Langham Lanes had three different little-kid birthday parties happening, so instead of waiting around to bowl, they got sodas and a bag of buttered popcorn from the concession stand and sat on the warm hood of Ryan’s car with their ankles crossed, ice rattling inside their waxy paper cups. “I’ve barely been outside in weeks,” Gabby confessed, holding one hand up and shielding her eyes from the glare in the parking lot. “I’m like a naked mole rat.”
“I don’t know,” Ryan said automatically. “You seem okay to me.” But when he turned his head to look at her, letting himself consider her full-on for the first time since she’d opened her front door, it occurred to him that he actually wasn’t so sure. Her cheekbones were more pronounced than usual; there were bluish circles under her eyes. When he glanced down at her hands, her nails were bitten down so far he winced. She was beautiful—she was Gabby, of course she was beautiful. But she also didn’t totally look like herself. “Are you?” he asked cautiously. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” Gabby started to nod, then stopped halfway through the gesture and shrugged instead. “No,” she said, sounding really and truly irritated about it. “Probably not. I don’t know.”
Ryan nodded, feeling like somebody had reached into his chest and squeezed. “You wanna tell me about it?” he asked.
Gabby shrugged again. “I will,” she said, picking at the lid of her soda cup. “But. You talk first.”
Ryan could do that for her, he thought. So he did: about his mom’s continued mission to clear their house of every speck of clutter; about Phil’s stupid dachshunds, one of whom had gotten loose the day before and run up and down the street for half an hour with a pair of Ryan’s boxers in its mouth. Finally he took a deep breath. “I’m not going to Minnesota,” he said.
Gabby’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?” she asked—more animated that he’d seen her all day, like for a moment she’d forgotten whatever was bothering her. Like she was Gabby again. “Why?”
Ryan made a face, a little irritated. “You know why,” he said. “You were the one—” He broke off.
“No no no, of course I know why,” Gabby agreed, nodding. “But I just—why?”
Ryan sighed, pulling his feet up onto the hood of the car and leaning all the way back against the windshield. “Because I don’t want to be too brain damaged to remember my own name by the time I’m twenty-two,” he told her. “Because I’m good at this or whatever, but you were right that it’s not the only thing I’m good at. And because eventually you have to stop loving shit that doesn’t love you back.”
“I love you back,” Gabby blurted immediately, turning to look at him. The sun glinted off the gold in her hair. “I just, before we talk about anything else—you know that, right? That I love you back?”
Ryan gazed back at her for a moment. “Yeah,” he said slowly. As it came out of his mouth he realized that it was true. “I know that.”
“Good.” Gabby exhaled then, shoulders dropping. Both of them were quiet. “So what happens instead?” she asked.
“Coach Harkin knows a guy in admissions at Purchase,” Ryan explained, looking down at his hands and feeling oddly shy about it. “Tuition’s not bad, especially if I live at home the first year. I’m gonna do that instead, watch my brain a little. See if I can transfer down the road.” He glanced up at her again, made a face. “Do you think that’s a bad idea?”
“Are you kidding me?” Now she was smiling. “I think it’s amazing. I think it’s such a good idea. But I just never thought you would—wow, Ryan. I think that is so, so good.”
Ryan let out a breath he’d been holding since he decided. It was a good plan, he knew that. But hearing her say it out loud didn’t hurt. He trusted her opinion more than anybody else’s; he always had. “Really?”
“Yes!” Gabby laughed and then stopped just as quickly, her face falling and her eyes filling with tears. “Hi,” she said, shaking her head and sniffling a little. “I missed you.”
“Hey hey, easy. I missed you too,” Ryan said, leaning forward to swipe at the tears on her face, licking them off his own thumb before he could think better of it. “I’m sorry I fucked it up so bad,” he blurted. “You and me.”
Gabby shook her head. “You didn’t fuck it up,” she said. “I fucked it up. Or, like, we both fucked it up.”
“Yeah, but you called it right from the beginning,” Ryan argued. “Maybe if I hadn’t pushed—”
“You didn’t push,” Gabby said. “I wanted it to work just as bad as you did. I guess I thought it would make everything better, right? Us being together.”
Ryan nodded, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “But it didn’t.”
“Why?” Gabby asked, sounding genuinely curious. “Like, what is it about us that—”
“That makes us better off as friends?” Ryan shrugged. “I don’t know, really. But I know I’d rather have you in my life that way than not at all.”
“Yeah?” Gabby asked, voice hopeful. “Me too.”
Ryan smiled. “Good,” he said. “Okay.”
They were quiet for a long minute then, watching the cars speed by on the street beyond the parking lot. Across the blacktop, a couple of kids skipped toward a station wagon, trailing brightly colored balloons.
“My parents think I need to be in therapy,” Gabby said.
That got Ryan’s attention. There was a tiny edge in her voice, like she was hoping he was going to contradict her; there had been a time when he might have for the sake of avoiding an argument, but now he only nodded. “Maybe,” he agreed.
Gabby sighed. “Probably,” she admitted, and lay back on the hood of the car. “I’m scared,” she confessed, looking up at the sky.
Ryan nodded. He was scared too, to be honest: of who he might be now that he wasn’t who he’d been planning, of the future and whatever it held. But sitting here with Gabby made him feel like he could handle it. Sitting here with Gabby made him feel weirdly brave.
“It’s okay,” Ryan told her, then took a chance and reached his hand out, lacing his fingers through hers. “You’re not by yourself.”
GABBY
“Okay,” Ryan said as he pulled the car into the loading area outside Gabby’s freshman dorm, an old brick building in downtown Manhattan with oxidized copper details around the tall, narrow windows. Cars and trucks and taxis crawled down the wide city street, horns honking and people shouting and late-summer sunlight glinting off the windshields; Gabby thought she could smell fall coming underneath the trash and car exhaust. “Did you pack shower shoes? You need shower shoes, otherwise you’ll get a foot fungus and all your toes will fall off.”
“Thank you.” Gabby rolled her eyes, fingers clutching nervously at the seat belt. “Do you want me to get out of your car or not?”