Ryan watched as his dad yanked open the top drawer of the bureau, began tossing handfuls of socks and boxers in the general direction of a gym bag on the bed. “Um,” he said after a moment, feeling like a putz even as he opened his mouth. “We’ve got that game against Hudson High on Thursday, the one you said you were gonna try and make it to? If you wanted to maybe time it so you came by then.”
His dad sighed loudly. “I don’t know, kid. I’ll try.”
“I—sure,” Ryan said, nodding like a ventriloquist’s dummy, hating both his parents a little bit. Hating himself most of all. “Absolutely.”
Back in his room he shut the door and lay down on top of the bedspread. He felt like he had too much energy to be by himself. He was thinking he’d go for a run even though he’d just worked his ass off at practice when his phone let out a chime from the back pocket of his jeans: Remy Dolan, his Big Brother from the team. PARTY TONIGHT, FRESHMAN, the text said. You ready to get sloppy?
He thought for a second about telling Remy his parents were getting divorced, which was laughable. Ryan actually didn’t think there was anybody he would tell. Two months into freshman year and he had a million people to hang out with, hockey teammates and cafeteria buddies and a not-insignificant number of girls who were trying to date him, but none of them were exactly the kind of friends he wanted to talk to about stuff that actually mattered. It occurred to Ryan all of a sudden that he didn’t know if he knew anyone who fit that description. But that seemed like a colossally dopey thing to be worrying about when there was a party to go to, so he put it out of his mind and looked at Remy’s text again.
Yeah, he typed back after a moment. I really am.
GABBY
Gabby slammed her book shut and tossed it onto the quilt in her bedroom, huffing loudly even though there was nobody to hear her. The party was clattering on downstairs, all buzz and laughter; she’d been hiding up here for the better part of an hour now, reading the same paragraph over and over. As much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, she couldn’t stop stewing about what Celia had said.
Whatever, Gabby thought. It wasn’t like she couldn’t go to a party. There was a difference between not wanting to go and not being able to.
Right?
Gabby hesitated another moment, then slung her feet over the side of the bed. She could be normal. She could attempt that, somehow. She wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans and headed for the door to her bedroom, stopping at the last minute to run a brush through her hair and slick on a little bit of lip gloss. Then she gritted her teeth and went downstairs.
Their house was packed. There were people in the hallway and slouched on the sofas; Gabby had to scoot around three different bodies just to get down the stairs. Something had spilled on the rug in the living room. The cloying smell of weed was thick in the air.
“Look who showed up!” Celia crowed across the living room when she saw her. Celia was drunk; Gabby could tell by her flushed cheeks and the looseness in her limbs. It made Gabby even more nervous than she already was.
“Guys, this is my sister!” Celia called loudly; Gabby winced as a dozen pairs of eyes cut directly to her. “I’m on a mission to convince her that parties aren’t all devil-worshiping ceremonies with ritual human sacrifice.”
Gabby felt herself flush. “That’s not what I think,” she muttered. Everyone was looking at her. She could feel the beginnings of a full-blown panicker, that telltale numbness in her hands and arms. Sometimes it even happened in the tip of her nose, though she’d never told that part to her parents. They’d think she was crazy, and she wasn’t crazy. No matter what Celia seemed to think.
She stood there awkwardly for another endless moment—a total and obvious outsider, even though this was her house where she lived. It felt like she didn’t belong anywhere. It felt like she probably never would.
“Little sister, how come you’ve been hiding upstairs this whole time?” asked some stupid-looking guy friend of Celia’s sporting the shadowy beginnings of a beard. It reminded Gabby of a little kid dressing up as a hobo for Halloween. “Don’t you like us?”
“Not particularly,” Gabby muttered. God, this had been a huge mistake. She should have known better than to put herself in this stupid position. She should have known better than to even try. “I just came down to get a snack,” she said to Celia, hoping her sister was drunk enough not to notice that she hadn’t actually made it to the kitchen. “See you.”
“Aw, where you going, little sister?” the guy called after her. Gabby ignored him. She scrambled back up the stairs so fast she almost tripped over them, like when she was a little kid and her dad used to chase her up to her room for bedtime. Gabby had never actually liked that game, and she didn’t like this, either. She wanted every single one of these people out of her house. She knew Celia would have called her an old lady, a wet blanket, a loser. She kind of couldn’t bring herself to care.
There was no way she was going to sleep anytime soon, but there was nothing left to do but get ready for bed and sulk with the lights off and the door locked. She guessed she might as well brush her teeth. She crept down the hallway, pushed the bathroom door open—
And found a boy kneeling in front of her toilet.
“Whoa, sorry!” Gabby said, holding her hands up as if she was the one who had trespassed. Her heart skittered like a field mouse inside her chest. Then, as she took in the scene in front of her: “Oh my god, are you puking?”
“Um, no,” the boy said, reaching up and flushing, then sitting back on the hexagon tile and looking up at her. “Not anymore. Who are you?”
“Who am I?” Gabby demanded. “I live here. Who are you?”
“I’m sorry,” the kid said, leaning back against the bathtub and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “They were going to make me chug another beer, and then I had to throw up, and—” He broke off.
“So you thought you’d come up here and do it in my bathroom?”
“Sorry,” the kid said again. “I’m good now, I’ll go.” He began the slow, laborious process of getting to his feet, slouchy and stumbling, fingers hooked on the edge of the sink for balance. He looked like he might pass out.
“Okay,” Gabby said, feeling suddenly bad for him in spite of herself. “Just, stop for a second before you hurt somebody. Sit on the tub, I guess.” She looked at him for a moment, curious. He was wearing jeans and a Colson Cavaliers T-shirt with a thermal underneath it; his hair was a wavy mass of washed-out brown shot through with red and gold in the bathroom light. Two of his fingers were held together with medical tape. “Who was it?” she asked, crossing her arms and leaning against the towel rack. “That was going to make you chug the beer?”
“The other guys on my team,” the kid said, sitting on the lip of the bathtub and wincing when he knocked a half-empty shampoo into the basin. “I play hockey?”
“Of course you do,” Gabby muttered.
The boy didn’t seem to notice. “I’m the only freshman,” he continued, “so they kind of like to razz me a little.”
Gabby made a face. “Haze you, it sounds like.”
The boy shook his head. “No no, it’s not like that,” he said earnestly. “I mean, I know you probably think I’d say that even if it was, but it’s not.” He smiled then, lopsided and, Gabby thought, pretty drunk. “I’m Ryan,” he announced, sticking his hand out.
Good grief. “I’m Gabby,” she said as they shook.
“Hi, Gabby,” Ryan said cheerfully. He had very friendly eyes.
Gabby huffed a breath out, all ambivalence: she wanted to be mad, but there was something about him she found weirdly charming, like he was a scruffy but well-meaning dog in a Disney cartoon. He just looked so pathetic. Also, he was definitely the best-looking boy who had ever been on the second floor of her house, Celia’s ex-boyfriend Greg included. “I have gum,” she offered finally. “You want gum?”
Ryan’s eyes lit up like she’d offered him a brand-new sports car; he nod
ded, hoisting himself off the side of the tub with some effort and following her down the hallway to her room. He stood politely in the doorway while she fished some Trident out of the pen cup on her desk and handed it over; as he unwrapped it she saw him looking longingly at her Nalgene, and she sighed. “You want water, too?”
“Um, if you don’t mind? That’d be great.”
“Uh-huh.” He was still hovering mostly in the doorway. “It’s okay,” Gabby allowed, holding the bright plastic water bottle out to him. “You can come in.”
Ryan did. She handed him the water and he took a giant gulp without bothering to wipe the lip of the bottle off with his sleeve, like she would have. “Thanks,” he said, setting it back down on her desk.
Gabby nodded. “No problem.”
Ryan smiled. She was expecting him to go but instead he looked around her room for a moment; it made her squirm a little bit, imagining what conclusions he might possibly be able to draw. She’d redecorated that summer as a nod to being in high school now; she’d picked pale gray walls and a big armchair that had come from Grandma Hart’s attic, which she and her mom had reupholstered in a deep velvety blue with a staple gun and a whole lot of swearing. She had a bunch of Annie Leibovitz photos tacked up on the wall above the dresser. She’d never had anyone this cute, boy or girl, in here before.
Ryan’s gaze traveled around for another moment before finally landing squarely on Gabby herself. “So how come you’re up here and not downstairs at the party?” he asked.
Gabby winced. It was a logical question, of course, but she’d hoped he was too distracted by his own gastric drama to think to ask it. She shifted her weight for a moment, trying to come up with a lie that seemed probable. Finally she settled for the truth. “I hate parties.”
That seemed to surprise him: he opened his mouth and then closed it again, like he had honestly never considered that such a thing was possible. “Really?” he asked.
“Really,” Gabby said.
“I love parties,” Ryan told her.
“That isn’t really shocking,” Gabby said.
Ryan nodded like, fair point. For a second she was pretty sure he was going to pull a Celia and explain to her all the reasons why she was wrong to hate parties: that maybe she just hadn’t been to the right parties, that maybe she just needed to try a little harder. She was preemptively getting ready to tell him to get the hell out of her bedroom, but instead he just leaned against the edge of her desk, right next to her grandma’s urn, and said, “So what do you like?”
Gabby wasn’t expecting that. “What do I like?”
“Yeah,” Ryan said, like it was an obvious question. “As opposed to parties, which you don’t.”
“Um,” Gabby said, perching on the arm of the blue chair. “Lots of things, I guess. Usual stuff, movies and whatever. Hanging out with my sisters. And I like to take photos, sort of.”
“Yeah?” Ryan asked, sounding interested. “What kind of photos?”
“All kinds,” Gabby told him. “Mostly portraits, but some still-life type stuff. I have this Instagram—” She broke off all of a sudden, feeling weirdly vulnerable. “Whatever, it’s dumb.” She shrugged. He was easy to talk to, maybe, but there were limits. “I mean, I’m also super good at Monopoly, so.”
That made Ryan smile, but not in a mean way. “Monopoly, huh?”
“You’re laughing,” Gabby said, “but I’m amazing at Monopoly. My family plays every Friday, which I get is probably super embarrassing, but. I dominate.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I do.” Gabby tilted her head to the side. “You should come and play sometime, you’ll see.”
Right away she felt herself blush—where had that come from?—but Ryan just nodded. “Maybe I will,” he said. He crossed his ankles, like he was anticipating being here awhile. “Are there a lot of you?” he asked. “In your family, I mean?”
“Five,” Gabby told him. “Two sisters. I’m in the middle.”
Ryan nodded. “That always sounded fun to me, house full of people.”
“Is it just you?”
Ryan nodded. “Just me.”
“Get lonely?”
“Nah,” Ryan said, and grinned. “I’m really popular.”
Gabby rolled her eyes at him, but she was laughing in spite of herself. “Yeah, I bet you are.” She liked him, she realized. She tried to remember the last time she’d warmed so quickly to another person, and couldn’t. It was kind of embarrassing.
Ryan nodded at her book splayed open on the bed, the Tudor thing. “Are you reading that?” he asked.
Of course she was reading it; what did he think it was doing there? Still: “It’s for school,” she lied, as if doing homework on a Saturday night while a party raged one floor below her was somehow less dorky than reading because she wanted to. She blew out a breath, then, annoyed at herself, amended: “It’s not, actually.”
Ryan shrugged. “Whichever.” He reached over and picked it up, scanning the back for a moment before looking up at her seriously. “I’m sure this will come as a shock to you, Gabby, but I am not a huge pleasure reader.”
Gabby hid a smile. “You’re not, huh?”
“I mean, some things,” he said. “I know how to read. There are some sports books I like. Magazines, sometimes. And, you know, the backs of cereal boxes in the mornings.”
“BuzzFeed lists,” Gabby put in.
“Hey, I love BuzzFeed lists!” Ryan protested, bouncing off the edge of the desk and plopping himself into the seat of the chair she was roosting on; Gabby moved her feet to give him room. “Twenty Times Kim Kardashian Showed Her Butt Crack Getting out of a Limousine. Or like, Seventy-One Things That Will Only Have Great Meaning to You If You Were Born in March of 1996.”
Gabby looked at him with great skepticism. He was sitting close enough that she could smell him; she braced herself for pukey unpleasantness but instead he just smelled kind of warm. “Are you being extra dopey right now so that I’ll forget you barfed in my bathroom?” she asked.
Ryan shook his head. “I think I’m this dopey all the time,” he said, leaning back against the chair cushion. His solid-looking shoulder brushed her knee. “I’m not kidding though; I do really like those lists. I make them in my head sometimes, if I’m bored or whatever.”
“You do, huh? Like what?”
“Top ten things about this party,” he said immediately. “You’d be on that one.”
Gabby threw her head back and laughed, except then she slammed her skull on the wall behind her, and she would have actually died of embarrassment only Ryan was laughing, too.
“Shit,” he said, reaching up with his nontaped hand and rubbing the back of her head, gentle circles. “You’re gonna have a bump.”
“Probably,” Gabby agreed, though she found she didn’t actually care about that, not really. Was this flirting? she wondered. It must be, right? This must be what normal people did when they weren’t hiding in their bedrooms like hobbits. “I’ll live.”
“I hope so.” Ryan grinned.
He was a hockey player, Gabby reminded herself. He probably acted exactly this way with every single girl he encountered; he’d probably acted exactly this way with some other girl tonight. But she couldn’t make herself care about that, either. For the first time in possibly her entire life she wasn’t worried about saying something stupid, about being hopelessly inept and embarrassing. For the first time she wasn’t worried that everything about her was wrong.
“Are those broken?” Gabby asked him, motioning to his taped-up fingers. His hands seemed disproportionately bigger than the rest of him, like a puppy that hadn’t grown into his paws.
“Nah,” Ryan said. “Just jammed.”
“They hurt?”
“Not as much as your head, probably,” he said. Then he smiled. “Anyway, I’m really tough.”
“Oh, right.” Gabby snorted. “Clearly.”
“Clearly,” Ryan echoed. They were quiet for a minute. Gabby could he
ar the noise of the party from downstairs. She kept expecting him to get up and go back down there, but when she glanced over he was just sitting back in the chair and gazing at her, patient and easy.
“I want to kiss you,” he announced.
“What?” Gabby felt like a trap door had opened up underneath her; her first, gut reaction was to frown. “Why?”
That made him laugh. “Why?” he repeated. “’Cause you’re pretty, and I like you. And I like how your mouth looks.”
I like how your mouth looks. That made Gabby’s heart and stomach and all her organs do a pleasant/painful thing inside her. She’d never been kissed before in her life. She peered back at him for a moment, heart pounding in a way that for once had nothing to do with anxiety. She liked how his mouth looked too.
Still: logistics. “You literally just barfed,” she pointed out, wrinkling her nose at the thought of it. “I’m not going to—”
“I didn’t barf because I’m sick!” Ryan protested, looking wounded. “I barfed because I was drunk.”
“You’re still drunk,” Gabby said.
“Not that drunk,” Ryan argued. “Plus I had gum and water.”
“Oh, well. In that case.” She looked at him for another moment. The truth was, she liked his whole stupid face. She thought of Celia, earlier: Don’t you ever want to have fun?
“Okay,” she finally said.
“Really?” Ryan looked like he thought he was getting away with something. “I can?”
“I said yes!” Gabby was laughing, she couldn’t help it. “Hurry up before I change my mind.”
“Well, then.” Ryan tilted his head at her. “Come here.”
“You come here,” she said, rolling her eyes at him, but by then he was already doing it, warm and friendly and familiar. Like they weren’t even strangers at all.
GABBY
Gabby woke up the next morning with a start and a headache, even though she hadn’t been drinking. She rolled over under the covers, then gasped again: Ryan McCullough was still sprawled sleeping on her floor, under the triangle quilt she’d thrown over him when he’d announced himself too tired to get up and go anywhere, including his own house, then promptly passed out on her shag rug. Gabby still couldn’t believe she’d let him stay.
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