Gabby hesitated. She wanted to push him. She would have pushed him—she had pushed him on stuff like this, in the past—but something about the look on his face, something about his act like my girlfriend made her feel like it wasn’t a good idea. And that was wrong, Gabby thought. That wasn’t how it was supposed to work. They were supposed to be closer than ever now, weren’t they? Instead it was just this weird, sick anxiety all the time, like something bad was perpetually about to happen. Like she was going to lose him either way.
“Okay,” she said, and banged her head against his, just lightly. “Let’s go inside.”
It was time for cake anyway, a dense slab of chocolate and buttercream. It tasted like sand in her mouth.
GABBY
Gabby’s parents were sitting on the couch watching a movie about a giant tsunami when she came in that night, holding her pinching shoes by their skinny heels. They looked utterly relaxed, her dad leaning slightly forward—he was bonkers for disaster movies—while her mom paged idly through a design magazine, stretched out with her ankles crossed in his lap. They looked like they belonged together. They looked like they fit.
“How was the wedding?” Gabby’s mom called, motioning for Gabby to come into the living room; Gabby would have, except that all of a sudden she felt that awful tightness in her throat that suggested she might be about to burst into tears.
“Good!” she called over her shoulder, making a beeline for the staircase. God, what was wrong with her?
She had wriggled out of her dress and into her pajamas by the time her mom’s knock sounded on the other side of her bedroom door. “You want to try that again, maybe?” her mom asked softly, easing it open.
“Not really,” Gabby said, which was the truth, but then before she could stop herself she was sitting down hard on the bed and it was all coming out: his distance and his crankiness and their argument at the wedding, how worried she was about his brain.
“I mean, we fought before we were together, too, obviously,” she finished, feeling oddly embarrassed: she never unloaded on her mom this way. It made her feel exposed and incapable of handling herself. It made her feel like one of her sisters. “But we didn’t, like . . . bicker.”
Gabby’s mom nodded, sitting down beside her on the mattress. “That sounds hard.”
“It is hard,” Gabby blurted, before she could stop herself. “I miss him. Which is idiotic, because we’re—” She broke off. “Well, theoretically we’re closer than ever, right? We’re dating.”
Her mom considered that. “Theoretically, I guess,” she said after a moment. “Although I don’t think dating relationships are always better or closer than friendships, do you?”
Gabby shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, starting to feel a little bit sorry she’d said anything to begin with. “I guess not.”
“And it sounds like what you’re saying is that you feel less close to him now that you guys are romantic.”
“Oh god!” Gabby flung herself backward on the bed, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Is that what I’m saying? That can’t be what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying, isn’t it.”
“It sounds a little like that’s what you’re saying, yeah.” Her mom peeled Gabby’s hands off her face, linked their fingers together. “And if it’s true, maybe you ought to ask yourself why that is.”
“What are you guys talking about?” That was Kristina in the doorway in a pair of ratty boxers and one of Gabby’s T-shirts, eyes big and curious behind her glasses. “How was the wedding?”
“I’m having a conversation with Gabby right now,” her mom said, but Gabby shook her head.
“It’s fine,” she said to Kristina. “You can come in.”
Kristina bounded up onto the bed between them, wriggling like a puppy angling to get petted. Gabby’s mom obliged, running her fingers through Kristina’s tangled hair. “I think the question you need to ask yourself, sweetheart,” she continued, looking at Gabby over Kristina’s shoulder, “is what do you want?”
That was easy, Gabby thought. She wanted Ryan.
She just wasn’t entirely sure what that meant.
RYAN
“Okay, so I just texted Remy,” Ryan said the following weekend, yanking his T-shirt over his head and tossing it in the general vicinity of his hamper. “I’m gonna jump in the shower, but when he texts back with his train time will you just say got it and we’ll get him on the way to the party?”
Gabby nodded. She was lying on his bed in a way that somehow communicated she was intending on staying there for the foreseeable future, possibly all night long. Sure enough, she reached out her hand for Ryan’s, pulling him onto the mattress alongside her: “What if,” she asked, in her best let’s-make-a-deal voice, “instead of going to the hockey party, we didn’t go to the hockey party and we just stayed here and made out instead?”
“Tempting,” Ryan said, leaning over and pressing his mouth against hers. It was tempting, too, although to be honest it was also a little bit annoying. He’d been looking forward to this party all summer, a reunion with a bunch of his old teammates who were back from college; he knew Gabby probably didn’t want to go, but having her confirm it out loud sort of irritated him. “But I can’t.” He straightened up again, wriggled out of his cargo shorts. “Even if I didn’t want to go, I’m Remy’s ride.”
“Nice boxers,” Gabby noted, propping herself up on one elbow and nodding at the robot print. Then, “I don’t even know who Remy Dolan is.”
“Yes, you do,” Ryan explained, and this time he was more than a little annoyed. Sometimes it was like she forgot who his friends were on purpose. “You met him a bunch of times; he was my Big Brother on the team my freshman year. I hardly ever talked to him outside of hockey, though. Anyway, he got like two DUIs in Binghamton, so now he doesn’t have a license anymore.”
“Charming,” Gabby muttered, flopping moodily onto her back and staring at the ceiling. “Why don’t you just go without me? You can take my car if yours is still making that noise.”
Ryan frowned. “I’m not using you to drive me places. I want you to come.”
“Why?” Gabby sounded genuinely baffled. “You used to do stuff like this without me all the time.”
You didn’t used to be my girlfriend, Ryan wanted to say, but thought better of it. It wasn’t that being his girlfriend meant she owed him anything, but it did mean that he wanted to show up places with her occasionally. It meant his buddies noticed that she never came out. “We stayed in last night,” he reminded her. “And the night before that, actually.”
“I’m not saying you have to stay in,” Gabby argued, sitting up on the mattress. “I’m saying you should go. But it’s going to be a bunch of dudes I don’t know, you’re probably going to leave me alone to talk to people’s boring girlfriends who are strangers, you’ll be shitfaced anyway—”
“Who says I’m going to be shitfaced?”
“I feel anxious about it, Ryan!” She shrugged, a quick aggressive jerk of her shoulders. “I don’t want to go.”
What was he supposed to say to that, seriously? Like, in all honesty, how was he supposed to argue? “Okay,” he told her finally, shrugging back at her, holding his hands up. “Don’t go, then.”