Top Ten by Katie Cotugno

“Yeah.” Gabby cleared her throat, looking down again; her wispy blond bangs fell into her eyes. “Well, you’re going to be the king of Minnesota,” she continued after a moment, more loudly. “They’ll probably name the student center after you your first year.”

  “A bar, at least.”

  “I’m serious,” Gabby said, reaching out to poke him in the shoulder. “I know you, too, you know.”

  “Yeah,” Ryan said, grabbing her finger and holding it for a second. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, or if their faces were getting closer. His heart did a weird, trippy thing inside his chest. “I guess you do.”

  They looked at each other for a moment. The air in the car seemed to change. He could smell her, her skin and the laundry detergent her mom used and the smell of her car, which was always a little like french fries when you first opened the door, but also like the Ocean Breeze air freshener hanging from the rearview. Ryan liked it. She smelled like home to him. She felt like home to him, too.

  “Ryan,” Gabby said quietly. “What are you—?”

  “Nothing,” Ryan said, and kissed her.

  For one terrifying second Gabby didn’t do anything, her mouth still and slack against his, her body hunched like a question mark across the center console. Then she made this sound, like a gasp or a tiny whimper, and kissed him back. She was a good kisser, Ryan thought, surprised and then immediately feeling kind of like a dick about it. He just thought he’d probably kissed a lot more people than her. His hand was on her arm, then on her rib cage, then rucking the back of her shirt up to rub her warm, bumpy spine. Holy shit, this was actually happening. This was happening, after all this time.

  “Okay,” she said finally, pulling away from him, tucking her hair behind her ears. She sounded breathless in a good way, which made him feel pleased with himself. “Are we, like.” She laughed a little bit. “Are we?”

  “I don’t know,” Ryan said, hoping with every fiber of his being that the answer was yes. “Are we?”

  “You tell me.”

  Ryan gazed at her, her tank top and freckled shoulders and her red, smudgy mouth. Jesus Christ, he loved her so much. “Do you want to come in?” he asked, and it sounded a lot more like pleading than he necessarily meant for it to.

  Gabby didn’t answer for a second, her blue eyes unreadable in the darkness. Ryan held his breath.

  “Yeah,” she said, and it sounded like something beginning. “Yeah, I want to come in.”

  GABBY

  Gabby felt Ryan take her hand as they made their way down the short hallway that led to his bedroom, putting a finger to his lips so they wouldn’t wake up his mom. His place wasn’t entirely familiar to her: they’d never spent as much time at Ryan’s as they had at Gabby’s house. For all his I’m an open book talk, he could be cagey about it, which she thought probably had to do with how small it was in here: the low ceilings and narrow doorways, the kitchen and bathrooms that hadn’t been updated since way before they were born. To Gabby it had always felt cozy, the millions of photos on the walls in the living room and Ryan’s hockey trophies all clustered on the fireplace mantel, the wallpaper in the kitchen with its print of tiny herbs tied with bows. Ryan’s mom ran her dog grooming business out of the basement, barks and yelps perpetually echoing up the staircase, coupled with the Sleater-Kinney Luann liked to listen to while she worked.

  Tonight, though, it was quiet.

  “Come here,” Ryan murmured, pulling her through the door at the end of the hallway and shutting it safely behind them. His room was small and a little close smelling, worn blue carpeting and a standard boy-plaid comforter. A ragged poster of Brian Leetch from the New York Rangers was tacked on the wall above the desk. Ryan’s dad had bought it for him when he was still in diapers, Gabby knew. It had literally hung above his crib before he could walk.

  Ryan clicked the desk light on now, bright enough that they could see each other’s faces, and Gabby looked at him for a moment: his scrum of messy hair and his friendly brown eyes, the tiny discoloration on the edge of his lower lip where he’d taken a hockey stick to the mouth sophomore year. God, he was so familiar in every way but this one. She couldn’t believe how this night had turned out. “Are we really doing this right now?” she asked.

  “I mean, I think—” Ryan looked sheepish in the half dark, and suddenly very young. “If you—?”

  Gabby nodded. It wasn’t like she’d never thought about it. Of course she’d thought about it, starting the very first night they’d met freshman year, but so many things—so many moments, so many people—had happened between then and now that Gabby had very nearly forgotten. It was like how she’d wanted a pet zebra when she was five: back then she’d imagined in great detail its personality and what she’d feed it, the adventures the two of them might have. But she never thought she’d actually get a pet zebra, not really, and now, at eighteen years old, she didn’t even want one anymore.

  Except, apparently, she did.

  Gabby kissed him again then, urgent. Ryan slid his hands down her back. She pulled his shirt up over his head, shocking herself with her own boldness; his chest was smooth and start-of-summer pale.

  “Wait wait wait,” Ryan said suddenly. He was gasping, which surprised her. Gabby wasn’t used to him like this. He was such a lion of a person it was strange to feel like she could undo him, like she held that kind of power in her two shaking hands. “Are you too drunk to make good decisions?”

  Gabby shook her head, laughing a little. “I’m not drunk at all, nerd,” she told him. “I drove, remember?”

  “Oh yeah.” Ryan smiled. “Okay, good.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “No,” Ryan said immediately. “Definitely not.”

  Gabby raised her eyebrows. “What is that, then, the first time all week?”

  “You’re a rude person,” Ryan said, and kissed her again. He walked her backward across the carpet, pulling her shirt up and tossing it onto the desk chair. For a moment, he only just looked. Gabby squirmed a bit, surprised and a little embarrassed by the expression on his face. He was gazing at her—there was no other word for this—adoringly. She hadn’t thought Ryan had it in him to look at anyone like that, really, but especially not her.

  “Stop staring,” she ordered, nudging him roughly in the arm.

  “I can’t,” Ryan said. Then: “Wait, really?”

  “I—” Gabby paused, thought about it for a moment. Sighed theatrically. “No.”

  “Okay,” Ryan said, making a big goofy show of looking her up and down. “Good.”

  “Good,” Gabby echoed. She wrapped her arms around his neck, trying to relax into the warm, solid broadness of him. She wanted to do this—God, she thought as he worked the button on her jeans, she definitely wanted to do this—but try as she might she couldn’t ignore the persistent lick of anxiety at the base of her spine. After all, this was Ryan: her best friend, her Most Important Person. Even if this was a one-time thing—and that’s what it was, Gabby was pretty sure, some kind of aberrant graduation-induced insanity—the stakes felt ridiculously, absurdly high.

  And then there were the practical concerns: mainly, that she knew for a fact he’d already had sex with a million other people. Whereas Gabby herself—well.

  “Okay, here’s the thing, here’s the thing, though,” she finally said, peeling his hands off her body and lacing his fingers through hers, squeezing. “You realize I’ve never done this with a boy before.”

  “Oh,” Ryan said, and Gabby watched understanding dawn on his face. “I—right. I guess I knew that.” He paused for a second. “Right.”

  “Well, don’t think about it,” Gabby said, feeling strangely invaded. Some things were private, even from him. Especially from him. “Don’t be a perv.”

  “I’m not!” Ryan defended himself, then, with a crooked smile: “Well, okay, now I am.”

  Gabby frowned. “I’m serious,” she said. It had been real, what she and Shay had done together. She didn’t want him to
think it was some kind of performance for his benefit. “I didn’t say that to like, turn you on or something gross like that, that’s a whole other—”

  “No no no, definitely, of course, I know.” Ryan’s eyes went wide. “I didn’t mean it that way at all, I just—”

  “Uh-huh.” She didn’t want to talk about this anymore, so instead she pushed him down onto the bed. His sheets were worn and pilled from years of washing and probably a couple of days past clean. Gabby barely noticed, though, because here was Ryan tugging her underwear down her legs in the darkness, here were his hands and his hipbones and his good, familiar face.

  “I’m not going to lie to you,” he muttered into her neck, his mouth warm and friendly against her collarbone, “this definitely makes the Top Ten list.”

  Gabby shivered as he worked one hand down between them, her bare feet sliding against the hair on his legs. “Oh yeah?” she asked, struggling to keep her voice even. “And what Top Ten list is that, exactly?”

  “I don’t know,” Ryan admitted, voice muffled. “I have no idea. Every Top Ten list, maybe.”

  Gabby laughed. “Shut up,” she said, and yanked his head up to kiss him, and they didn’t talk any more after that.

  RYAN

  Ryan didn’t mean to fall asleep, but he must have, because when he woke up the sky was just starting to get light outside the window, and Gabby was pulling on her jeans across the room.

  “You’re leaving?” he asked, rolling over in his bed and looking at her. He’d never noticed the line of her neck before, the way her shoulder blades looked like bird wings moving under the pale skin of her upper back. He kind of just wanted to stare at her for the foreseeable future. He would have felt embarrassed, if he hadn’t felt so glad.

  Gabby nodded. “I have to get home,” she explained, pulling last night’s tank top over her head.

  “Why?” Ryan asked sleepily. “Stay. We’ll go to the diner and get eggs.”

  “I can’t,” Gabby said, and Ryan wasn’t sure if he was imagining a slight edge in her voice. “I need to be there before my dad wakes up, or he’s going to freak out and think I got murdered. Not to mention the fact that I don’t want your mom to catch me walk-of-shaming it out of your house.”

  Ryan frowned, sitting up on the mattress and scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I don’t know if I’d call it walk-of-shaming it, exactly.”

  “Oh no?” Gabby dug one flip-flop out from underneath his bed. “What would you call it?”

  “Well.” Ryan took a deep breath. Before last night he’d completely given up on the idea that any of this was still a possibility; now he felt like the universe had dropped one last chance in his lap. He’d have to be an idiot not to take it. “I mean, we could call it, like. The beginning of something. If you wanted.”

  “The beginning of—” For a moment Gabby just stared at him, still crouched on his bedroom carpet with a sandal in one hand. “Wait, you want to date?”

  Jesus Christ, it was like he’d suggested ritual sacrifices or a Tough Mudder. Ryan felt his spine straighten up. “Not with that tone in your voice, I don’t.”

  “No, no, no,” Gabby said, tipping backward and sitting down hard on the floor. “I just mean, like. You don’t really . . . date? One person?”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” Ryan demanded, stung. It wasn’t even true. “I dated Chelsea for like a full year.”

  “Okay, you’re right,” Gabby conceded immediately. “You’re right, that was fucked up. I’m sorry. I guess I just mean that, like . . . you don’t usually date one person? You definitely haven’t been dating one person lately? And I worry this would be, like, a Hallie Whiting situation.”

  Ryan shook his head, disbelieving. He’d hung out with Hallie Whiting for a grand total of like twenty minutes back in April, in between a softball player named Karly and a girl from the art club who called herself Fern; when he’d broken things off with Hallie, she’d sent him a note telling him to fuck himself with an ice pick along with a Spotify playlist made entirely of songs by Florence and the Machine. “You think that’s what this would be?” he asked. “You think you’d be Hallie Whiting in this situation?”

  “I don’t know,” Gabby said, tucking her messy hair behind her ears. “I mean, not the ice pick thing, obviously, but—”

  “Is this about Hallie Whiting?” Ryan asked suddenly, not liking at all how close to desperate he sounded. “Or other girls? Like, do you think I’m—”

  “Kind of indiscriminate about who you hook up with?” Gabby supplied. “I mean, yes, but you already know that. And that’s not why—I mean, I don’t even know—” She broke off.

  “What?” Ryan prodded, somehow managing to suppress the urge to tell her he was only indiscriminate because she’d never been an option. Shit, this was not how he’d pictured this happening. “It’s me, just say it.”

  “I mean, I don’t know if I even want a relationship.”

  “Seriously?” Ryan blinked. Didn’t girls always want relationships? He felt like he’d spent all senior spring trying to avoid getting into relationships with girls who wanted them. “With anyone? Or just with me?”

  “With anyone!” Gabby exploded, then glanced nervously at his bedroom door and lowered her voice. “We’re leaving in two months. I don’t know if I think it’s a good idea to start anything with anybody.” She shook her head. “Or maybe just with you,” she admitted after a moment. “I don’t know, Ryan. Do you see any scenario in which trying to date doesn’t mean we aren’t friends anymore?”

  “So then why did you just have sex with me, Gabby?”

  “Wait a minute.” Gabby scrambled to her feet like the room was on fire; she was taller than Ryan suddenly, him still sitting in his bed like a little kid. “Wait a minute. Since when does casual sex automatically mean something to you? You had casual sex with half the senior class this year, but now—”

  “This wasn’t casual sex to me!” Ryan hissed.

  “I—” Gabby looked at him for a minute, something clicking into place behind her eyes. “Oh,” she said.

  Oh. There it was. Jesus Christ, this fucking sucked. This was officially embarrassing now. This was a disaster. “Look,” Ryan said, getting up and grabbing for his T-shirt, for the boxers in a puddle on his floor. He wasn’t shy, but fuck. “Forget it, okay?”

  “No,” Gabby said, like the goddamn mule she was. “I don’t want to forget it. What does that mean, that it wasn’t—”

  “What does it mean?” Ryan gaped at her. It meant that he’d spent the last few years convincing himself nothing was ever going to happen between them. It meant that for a couple of hours last night he’d thought he’d been wrong. It meant that he’d let himself believe that maybe he was actually the kind of person she’d want to be with, smart or interesting or whatever, and it made him feel like an idiot of the first order to remember all over again what a total fantasy that was.

  But he wasn’t going to say any of that to her, clearly. Not now.

  “It means we can’t just go back to how it was now, okay?” he said finally. “Not after we—”

  “But why?” Gabby asked, and it sounded almost like she was begging him. “I don’t understand—we did it, so now our friendship is over regardless?”

  Ryan shook his head, frustrated; she was twisting things. “That’s not—”

  “Why does sex have to be the only thing that matters? Why does it have to automatically change four years of—”

  “Because it does!”

  “You’re being an infant,” she said. “You’re being exactly the kind of person you hate when people think you are.”

  The unfairness of it was staggering. “I’m telling you I want to try to be with you, Gabby. I’m telling you I’ve wanted that for a long time. And if you don’t want it then that’s fine, I can’t do anything about that, but you don’t get to call me an asshole on top of it.”

  “I’m not calling you an asshole!” Gabby said. “And I’m not saying I do
n’t want it, even.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I’m scared.”

  “Great,” Ryan snapped. “Something new and different for you, then.”

  Right away he knew that was the wrong way to handle it; sure enough, Gabby’s eyes flashed. “That was mean,” she said. “You know what, that was a low blow, and now I am calling you an asshole, and I’m leaving.” She grabbed her bag from where she’d dropped it on the floor on their way in here, swiped her car keys with a rattle off his desk. “I’ll see you later, Ryan.”

  “Gabby—” Ryan broke off, baffled by how fast this had gone pear-shaped on him. He wanted to grab his words right out of the air. But it was too late now; they were in this. He’d meant it. There was no turning back. “Fine,” he said, blowing a breath out. “Go, then.”

  Gabby went.

  NUMBER 9

  THE BEGINNING

  FRESHMAN YEAR, FALL

  RYAN

  Coach Harkin kept them late again on Friday afternoon, so it was after five by the time the van dropped them back at school. Ryan showered up and shoved his hockey gear into his locker, then slung his backpack over one shoulder and ambled down the bleachy-smelling hallway out into the parking lot. It was colder than it had been this morning, Halloween coming, the oak trees on the lawn of the high school shedding their papery brown leaves in heaving gusts. The sun was already starting to set, and Ryan frowned a bit at the sky as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his varsity jacket. It creeped him out, when it got dark early like this. A lot of stuff had kind of creeped him out the last few days, truth be told.

  Don’t be such a wuss, Ryan scolded himself, shaking his head like maybe he could knock the thoughts of last night loose that way. His dad had come down to get the last of his stuff from the house, loading his favorite chair and the bedroom TV and his own ancient hockey gear into a beat-up van he’d borrowed from his friend Skippy. Things had started off civilly enough between his parents—after all, what did they have left to fight about at this point?—but pretty soon they were at it again, first over some odds and ends from the kitchen that Ryan was pretty sure neither of them actually wanted, then over the waitress Ryan was pretty sure they didn’t think he knew about, and then, finally, about money. Always money, in the end.