Top Ten by Katie Cotugno
“Come on,” he said finally, toeing his boots off and standing up, nudging her with his knee to get her attention while keeping the rest of his body a safe distance away. It was insane to him suddenly, how fast this whole night had changed directions. How fast his entire heart had. If he thought about it for more than a second, he had to admit that it wasn’t actually much of a change at all: his feelings for Gabby had always been there just underneath the surface, constant as breathing and just as reflexive. He didn’t usually stop to consider them. They just sort of were.
She still wasn’t looking at him; Ryan jiggled the mattress a little bit. “You said you wanted to sleep, yeah?” he asked. “Let’s go to sleep. We’ll get out of here early tomorrow; we’ll get eggs.”
Gabby huffed another sigh, then lowered her hands and looked at him pitifully. “Don’t hate me,” she said.
Ryan rolled his eyes, reaching for the remote and flicking through the channels until he found a Friends rerun, bright and familiar. “I don’t hate you, dumbass.”
“Okay,” Gabby said, not sounding entirely convinced. She kicked her shoes off and crawled under the blankets, like a bear preparing to hibernate for winter. After a moment the top of her head poked back up. “I don’t hate you either, for the record,” she told him, voice muffled by the blankets. She reached her hand out and waggled it at him pathetically. “Just in case that was a thing you also had crippling social anxiety about.”
Ryan grinned at her, he couldn’t help it, a feeling like hearing the first three chords of his favorite song on the radio. A feeling like the start of something good. “It wasn’t, actually,” he said, reaching for her cold hand and squeezing. “But it’s nice to be reassured.”
GABBY
“More coffee?” asked the waitress as she dropped off their check the following morning. They were back up in Colson at the diner, sitting across from each other at the same ripped booth where they’d gotten egg sandwiches and late-night pancakes a million times before. This wasn’t so bad, Gabby thought. She’d just spend the rest of senior year eating eggs in diners with Ryan. Maybe they could do a hash brown tour of the Hudson Valley or something. Top ten spots to eat ham-and-cheese omelets.
“I gotta pee,” Ryan said when the waitress was gone, digging some bills out of his back pocket. “Then we’ll get out of here?” He was weirdly chipper for somebody who’d been dumped twelve hours ago: by the time she’d woken up this morning he’d already been to Starbucks and back, was announcing plans for Ryan and Gabby’s Super-Sad Breakup Club. “Maybe today’s the day I teach you to ice skate.”
“I know how to ice skate,” Gabby grumbled.
“Sure you do,” Ryan said, grinning at her dubiously across the chipped Formica table. “I’ll be right back.”
Gabby watched him trot across the restaurant, baffled by his apparent ability to move on so quickly. He’d told her he didn’t want to talk about whatever had gone on with Chelsea, and apparently he meant it. Gabby would have pressed him, but he’d also apparently decided to forget about her moment of temporary insanity last night in the hotel room, and she didn’t want to push her luck.
God, Gabby couldn’t believe she’d done that. Remembering it was like touching her hand to a burning hot stove. Sure, she’d been sad and rejected and drunk, but this was Ryan. Some lines weren’t meant to be crossed, no matter how warm and safe and right it had felt to bury her tired face in his neck.
Not like this, he’d said in the moment before he’d pulled away from her. Just for a second, Gabby let herself wonder: like what?
Enough, she thought, picking up her fork and stabbing a cold bite of hash browns. Was she seriously going to let herself sit here entertaining moony Ryan fantasies on top of everything else? Sometimes she still didn’t get why he hung out with her at all, honestly. Sometimes she didn’t get why anyone did.
She was staring out the window at the gray parking lot, well on her way into a spiral of anxiety and self-loathing, when her phone buzzed on the table. She flipped it over, heart stopping for a sliver of a moment: It was Shay. Not texting, even. Calling.
Gabby took a deep breath, hit the green button to answer. “Hi,” she said quietly.
“So, that was terrible, right?”
All at once, Gabby felt like she was going to cry all over again. “Yeah,” she said, swallowing a phlegmy knot in her throat. She’d said enough of a good-bye the night before that Shay knew she hadn’t been murdered, but barely. Mostly, she’d just run away. “That was pretty terrible. I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Shay said. “I should have thought more about how weird it would be for you, and overwhelming. We hardly spent any time alone at all.”
Gabby could see Ryan coming back from the bathroom; she caught his eyes and pointed at her phone, then slid out of the booth, dragging her jacket behind her. “I thought maybe you didn’t want to,” she said to Shay as she headed out into the cold gray morning.
“Seriously?” Shay laughed. “No, I wanted to climb you like a tree. I honestly didn’t know Ade was going to be home; she was supposed to be going to some sorority thing.” She sighed. “I wish you hadn’t left.”
“I’m sorry,” Gabby said. “I panicked.”
“It’s okay,” Shay said. “I get why you did. I was drunk, I was being obnoxious. Look,” she continued, “I’ll be home for break in like two weeks. I’ll make it up to you, okay? We’ll spend every day together; we’ll marathon a whole series or something. It’ll be the mellowest thing ever.”
That sounded perfect, actually—it sounded like actual heaven—but for the first time she was embarrassed to admit that to Shay. “I don’t—I don’t want you to feel like I’m holding you back,” Gabby said. Ugh, she always felt so awkward talking on the phone. “Like, if there’s other stuff you’d rather be doing, then—”
“I don’t feel that way,” Shay said immediately. “That’s not how I feel.”
“Are you sure?” Gabby wasn’t convinced. “Because—”
“Gabby-Girl,” Shay said, low and quiet in her ear; Gabby shivered in spite of herself, and it had nothing to do with the cold. It was Shay, after all. It was Shay. “I love you. You’re my favorite person to hang out with. And I should have done a better job of showing you that last night.”
“I’m sorry,” Gabby said again, looking out at the avenue, the SUVs and minivans whizzing by. So things were a little different between them now. That was okay, wasn’t it? She wanted to make it work—needed to, even. An hour of being broken up and she’d thrown herself at Ryan of all people. Clearly she needed all the steadiness she could get. “I’m a weirdo.”
“You’re my weirdo,” Shay assured her. Gabby smiled.
RYAN
By the time Ryan paid the bill and made his way out of the diner, he already knew Gabby and Shay were getting back together. Gabby was slipping her phone into her bag as he approached, her face all pink and pleased-looking. “Fixed, huh?” he asked, aiming for casual as he dug his car keys out of his jacket pocket.
Gabby tilted her head a bit, halfway between a nod and a shake. “I think so? Getting there, at least.” She shrugged as they crossed the parking lot, pulling her hands up into her sleeves. “I’m sorry. I feel stupid that I made you pick me up. And, you know.” She gestured vaguely. “About the rest of it.”
The rest of it. Ryan felt a strange, unfamiliar heat creeping up the back of his neck. He’d been waiting for the right time to bring it up, to tell her . . . whatever it was he was going to tell her.
Apparently, that time was never.
“Already forgot about it, remember?” Ryan made himself grin, turned away as he opened the car door. “Anyway, not like I had anyplace else to be.”
“You really don’t want to talk about what happened with Chelsea?” Gabby asked as she settled into the passenger seat. “What did you guys even fight about, huh?”
“It was stupid,” Ryan said, “like I told you. Nothing worth crying over.”
&nb
“Yeah.” Ryan shook his head. He’d fucked things up with Chelsea, he knew that. There was no way to recover. It was like she’d dug out some part of him that he’d fully intended to keep buried for the rest of his days, and for what? He looked at Gabby. This was going nowhere, clearly. He was stupid for imagining that it might have. “Well.”
“Well?” Gabby echoed. “Well, what?”
“Gabby,” he said, more sharply than he meant to. “Let it go, okay?”
Gabby looked surprised. “Okay,” she said. “Sorry.” Then, her voice artificially bright, “Ice skating, then?”
And—yeah. Ryan just did not have it in him. “You know,” he said, “I’m kind of tired. I might just go home and crash.”
Gabby glanced down at her hands, face flushing in a way that made him feel sort of like an asshole. “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Yeah, totally. Of course. I should probably let Michelle know I’m back, anyway. She was cranky about not having anything to do this weekend.”
Back at his mom’s house he tried to nap but couldn’t settle; he made himself a sandwich but didn’t really feel like eating. Finally, he did what he always did when he was feeling shitty and wanted to forget about it: he looked for a party.
It was a Sunday in December and slim pickings, but his buddy JP was driving down to Golden’s Bridge to hang out with some of his brother’s friends; Ryan caught a ride in the passenger seat of JP’s Civic, rolling the window down so it was too loud to talk. The whole thing was kind of a dodgier affair than Ryan was used to: a low-slung ranch with a scruffy lawn and dingy curtains over the windows, the sweet reek of pot smoke heavy in the air. In the yard was an ancient hot tub of indeterminate cleanliness, a dog prowling back and forth across the porch.
He probably would have bailed out early under normal circumstances, but tonight the whole thing struck him as kind of fun, exactly what he needed to take his mind off . . . whatever it was he was trying to take his mind off, exactly. See? Ryan thought as he dug another beer out of the fridge, pleased with himself. It was already working.
“Well, hey, Ryan,” said a girl’s voice behind him, surprised and cheerful; somebody nudged at his lower back. “What are you doing here?”
Ryan turned around, a little unsteady: it was Michaela Braddock, wearing tight skinny jeans and a sweater that showed off her excellent cleavage. Her dark hair hung in ringlets down her back. She smiled at him, tilting her head to the side a little the way girls did when they were being flirtatious. Ryan smiled back.
“I am considering getting in that hot tub, Michaela,” he said, although he hadn’t been until right this moment. Gabby was never going to want him, that much was obvious. But plenty of other girls did. It was time to start acting like it. “What about you?”
NUMBER 3
THE MEET CUTE
FRESHMAN YEAR, FALL
GABBY
“Can I put Grandma in your room?” Celia asked late Saturday afternoon, coming into the kitchen with the heavy copper urn in her arms.
“Seriously?” Gabby asked, a jar of peanut butter in one hand and a spoon in the other. “This is the kind of party where you need to hide Grandma? I thought you were having like five friends over.”
Celia shrugged and set the urn down on the counter. “It got a little bigger once people started hearing about it,” she admitted.
Gabby swallowed her mouthful of extra-crunchy. “Mom and Dad are going to kill you.”
“Mom and Dad are never going to know,” Celia said sweetly.
Gabby sighed. Her grandmother had died back in August, just before school started; her parents were in North Carolina this weekend, starting to clear out her old house. They’d taken Kristina with them, so it was just Gabby and Celia here, and Celia was pulling rank. “Fine,” she said, tossing her spoon into the sink with a clatter. “I’ll take Grandma.”
Celia rolled her eyes and made a big show of fishing the spoon out of the sink and putting it in the dishwasher. “Go stay at Michelle’s if you don’t want to be here,” she suggested brightly.
“This is my house too,” Gabby snapped, although in reality she would have if Michelle wasn’t touring colleges in Pennsylvania for her older brother this weekend. She definitely was not above vacating the premises to avoid a crowd.
“It is your house,” Celia agreed. “And like I said, you’re totally invited to hang out.”
“Gee, thanks,” Gabby muttered, hefting the urn onto her hip like she was carrying a baby and praying she didn’t trip on her way up the stairs. “But I’ll pass.”
Celia frowned at her, leaning against the counter and crossing her arms in a way that made her look spookily like their mom. “You’ve been in high school for two months, Gabby,” she pointed out. “Have you made a single friend so far?”
“Seriously?” Gabby felt her face flush. “Of course I have.”
“Really?” Celia looked skeptical. “Who?”
“Wha—people,” Gabby said inanely. “I don’t report every social interaction I have back to you.”
“Oh, okay,” Celia said. “People. Because every time I see you in the hallway you’re either by yourself or with Michelle, who honestly isn’t exactly helping the situation. If you liked being alone all the time, that would be one thing. But I don’t actually think you do. I think you’re just letting yourself be scared.”
“Oh, I’m letting myself.” Gabby scowled. She was pissed at Celia for sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, but mostly embarrassed that she’d noticed at all. God, had other people noticed? Did everyone at school already think she was a creepy loner? “I don’t know what makes you think you know anything about what I like, actually.”
The worst, most humiliating part was that Gabby knew her sister had a point: she wasn’t exactly thriving in high school so far. Last week Michelle had stayed home with cramps, and the only thing she’d said out loud all day was “here” when her homeroom teacher took attendance. She didn’t understand how other people did it, how they just strolled right up to strangers and started conversations—how they made themselves into people strangers would ever want to meet. She wasn’t shy, not exactly. She was afraid.
“Look,” Celia said. “Mom and Dad don’t give you a hard time about this kind of thing, and that’s their choice, I guess. But I don’t actually think they’re doing you any favors by babying you.”
“Babying me?” Just like that, Gabby was done with this conversation. Screw Celia. Screw anybody who thought they knew anything about her. “I’m not talking about this,” she announced, turning her back and stalking out of the kitchen. “Bye.”
She felt Celia’s scowl more than she saw it. “Don’t you ever want to have fun, Gabby?” Celia called, her voice downright saccharine. Gabby let go of Grandma with one hand and flipped her the bird.
Before people started showing up she squirreled provisions up in her room like an animal getting ready for the winter: two peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches, an apple, a bag of chips, plus a Nalgene bottle big enough to cross the Mojave with should the need arise. She set Grandma on her desk, flipped the lock on her bedroom door, and settled in with the long, sedate book about Henry VIII that she liked to read when her anxiety was particularly bad.
The thing about hiding out like this was that it did get boring, every once in a while. It occurred to Gabby to wonder if possibly she was missing something great. For all her bravado, it bothered her sometimes, that she couldn’t make herself do what seemed to come so naturally to everyone else.
Next time, maybe.
For now she made a nest for herself out of blankets. She clicked on the bedside lamp and began to read.
RYAN
Ryan’s parents told him they were getting divorced on a crisp, sunny Saturday in the middle of autumn, right after he got home from an early-morning hoc
Or, more accurately, his mom told him, standing in the backyard in her pajamas with the first and only cigarette Ryan had ever seen her smoke clutched between her fingers. “It’s a long time coming, lovey,” she said, clearly trying to keep her voice even. “You had to kind of know that, right?”
Ryan both had and hadn’t, he guessed: on one hand, it wasn’t as if he’d thought his parents liked each other, exactly. On the other, he’d always figured it was a chronic, manageable condition. Like diabetes.
“It’ll be fine,” his mom continued, and sniffled, though Ryan wasn’t sure if she was crying or if it was just the cigarette smoke. “I’ve got you, don’t I? You’ve always been the best man in this house anyhow.”
“Sure,” Ryan said, patting her on the shoulder. “Yeah, of course.”
His dad was in the small, cramped bathroom, tossing various items from the medicine cabinet into a dopp kit perched on the edge of the sink. “Where are you gonna go?” Ryan asked him, hovering awkwardly in the doorway.
“Who knows,” his dad said, conscripting the anti-itch cream and a battered box of Band-Aids. “Your mother would have me be fucking homeless, probably. But anyplace is better than here.” He looked at Ryan then. “No offense, kiddo.”
Ryan waved his hand to show there was none taken.
“You know I don’t mean—”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “No, I know.”
His dad paused for a moment of deliberation, took the toothpaste out of the cup on the bottom shelf, then gestured for Ryan to move out of the doorway. “I’ll be back to get the rest of my stuff sometime this week,” he said as he headed into the master bedroom, Ryan following at his heels. “You wanna do your old man a favor, you can haul those boxes of my Thunder gear out of the garage.”