Ryan tilted his head to the side. “I mean, only if you’re ready,” he said, looking at her closely. “You ready?”
Gabby nodded. Her parents had been planning to drive her down into the city, but when Ryan volunteered to do it, she’d jumped at the offer: “I don’t want to say good-bye to you in front of a bunch of strangers,” she’d explained to her mom, perched on the arm of an Adirondack chair out in the yard earlier that week. “I’ll never be able to let you leave if that’s how we do it.”
It was kind of awkward, but Gabby was trying to say this stuff lately: how to figure out what would help her and then ask for it, how to let other people give her a hand. She’d started seeing a therapist the day after she and Ryan had talked in the Langham Lanes parking lot; she was learning to breathe through the panic, learning how to talk herself down. She had a roommate and a shower caddy and an appointment at the counseling center for first thing on Monday. She wanted to barf, more than a little bit. But she also felt weirdly okay.
“All right,” she said to Ryan now, hand curled around the handle of the passenger side door, feeling her lips twist in a smile. “Let’s go.”
They unloaded her suitcases and her desk lamp and her camera bag; they put everything in a canvas laundry cart, wheeled it over the bumpy, uneven sidewalk into the lobby of the dorm. All around them was the crush of other new freshmen and their families, the smells of perfume and sweat and the heat of eager bodies: A million new faces. A whole new life.
“So this is it, huh?” Ryan asked her when they were finished, shoving his hands into his back pockets. “See you around, and all of that?”
Gabby nodded. “This is it,” she said, swallowing her heart back down into her chest where it belonged. She wanted to reach into her rib cage and hand it to him for safekeeping, wanted him to know he had it no matter what else happened next. “Ryan—” She broke off.
“No, I know.” Ryan nodded, then shook his head a little, then made an exasperated face at himself. “Me too.”
“Okay.” Gabby felt the panic start to lick at her ankles; she took a deep breath then, tugging his wrists out of his pockets and squeezing both his hands. “But—”
“Gabby. I know.” Ryan smiled faintly, his long, knobby fingers laced through hers. “You want me to come up with you?” he asked her. “Help you get settled, all of that?”
Gabby exhaled, feeling her shoulders drop and her breathing slow to something like normal. She looked at him for a moment, her Ryan: calm and so loyal, steady as a beating heart. He was her most important person. He was her best friend in the world.
“Nah,” she said, and smiled at him. “I can do this one by myself.”