They got snacks and drinks and rounded up Kristina from the basement; as they were heading back into the living room, Shay pulled Gabby into the darkness of the stairwell. “Hi,” she said, pressing a ChapSticked kiss against Gabby’s mouth.
Gabby grinned. “Hi,” she said, and kissed Shay back, hooking her fingers in Shay’s belt loop and tugging her close. Shay made a quiet sound, cupping Gabby’s face in two warm hands. “You realize there’s a room full of people like, right around the corner.”
“I do, in fact,” Shay said. Her hands were wandering now, slipping up under Gabby’s button-down, her fingertips whisper-light against Gabby’s skin. “I’m trying to distract you. Is it working?”
Gabby swallowed hard. She’d worried things might feel awkward and different after they’d had sex, but instead it was like she just wanted to be around Shay more, if that was possible. “I mean, yes,” she said, pushing herself against Shay’s hip; Shay smiled, pleased. “Do I seem like I need to be distracted?”
She was teasing, expecting to be teased in return, but instead Shay pulled back and considered her for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “You okay out there? You have a look on your face like maybe you feel weird.”
“This is my normal face,” Gabby said, then, gesturing between them: “I mean, this is not my normal face, but that”—she tilted her head toward the living room—“totally normal.”
“Okay,” Shay said, like she thought Gabby was full of garbage but wasn’t going to push her. “If you say so.”
Gabby huffed a breath out, frustrated. She did feel weird, obviously she felt weird, and obviously it was about Ryan being here in her living room with his girlfriend. But it wasn’t because she wanted to be Ryan’s girlfriend, and there was no way to describe what she was feeling to Shay without making it sound like that’s what was going on. That had always been the problem with her friendship with Ryan: she couldn’t explain it properly to anyone, not really. Sometimes it was like she couldn’t even explain it properly to herself. “I get strange about new people at my house,” she said finally. “You know that.”
“You get strange about new people everywhere,” Shay pointed out, but she was smiling like that was a thing she found charming. Gabby felt herself relax.
They kissed another long minute, Gabby letting herself sink into it: Shay’s plush mouth and the lavender smell of her perfume, how soft her body was. Before they headed back into the living room, Gabby grabbed her by the sleeve. “Hey,” she said, pulling her back into the darkness of the hallway. “I’m glad I have you on my team, you know that? For, like, Monopoly, and also life.”
Shay smiled her you’re such a dork, Gabby Hart smile, but she also squeezed Gabby’s hand. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”
They went back out into the living room, plopped down around the coffee table. Kristina was banker, carefully doling out everybody’s colorful cash. “I know you’re all quaking in your boots now that the reigning champ is back,” said Ryan, who had literally never won a game in all the time he’d been coming to Monopoly. “I’ll try to go easy on you, let you reacclimate and all.”
“You do that,” Gabby said, smiling in a way she hoped was convincing. She should have been happy. She was happy. These were all her most important people, weren’t they? Back in one place where they belonged.
Well, she guessed. All her most important people, plus Chelsea.
Gabby tore her paper napkin into shreds on the carpet, glancing around as the game went on. She could only imagine the kind of conversation the two of them would have had on the ride over here: Monopoly? Chelsea must have asked, face crinkling in confusion and contempt. Really? Why were you friends with this person again?
Still, Gabby couldn’t deny that Chelsea didn’t seem like the kind of person who would actually say anything like that. In fact, her niceness was almost aggressive. She was a good question-asker, a person with a lot of stories to tell: about her mom, who’d been her dad’s boss in a medical lab in Stanford, about the wilderness camp she was going to be a counselor at this summer once they got back from the Poconos.
“That sounds incredible,” Gabby’s mom gushed, rounding Go and holding her hand out for her $200, which Kristina delivered with officious solemnity. “What about you, Shay? Do you have summer plans?”
“Just teaching music lessons to try and save up some money for school,” Shay said. “And then also maybe a trip to LA, if we can convince Gabby to do the photo thing.”
Gabby felt a bear trap spring shut deep inside her chest, sinking its ferocious metal teeth in. “What?” her dad asked, at the same time as her mom said, “What photo thing?”
“Oh,” Shay said, whirling to look at Gabby. Then, “Shoot. I’m sorry. I figured you’d at least mentioned it to them.”
Gabby hadn’t, in fact, explicitly to avoid a conversation exactly like this one. “It’s a photo thing at UCLA Mr. Chan told me about,” she explained, giving them the highlights. “I’m not going to go.”
“Really?” Her mom’s brow furrowed. “Why not?”
“Are you sure?” Her dad was frowning. “That sounds perfect for you, Gabby.”
“Oh, you should go!” Chelsea put in from her perch next to Ryan on the sofa, eyes wide and excited. “LA is so beautiful. My dad grew up in Santa Monica; we used to go visit my grandparents every year for Passover.”
“Yeah,” Gabby said brightly, as if the climate of California might be what was deterring her. “I’ve heard it’s great.” She picked up the dice and rolled too forcefully, trying to ignore the roomful of curious glances. She could feel her cheeks burning under their scrutiny. After all, what was she supposed to say? Of course she wanted to do the UCLA thing. Obviously she wanted to go. She’d spent the last two weeks imagining it basically nonstop: the beaches and the palm trees and the endless pink neon. The things she might learn there. The pictures she might take. Even more than actually going, though, Gabby wanted to be the kind of person who could: who could fly across the country solo, confident that she’d be able to handle whatever she found on the other side of it. Who didn’t melt down at the thought of something new.
But she wasn’t.
“Reading Railroad,” she said, eyes on the board in front of her. “I’ll buy.”