“She is,” Ryan said. “You guys would like each other.” Actually he had no idea if that was the case, but clearly Gabby was trying, and it seemed like the right thing to say. “Her family rents a place in the Poconos at the start of every summer, which is cool. I think I’m going to go with them this year.”
“Ugh, summer plans.” They were stopped at a red light, and she banged her skull lightly against her headrest. “Mr. Chan thinks I should do this photo thing.”
Ryan looked over at her. “What kind of photo thing?”
“Like with professionals and stuff. But it’s all the way in California and sounds kind of like a misery, so.”
“But you want to do it?”
“No,” Gabby said as the light turned green; she hesitated for a moment before stepping on the gas, then sighed. “It’s just—well. I mean. Sure, in a perfect world. Yes.” She huffed out a wry, quiet sound then, not quite a laugh. “I haven’t said that out loud to anybody else, you know that? I haven’t even really thought it. But you show up, and five seconds later I’m, like, falling all over myself to—” She broke off. “Anyway,” she said, clearing her throat. “I’m not going to go.”
Ryan’s heart did something strange and complicated inside his chest then, a feeling like both swelling up and cracking at once. He thought he should probably push her, ask what exactly was keeping this world from being perfect, but he was so relieved that she was talking to him at all that he didn’t want to risk ruining it. “I’m glad you told me about it,” he finally said.
It was late afternoon when they got back to his mom’s house; they sat there for a moment with the engine off, Gabby’s hands still on the wheel. “Can I ask you what happened, with your head?” she asked him. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me. But.”
Ryan took a breath. “I sat out the season,” he said, trying as hard as he possibly could not to sound like he blamed her. “I’ll start again in the fall. Coach is supposed to talk to some scouts for me. Hopefully there’s still a spot for me at a school somewhere.”
Gabby nodded. “I know you wanted me to say I was sorry,” she said. “And I am sorry for how it all went down.”
Ryan didn’t really want to talk about this, truthfully. “It was a stupid fight.”
“I don’t actually think it was stupid,” Gabby said. “I was freaked out and worried for you, but I said a lot of garbage-y stuff, and I’m sorry about that. And I’m really sorry we lost our whole friendship over it.”
“We didn’t lose our whole friendship,” he protested.
“Ryan,” Gabby said, and for the barest fraction of a second she looked like she might be about to cry. “We haven’t talked in five months.”
Ryan couldn’t argue with that, he guessed. “We’re talking now,” he pointed out.
Gabby nodded. “Yeah,” she allowed finally. “We’re talking now.”
They sat there for another minute, the air through the open windows springtime cool and his house a shadowy outline against the streaky orange-pink sky. “It was good to see you,” Gabby said, looking down at her hands on the steering wheel. “I owe a thank-you to whoever pulled that fire alarm.”
Ryan nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “definitely.” He felt weirdly nervous all of a sudden, like he’d finally taught himself not to miss her and this afternoon was undoing it. He kind of didn’t want to let her out of his sight. “What are you doing this weekend, huh?” he blurted, before he could think better of it.
Gabby shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “Nothing super special.”
“Monopoly Friday?”
She huffed out a little breath at that, like Yes, I know I’m predictable. Ryan had missed the way she breathed. “Yeah, probably.” She looked over at him then, her face half in shadow. “Why,” she asked, sounding timid and wry at once, “you wanna come?”
Ryan did. He wanted it like all hell, and the wanting was so fierce and sudden that it knocked him back a little. He was homesick, he realized. He was homesick for her. He made himself wait a beat before he answered. “Can I bring Chelsea?”
Gabby blinked at that. “I—sure,” she said, pausing exactly one second too long for it to sound entirely natural. “Of course.”
Ryan nodded anyway. “Great,” he said. “We’ll be there.”
GABBY
“Taste these,” Gabby’s dad said to Shay on Friday night, crunching thoughtfully on the marinated cocktail nuts he was about to slide into the oven, 1,001 Crowd-Pleasing Party Appetizers open on the counter beside him. “They taste boring to me.”
Shay plucked a few off the baking sheet. “Cumin, maybe?” she asked after a moment. “My mom always puts cumin on her microwave popcorn.”
“Cumin!” Gabby’s dad said happily, and Gabby smiled. Her family had never given her any grief about being bi—she’d accidentally blurted out her giant crush on Zendaya in front of her mom and Celia in the car one day the summer before ninth grade, after which her parents had sat her down over bowls of ice cream and told her, in a nice but exceedingly embarrassing way, that they only ever wanted her to be happy. Still, she’d been kind of nervous to introduce an actual, nontheoretical girlfriend to her parents, but it turned out that her dad and Shay had a weird amount in common: cooking and disaster movies and a dorky, fanatical love of the US Women’s Soccer team. Normally it made Gabby really happy; tonight, she was too anxious to care.
“We’ll finish these,” she said now, jumping at the chance for a project, something to do with her nervous hands. She wasn’t entirely sure what had possessed her to invite Ryan over tonight. It felt like too much too soon, like they’d barely even made up yet. “Cumin, yeah?”
She and Shay were just sliding the trays into the oven when the doorbell rang. “Ryan!” Gabby’s dad cried when he answered it, looking so delighted that Gabby almost felt embarrassed for him. If he’d had a tail he probably would have wagged it. Gabby rolled her eyes.
“Hey, Mr. Hart,” Ryan said, handing over his customary bag of sour-cream-and-onion Ruffles. “This is my girlfriend, Chelsea.”
Chelsea smiled at her dad, then past him at Gabby. “Thanks for inviting me,” she said.
Gabby smiled back. She’d hung out with Chelsea a couple of times before she and Ryan had their fight, although honestly Gabby hadn’t expected her to last this long and hadn’t really paid a ton of attention. She couldn’t repress the urge to stare a little bit now. It was odd: she’d always thought that if Ryan ever got a serious girlfriend it would be someone . . . prettier. Not that Chelsea wasn’t pretty—she was, with dark curly hair and friendly brown eyes. But she was normal pretty, not Instagram-model pretty. It kind of weirded Gabby out. Having Chelsea here in the first place weirded her out, honestly; the truth was, Gabby had been instantly irritated when Ryan had asked to bring her tonight, even though she knew that made her a giant bitch. She just felt so invaded.
“Hey,” Ryan said, looking at her curiously.
“Hey,” Gabby said, and turned toward the kitchen door.