The night dragged on. Gabby sat on the edge of her couch with her beer, feeling her anxiety creep higher and higher, like the mercury in a cartoon thermometer. It wasn’t logical—Gabby knew that—but her stupid anxiety had never been logical. She wanted to leave. She would have left, six months or two years ago; it was close enough that she could have walked home. She wanted to get in bed and read her damn Tudors book until she felt calm and comfortable in her skin again.
She glanced across the kitchen now, watching Ryan in the middle of a crowd of people she vaguely recognized from school. The whole party seemed to orbit around him, like he had a spotlight on him everywhere he went. Normally it was a thing Gabby liked about him—admired, even—but tonight it was annoying to her in a way it hadn’t been in years. She resented him for not being anxious, she realized. She’d never felt that way before they were dating. It made her feel about two inches tall.
“Hey,” she said finally, slipping her hand into Ryan’s, tipping her mouth up close to his ear. “I’m going to go.”
“Really?” Ryan looked surprised. “Are you not having fun?”
Gabby smiled in a way she hoped was charmingly self-deprecating. “Not really,” she said.
Ryan frowned. “Why not?” he asked—sounding so earnest, like he honestly couldn’t understand why this was an issue for her. As if he thought she might be an entirely different person now that they were together.
“Just had enough,” she said, wincing as it came out. She knew it sounded like she’d had enough of him, which wasn’t true. Was it? “You stay, though.”
“No,” Ryan said. “No, I can take you.”
“Ryan,” Gabby said. She didn’t want to have a panicker in front of a bunch of strangers, and she could feel one creeping up on her: her lips tingling, a knot of tension forming like a tumor at the back of her neck. It felt like the attacks were coming on more frequently lately, sharper and with less warning. It had occurred to her to write down when she had them so that she could see if that was actually true, but the truth was that part of her didn’t really want to know the answer. The whole thing made her feel insane. “Really.”
Ryan looked at her for a moment, worried—but also, Gabby thought, a little annoyed. “Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
Gabby let out a breath she’d been holding for what felt like hours. “Yeah,” she promised. “Absolutely.” She slipped out the door and headed across the lawn toward the sidewalk, the summer breeze cool on the back of her neck.
GABBY
Ryan’s mom got married in a restaurant overlooking the Hudson River at the end of July, white tablecloths and baby’s breath and a DJ playing Frank Sinatra songs; Ryan twirled Gabby around to “Summer Wind” while his great-aunt Dolly cooed at them from her wheelchair. “They look really happy,” Gabby said, nodding over Ryan’s shoulder at Luann and Phil, who were sitting at a table with their arms linked, feeding forkfuls of turkey tetrazzini to one another.
“I guess,” Ryan said, rolling his eyes. “I’m just surprised he didn’t bring the dogs.”
Gabby came out of a stall in the ladies’ room a little while later and ran into Luann reapplying her lipstick in the mirror above the sink, mouth puckered; right away Luann hugged Gabby tight. “You are like a daughter to me, you know that?” she asked, sounding slightly maudlin. She’d had a lot of champagne, Gabby thought. “I’m so glad you and Ryan have finally found each other for real.”
Gabby didn’t know what that meant, exactly, but something about it made her uncomfortable. Hadn’t it been real when they were just friends? “I’m glad too,” she finally said. “Congratulations again, Luann, really.”
She found Ryan out on the back deck of the restaurant overlooking the water, his tie loosened and the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up in a way Gabby had to admit she really appreciated. “I think your mom is planning what to name our children,” she reported, looking south at the outline of the bridge in the distance. The sun was just starting to set.
“Oh, Jesus. Sorry.” Ryan made a face. “She’s nuts. I guess I should be glad she’s thinking about grandchildren, though, and not, like, trying to give me a little brother with—with—” He broke off, shaking his head. “What’s his face.”
Gabby felt her eyes narrow. “Phil?”
“Yeah.”
She looked at him more closely then, leaning against the wooden railing; she could smell the brackish water from the river down below. “Ryan . . .”
“What?” he asked irritably.
“Are you okay?”
“What, because I—?” He shook his head. “I had a brain fart, Gabby. It happens.”
“No, I know.” It happened, sure. But something about it was bothering her, suddenly. The headaches he’d been getting. How crabby he sometimes seemed. “Ryan,” she said again. “Listen to me. Do you think maybe you should go back to the doctor about this?”
“What?” Ryan looked at her like she was ridiculous. “Why?”
“Because you’re eighteen years old and you’ve had three concussions and you just forgot your new stepdad’s name.”
“Don’t do that,” Ryan said immediately, standing up straighter. “First of all, I forgot his name for one second because I always call him Dachshund Guy. Second of all—”
“It’s getting worse, right?” Gabby asked, though she already knew it, the certainty like a sickness deep inside her gut. Right away she thought of a bunch of different times this summer she hadn’t let herself articulate it, the memories flooding in like a tidal wave: The night they’d gotten to the movie theater and realized he’d bought tickets to the wrong show on the website. The time he’d gotten cut off in traffic on the parkway on the way back and completely lost his mind, yelling and swearing even though he was normally the most laid-back driver Gabby knew. Normal stuff, she’d told herself, dumb stuff. But taken together, she couldn’t act like they didn’t start to add up. “Your head is getting worse. And in a month you’re going to be showing up for practice in Minnesota with guys who are three times your size and—”
“Thanks a lot,” Ryan said.
“Really?” Gabby asked. “That’s the part of what I’m saying that you’re choosing to hear?”
“Gabby, I can’t have this argument with you, I mean it. Not again. Not now.”
“What does that mean, not now?”
“It means it’s my mom’s fucking wedding and I would love if you could act like my girlfriend and not the police.”
“I—” Gabby shook her head. “Wow.”
“I’m sorry,” Ryan said immediately, taking her hands and lacing their fingers together. “I just—I really, really don’t—” He sighed loudly, looking out at the water for a moment. “Look, let’s go back inside, okay? You know at some point this guy is going to play ‘New York, New York’ and all my mom’s old-lady friends are going to want to do a kick line. You don’t want to miss that, do you?”