Gabby waited for Luann to contradict him, to tell him this was serious—crap, to tell him he couldn’t play hockey anymore—but instead she just got to her feet. “I need to go fill out some forms,” she said. “Will you kids be all right here for a second?”
Gabby nodded. “Sure thing,” she said, and Ryan looked up at her; for the first time, he seemed to notice that she was here. When Luann was gone, they stared at each other for a moment. Gabby had no idea what to say.
“You let them cut my shirt off?” Ryan asked, sounding bewildered, and just like that he was himself again; Gabby exhaled. “Why did they have to cut my shirt off?”
“I don’t know,” she said, taken aback. “I didn’t really ask.” She looked at him for another minute, still hovering near the doorway. “How you feeling?” she asked.
“Like shit,” he said. “Don’t tell my mom.”
Gabby rolled her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me you busted your brain?”
Ryan shook his head, then immediately winced. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
“Oh, really?” Gabby asked, gesturing around them. “Because I gotta tell you, it kind of seems like a big deal.”
“Yeah, because you freaked out and called the National Guard,” he said irritably. “Now they’re gonna have to tell my coach, which means I’m definitely going to get benched this week.”
“Because I—” He was pissed at her, Gabby realized. Abruptly, she wanted to smash his head in herself. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she snapped. “I’m not going to have that argument with you. You scared the shit out of me, do you know that? I thought you were going to die.”
Her voice did a weird, squeaky thing on that last word, the fear hot and sharp and immediate. She hadn’t felt any of her standard-issue panic when it was actually happening, on the phone with the 911 operator or riding in the ambulance; now, though, it was like some kind of impermeable shield had sprung a leak, all of it rushing in at once. When she looked down at her hands they were shaking.
“Okay,” Ryan said, letting out a sigh and leaning back against the pillows. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I should have said something. I was going to mention it at least, but then you were so mad at me all night.”
“I wasn’t mad at you,” Gabby said, coming into the room and sitting down in the chair by the bedside. “I mean, I was, but not because you did anything.”
Ryan looked at her like she was speaking German. “Gabs,” he said. “I have a fucking concussion. You gotta make more sense than that.”
That made her laugh, but then it was like the laugh jangled something loose in her and for a second she felt, horrifyingly, like she might be about to cry. Gabby straightened her spine, swallowed savagely. She was tired. A lot of different things had happened tonight.
“Michelle was giving me a hard time today,” she explained finally, picking at a loose seam on the handle of her purse. “About the idea that you’re, like—” She broke off, waving her hand vaguely. God, she hated talking about this kind of thing. It was so profoundly gross.
But Ryan pressed. “That I’m what?” he asked. “Gabby. That I’m what?”
“That you’re embarrassed of me,” she said. “And that’s why we only ever hang out one-on-one.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Ryan said, suddenly more alert than she’d seen him all night. “We only ever hang out one-on-one because every time I asked you to hang out with other people for like a year you said no. So I stopped asking.”
“I mean, I know that,” Gabby said, though in truth she’d never articulated it to herself in quite those words. She blushed a little at the knowledge that he was, unequivocally, right. “But hearing her say it, I just—I don’t know.” She waved her hand again. “I meant it, though. I don’t want you or anybody else to think I’m like, your weird sidekick. I don’t want it to be like you’re Charlie Brown and I’m Snoopy. Or I’m Calvin and you’re Hobbes.”
“I think Hobbes is the tiger,” Ryan said.
“Whichever!”
“Whichever,” Ryan agreed. He shifted his weight in the bed, like he couldn’t quite get comfortable. “You’re not my weird sidekick,” he said finally. “Like, not even a little. You’re—you’re—” He stopped for a minute, looking at her in a way she’d never seen before. “Gabby,” he said, and his voice was so quiet. “That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about tonight, actually. You’re—” He broke off again.
Gabby thought of kissing Shay on the side porch of Jordan Highsmith’s. She thought of the very first night she and Ryan had met. She thought of the sheer improbability of being here in this hospital room with him, the incredible luckiness of it: “You’re my best friend,” she blurted.
Ryan looked at her for half a second, unreadable. Then he nodded, and it was like he was agreeing to something she hadn’t asked out loud. “Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat a little. “You’re my best friend.” He glanced down at his hands then, shyer than she’d ever seen him. “Sorry I busted up your good time,” he said.
“What, at the party?” Gabby shook her head. “No, you didn’t.”
Ryan smiled ruefully. “I don’t know about that,” he said. Then, off her questioning expression: “I kind of saw you,” he admitted. “With that girl on the porch.”
Gabby felt some kind of trapdoor open inside her chest. “With Shay?”
“Yeah, is that her name?” Ryan nodded. “I wasn’t trying to be a creep, I was just—I was looking for you, and, you know. I found you.”
“Oh,” Gabby said, feeling her face flush. “Yeah.”
“We can talk about that stuff, you know,” Ryan told her.
Gabby huffed. “Oh my god, stop. Don’t be corny.”
“How is that corny? I literally just told you you’re my best friend, you fucking cyborg.”
“Okay, I know, I just—” Gabby broke off. “Okay.”
Ryan made a goofy face. “Okay.”
Gabby fussed with the zipper on her bag for another moment. “There’s one thing you can tell me, I guess.”
“Name it.”
“All right.” She tucked one knee up underneath her, settling in. “Can you help me figure out how to get a girl’s number?”
NUMBER 7
THE DAD THING
SOPHOMORE YEAR, FALL
RYAN
“Can you even name ten, though?” Ryan asked, leaning back in the wobbly Adirondack chair in Gabby’s backyard and crossing his legs at the ankles. “Ten Halloween costumes that don’t have, like, a corresponding sexy version?”
“Sexy Mr. Potato Head,” Gabby said immediately, and Ryan laughed. “Sexy Dr. Kevorkian. Sexy Margaret Thatcher. Sexy Teletubbie. Sexy—”
“So clearly this is something you’ve already given a lot of thought to, then,” Ryan said, reaching for his soda. It was Friday, Monopoly night, fall of their sophomore year; Gabby’s dad had made a flatbread pizza with honey and goat cheese that should have been gross but was in fact actually delicious, like most things Gabby’s dad had made in the year that Ryan had been coming over. Now they were camped out on the back patio, Gabby stretching her oversized sweatshirt down over her knees while the wind rustled the papery brown leaves still clinging to the trees in the yard.
“Obviously.”
“What did you go as last year?” Ryan asked.