Unless he hadn’t actually missed it at all.
He could still tell her, Ryan thought suddenly. He could go find her right now, take her by the hand and lay it all out for her. Maybe she’d think he was crazy. Maybe she’d tell him to get lost. Maybe their friendship really would be over. But he had to try, didn’t he? He had to try.
Once he thought it he couldn’t unthink it, like those Magic Eye books his mom used to do with him when he was little: once you found a picture in the pattern, you couldn’t figure out how all you’d seen before was dots. He made his excuses and extricated himself from Michaela, then headed back inside the house, hoping Gabby hadn’t bailed out entirely and gone home. That would be just like her, he thought, peering with no luck through the crowds in the kitchen and the den. His head was still throbbing, a rhythmic pulse deep in his brain stem. He thought he might have fucked himself up for real today.
She must have left, he thought, when he didn’t find her after another ten minutes of looking. Well then, he’d have to go over to the Harts’. He made his way to the front of the house, waving good-bye to a couple of his buddies before letting himself out; he was halfway across the lawn when he stopped short. Because Gabby hadn’t left at all. She was sitting mostly hidden in the shadows on the screened-in side porch, the sharp column of her spine as familiar as her face every morning.
And she was kissing a girl.
Ryan turned around, feeling himself—Jesus Christ—feeling himself blush like a scandalized grandma. He knew Gabby was bi, obviously, thanks to an extremely awkward top ten celebrity crushes conversation halfway through freshman year. But there was a difference between knowing something existed without ever having seen it in real life, like the Grand Canyon, and having evidence of it right in front of your face. God, he was such a fucking idiot. He’d been so distracted trying to figure out whether or not Gabby had feelings for him that it had never occurred to him to wonder if she might have them for somebody else entirely. But she did. And here was the indisputable, undeniable proof.
They hadn’t seen him, and Ryan wanted to keep it that way. He turned around and wandered toward the back of the house. He really, really was not feeling good; his brain was a pot of the clean-out-the-fridge soup his mom made when she hadn’t been grocery shopping, murky and full of suspicious floating bits.
“Hey, McCullough.” It was his buddy Remy from hockey; his voice sounded far away, though Ryan wasn’t sure exactly why. “You okay over there?”
“Hey, Remy,” Ryan said, trying to sound cheerful.
That was when he leaned over and barfed.
GABBY
Sitting huddled together on the darkened side porch a little while later, Gabby shivered as Shay sucked lightly on her lower lip. It felt like she’d left her body entirely, except for the fact that she was sharply, deliciously aware of every single one of her cells vibrating back and forth, her blood moving underneath her singing skin. She had never in her life done anything like this, made out with a stranger at a party, but it was official: she wanted to do it forever. She wanted to kiss Shay forever. She smelled like vanilla and chamomile. Her mouth was clever and warm.
“I almost didn’t come to this party,” Shay admitted, fussing with a strand of Gabby’s hair, twisting it around her finger and letting it go again. “I was going to meet some friends in the city tonight instead.”
“Really?” Gabby asked. The idea that Shay was the kind of person who popped down to the city with friends for the night gave her a weird little thrill, half fear and half admiration. She wanted to know everything about her, suddenly; she wanted to know everything Shay knew. “Well,” she said. “I’m calling it a win that you did.”
“Uh-huh.” Shay grinned right up against Gabby’s mouth, the curve of it like an open parenthesis. “I’m calling it one, too.”
“Yo, Gabby?” said a deep voice in the darkness, the rickety screen door to the porch swinging open, then: “Whoa. Sorry.”
Gabby pulled back and blinked at a kid in a Colson Cavaliers hoodie who she vaguely recognized as one of Ryan’s hockey buddies, though she wasn’t entirely sure which one. Honestly they all kind of looked like Thor to her. “I—um.” She could feel herself blushing; she tucked her messy hair behind her ears. “Yeah?”
“Sorry,” the kid repeated, holding his hands up in mock-surrender and grinning a twisty, unpleasant grin. “Didn’t realize you were busy.”
Shay huffed a quiet sound out, irritated; Gabby rolled her eyes. “Did you need something?” she asked. She had no idea how this kid even knew who she was.
“I mean, I don’t,” he said, still looking at them in a way Gabby didn’t appreciate. “But your boyfriend’s puking all over himself in the backyard.”
Shay pulled back like someone had slapped her. “You have a—”
“No,” Gabby said immediately. “Honestly, I don’t.” Still, she thought guiltily, it wasn’t like she didn’t know who this guy was talking about. “You mean Ryan?”
Hockey Bro nodded. “He told me to come get you, yeah.”
“Because he’s drunk?” Ugh, Gabby was going to murder him. She turned to Shay. “We’re friends, is all. Seriously. I came here with him.”
“He’s pretty fucked up,” Hockey Bro put in helpfully. Gabby grimaced.
Shay looked unconvinced, but she nodded. “Okay,” she said, wiping her hands on those immaculate white jeans. “You should probably go check on him, then.”
“Okay. I’ll be right back, though.” Gabby blew out a sigh and got to her feet, a little unsteady even though she’d only had two sips of beer. Her lips felt swollen and itchy from kissing; her limbs were heavy and sluggish and warm. “Where is he?”
She found Ryan at the far side of the backyard, slumped against a boxwood hedge that was swallowing him in its branches. “This is not the way to prove to me I’m not your sidekick, dude,” she said, peering down at him in irritation. She smelled, and then saw, the puddle of barf a few feet away. “Ryan,” she said. God, was this what he was like at every party he ever went to, and she just never knew because she wasn’t usually there? “Seriously? Again?”
Ryan didn’t answer for a moment, his eyes mostly closed. Sprawled on the grass like this he looked even bigger and taller than normal, like some kind of fallen giant from a fairy tale. He blinked at her, not quite focusing. Trying again. “It’s you,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s me.” She looked at him more closely, squatting down so they were eye level. Gabby frowned. She’d seen Ryan drunk before. This . . . did not seem like that. His gaze was still oddly unseeing; his face was weirdly, waxily pale.
“Ryan,” she said again. “Hey, dude, listen to me, how much did you drink?”
“I didn’t,” he mumbled.
“Ryan, this is not the time to be a dick—”