Top Ten(96)

There was Ryan on the other side of it, tall and summer tan and so gut-punchingly familiar Gabby almost couldn’t breathe.

“Um,” she said, suddenly acutely aware that she looked like a crazy person. Which, she supposed, probably fit. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Ryan said, tilting his head to the side and apparently deciding not to say anything about her invalid cosplay. “You wanna go bowling with me?”

Gabby huffed out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Sure,” she heard herself tell him, turning her face up into the afternoon sunlight. “Let’s go.”





RYAN


Langham Lanes had three different little-kid birthday parties happening, so instead of waiting around to bowl, they got sodas and a bag of buttered popcorn from the concession stand and sat on the warm hood of Ryan’s car with their ankles crossed, ice rattling inside their waxy paper cups. “I’ve barely been outside in weeks,” Gabby confessed, holding one hand up and shielding her eyes from the glare in the parking lot. “I’m like a naked mole rat.”

“I don’t know,” Ryan said automatically. “You seem okay to me.” But when he turned his head to look at her, letting himself consider her full-on for the first time since she’d opened her front door, it occurred to him that he actually wasn’t so sure. Her cheekbones were more pronounced than usual; there were bluish circles under her eyes. When he glanced down at her hands, her nails were bitten down so far he winced. She was beautiful—she was Gabby, of course she was beautiful. But she also didn’t totally look like herself. “Are you?” he asked cautiously. “Okay?”

“Yeah.” Gabby started to nod, then stopped halfway through the gesture and shrugged instead. “No,” she said, sounding really and truly irritated about it. “Probably not. I don’t know.”

Ryan nodded, feeling like somebody had reached into his chest and squeezed. “You wanna tell me about it?” he asked.

Gabby shrugged again. “I will,” she said, picking at the lid of her soda cup. “But. You talk first.”

Ryan could do that for her, he thought. So he did: about his mom’s continued mission to clear their house of every speck of clutter; about Phil’s stupid dachshunds, one of whom had gotten loose the day before and run up and down the street for half an hour with a pair of Ryan’s boxers in its mouth. Finally he took a deep breath. “I’m not going to Minnesota,” he said.

Gabby’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?” she asked—more animated that he’d seen her all day, like for a moment she’d forgotten whatever was bothering her. Like she was Gabby again. “Why?”

Ryan made a face, a little irritated. “You know why,” he said. “You were the one—” He broke off.

“No no no, of course I know why,” Gabby agreed, nodding. “But I just—why?”

Ryan sighed, pulling his feet up onto the hood of the car and leaning all the way back against the windshield. “Because I don’t want to be too brain damaged to remember my own name by the time I’m twenty-two,” he told her. “Because I’m good at this or whatever, but you were right that it’s not the only thing I’m good at. And because eventually you have to stop loving shit that doesn’t love you back.”

“I love you back,” Gabby blurted immediately, turning to look at him. The sun glinted off the gold in her hair. “I just, before we talk about anything else—you know that, right? That I love you back?”

Ryan gazed back at her for a moment. “Yeah,” he said slowly. As it came out of his mouth he realized that it was true. “I know that.”

“Good.” Gabby exhaled then, shoulders dropping. Both of them were quiet. “So what happens instead?” she asked.

“Coach Harkin knows a guy in admissions at Purchase,” Ryan explained, looking down at his hands and feeling oddly shy about it. “Tuition’s not bad, especially if I live at home the first year. I’m gonna do that instead, watch my brain a little. See if I can transfer down the road.” He glanced up at her again, made a face. “Do you think that’s a bad idea?”

“Are you kidding me?” Now she was smiling. “I think it’s amazing. I think it’s such a good idea. But I just never thought you would—wow, Ryan. I think that is so, so good.”

Ryan let out a breath he’d been holding since he decided. It was a good plan, he knew that. But hearing her say it out loud didn’t hurt. He trusted her opinion more than anybody else’s; he always had. “Really?”