. He probably acted exactly this way with every single girl he encountered; he’d probably acted exactly this way with some other girl tonight. But she couldn’t make herself care about that, either. For the first time in possibly her entire life she wasn’t worried about saying something stupid, about being hopelessly inept and embarrassing. For the first time she wasn’t worried that everything about her was wrong.

“Are those broken?” Gabby asked him, motioning to his taped-up fingers. His hands seemed disproportionately bigger than the rest of him, like a puppy that hadn’t grown into his paws.

“Nah,” Ryan said. “Just jammed.”

“They hurt?”

“Not as much as your head, probably,” he said. Then he smiled. “Anyway, I’m really tough.”

“Oh, right.” Gabby snorted. “Clearly.”

“Clearly,” Ryan echoed. They were quiet for a minute. Gabby could hear the noise of the party from downstairs. She kept expecting him to get up and go back down there, but when she glanced over he was just sitting back in the chair and gazing at her, patient and easy.

“I want to kiss you,” he announced.

“What?” Gabby felt like a trap door had opened up underneath her; her first, gut reaction was to frown. “Why?”

That made him laugh. “Why?” he repeated. “’Cause you’re pretty, and I like you. And I like how your mouth looks.”