“Yes, Ryan.” Gabby scowled at him. “I am sorry to inform you, you told this giant loser that you liked her mouth, and I was stupid enough to—”
“Gabby,” he interrupted; he wanted her to stop talking with that tone in her voice, like she hated him. “Really?”
“You think I’m making it up?”
“No, of course not, I just—” Ryan tried to stop gaping at her and couldn’t. It felt like their whole entire friendship was reshuffling itself in his head. He thought of how dubious she’d been that very first night he ever came to Monopoly. He thought of how she’d yelled at him the morning he woke up on her floor. “You didn’t tell me?”
“Why should I have?” she snapped. “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me. And it looks like I was right.”
“Gabby, come on.” Ryan reached for her arm, suddenly acutely aware he was still only wearing his towel; it put him at a disadvantage, and Gabby scooted out of his reach. “I was unequivocally a dick at the beginning of freshman year, you know that. I don’t need to remember that party to know I probably acted like an asshole. I didn’t know you were you when I met you; I had no idea I was meeting my best friend. You’re different from everybody else in my life, do you get that?”
Gabby shrugged head. “I was, maybe.”
Ryan felt his eyes narrow. “What does that mean?”
“It means everything has been fucked up since we started dating; haven’t you noticed that? It means I was different from everybody else in your life until we had sex, and now I’m just your latest hookup who you’re going to get tired of in five minutes, and nobody will even blame you, because apparently I’m a giant loser.”
“What?” Ryan stared at her. “Now you’re just being insane.”
“Don’t call me that,” Gabby said immediately, and Ryan held his hands up in surrender.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right.”
But Gabby wasn’t listening. “This was a massive, massive mistake,” she was saying, the pitch of her voice rising; he knew better than to try and touch her now. “We never should have started dating. I never should have let you talk me into—”
“Talk you into?” Ryan felt like she’d punched him. “Is that what this was, us dating? Me pressuring you into something you didn’t even really want to begin with?”
“No!” Gabby shook her head. “That’s not—I don’t mean—”
“You said you wanted to do this, Gabby. And I’m the idiot who took you at your word.”
“I did want to do this!” Gabby insisted. “Of course I wanted to do this. But you don’t think it’s been a little bit of a disaster in practice, really? Can you honestly stand there and tell me that?”
Ryan didn’t know how to answer that. Obviously it hadn’t been perfect. But a disaster—that stung to hear her say, to be honest. That really fucking sucked.
“Well,” Ryan said, mimicking her tone exactly; he knew he sounded nasty, but he didn’t particularly care. “I can stand here and honestly tell you that you shouldn’t come to this party with me tonight, I think that much is pretty obvious. And from the way you’ve been talking it sounds like we should probably quit doing a shit ton of other stuff together, too.”
Gabby was wide-eyed and terrified looking, like the implications of this fight were suddenly becoming real to her. “Ryan—” she started, but he shook his head to stop her talking. He wanted her out of his house like he hadn’t wanted anything in quite some time.
“I’ll see you around, Gabby,” he told her, eyes on the hallway behind her.
“I—okay,” Gabby said after a moment. “I’ll see you around.”
GABBY
Gabby was sitting at the kitchen table when Celia let herself in through the back door late that night, flicking the overhead lights on and letting out a bark. “Jesus Christ,” Celia said, hand on her heart like a romance novel heroine preparing to swoon. “You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing sitting here in the dark?”
“You’re home?” Kristina asked, coming into the kitchen in her pajamas at the sound of their voices. It was after ten; Gabby had heard her watching a movie with their parents in the living room but hadn’t quite been able to motivate herself to go in and say hello. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting here. She felt like a wounded animal who’d dragged herself into a cave.
“Who’s home?” There was their mom appearing behind Kristina in the doorway. “How long have you been here?” she asked Gabby. Then, looking at her more closely: “What’s wrong?”
Gabby did not want to talk about this. Gabby did not want to talk about anything, possibly for the rest of her life. Still, she might as well tell them all at once and get it over with. Her voice was surprisingly steady as she announced it: “Ryan and I broke up.”
“You what?” Kristina said, at the same time as her mom said, “Oh, Gabby.”
“I—” Celia began; Gabby was on her feet in an instant, whirling on her.
“I don’t want to hear it, Celia,” she snapped, slamming her hands down on the kitchen table. Kristina jumped about a thousand feet in the air. “Whatever great big-sister wisdom you’re about to dispense about how Ryan was always an idiot to begin with, or about how I brought this on myself by being a giant weirdo about everything.” She was furious all of a sudden, rage cresting like a bright red wave inside her; she wanted to scratch and shove and bite. “Save it, okay? Just, for once in your entire life, I need you to keep your opinion to yourself.”
For a moment the kitchen was silent. “Gabby,” her mom said quietly, but Gabby barely heard. The worst part of how angry she was was how much it felt like panic, her heart thudding in her chest, violent as an act of war. She thought she could sprint from Colson clear across to North Dakota. Also, she thought she might be about to faint.
“I wasn’t going to say anything like that,” Celia said finally, setting her purse down on the table and looking—oh god—looking cowed. “I was just going to say I’m really sorry, and ask you if maybe you wanted me to make you a sandwich?”
“Oh.” Gabby nodded and sat back down at the table, all the fight going out of her at once. “Yes, please,” she said, looking up at her sister, then put her head down on the kitchen table and cried.
NUMBER 1
THE NEW BEGINNING
SUMMER AFTER SENIOR YEAR
GABBY
“Want to take a drive to Target?” Gabby’s mom asked, hovering in the doorway of her bedroom the following Saturday. Gabby was still in bed even though it was after eleven, under the covers scrolling unseeing through her phone. “See if they’ve got anything for your dorm?”
“No, thanks,” Gabby said to the wall, pulling the blankets more tightly around her. Her roommate info had come last week, though she’d left it unopened in her email. A couple of days after that, she’d stopped checking her email altogether. “Maybe tomorrow.”