Top Ten by Katie Cotugno
“Did you hook up with her?” Gabby asked now, raising her eyebrows in reply to a nasty look from a dark-haired girl in cutoffs crossing the parking lot; Ryan looked at her guiltily, and Gabby sighed. “Dude, did you hook up with every girl in Colson or what?”
“Not every girl,” Ryan defended himself. “Just like, eighty percent.”
Gabby snorted, although she didn’t actually think it was that funny at all. It wasn’t the hookups themselves that bothered her, exactly—or, okay, they bothered her a little, but she knew it wasn’t fair to be annoyed with Ryan for stuff that had happened back before they were together. It just felt like they were constantly bumping into people who were sizing her up, wondering what a guy like Ryan was doing dating a nervous, awkward girl like her. It was like every worry she’d had at the beginning of their friendship was back in full force, only a hundred times worse because now there was sex involved.
And then there was the other piece, which was the fact that forever running into girls Ryan had gotten bored of and promptly discarded over the last four years didn’t exactly boost Gabby’s confidence about her own ability to hold his attention. For so long she’d kept herself apart from his never-ending parade of five-minute girlfriends—been openly contemptuous of them, even—and now here she was joining their ranks at the very last minute, bringing up the rear of the march. It was a gross thought; she felt like a gross person for having it. And for the first time since she’d known him, she thought Ryan was a little gross, too.
She was trying to figure out how to explain that to him in a way that didn’t sound like some horrible accusation when somebody called his name. Gabby winced, expecting another ex-girlfriend, but it was actually a preppy couple approaching them now in matching Cornell T-shirts: “Hey!” Ryan called. He’d played hockey with the dude, whose name was Turner; his girlfriend, Sara, was visiting from Vermont. “What are you guys up to?”
“Having some people over to Turner’s tonight, actually,” the girl said. “You guys should come.”
“That sounds awesome,” Ryan said immediately, then looked at Gabby. “You down?”
Gabby hesitated. On one hand, she wanted to go to this random stranger’s house like she wanted a hole in the head, and if she and Ryan hadn’t been dating, she definitely would have begged off. On the other hand, she and Ryan were dating. She didn’t want to be a wet blanket. “Sure,” she managed. “Sounds like fun.”
It was not fun. It wasn’t a rager—maybe a dozen people total hanging out in a basement rec room, weed smoke and microwave popcorn and Scarface on TV—but in some ways that made it worse: there was nowhere for her to hide. It felt like everybody was wondering what she was doing here—including Felicity Trainor, who’d had a hate-on for Gabby since sophomore year. “She does not,” Ryan said when she mentioned it in the kitchen, like she was being a crazy person. “She probably doesn’t even remember who you are.” He stopped then. “I didn’t mean—”
“No,” Gabby said, cheeks flushing. “I know. It’s fine.”
The night dragged on. Gabby sat on the edge of her couch with her beer, feeling her anxiety creep higher and higher, like the mercury in a cartoon thermometer. It wasn’t logical—Gabby knew that—but her stupid anxiety had never been logical. She wanted to leave. She would have left, six months or two years ago; it was close enough that she could have walked home. She wanted to get in bed and read her damn Tudors book until she felt calm and comfortable in her skin again.
She glanced across the kitchen now, watching Ryan in the middle of a crowd of people she vaguely recognized from school. The whole party seemed to orbit around him, like he had a spotlight on him everywhere he went. Normally it was a thing Gabby liked about him—admired, even—but tonight it was annoying to her in a way it hadn’t been in years. She resented him for not being anxious, she realized. She’d never felt that way before they were dating. It made her feel about two inches tall.
“Hey,” she said finally, slipping her hand into Ryan’s, tipping her mouth up close to his ear. “I’m going to go.”
“Really?” Ryan looked surprised. “Are you not having fun?”
Gabby smiled in a way she hoped was charmingly self-deprecating. “Not really,” she said.
Ryan frowned. “Why not?” he asked—sounding so earnest, like he honestly couldn’t understand why this was an issue for her. As if he thought she might be an entirely different person now that they were together.
“Just had enough,” she said, wincing as it came out. She knew it sounded like she’d had enough of him, which wasn’t true. Was it? “You stay, though.”
“No,” Ryan said. “No, I can take you.”
“Ryan,” Gabby said. She didn’t want to have a panicker in front of a bunch of strangers, and she could feel one creeping up on her: her lips tingling, a knot of tension forming like a tumor at the back of her neck. It felt like the attacks were coming on more frequently lately, sharper and with less warning. It had occurred to her to write down when she had them so that she could see if that was actually true, but the truth was that part of her didn’t really want to know the answer. The whole thing made her feel insane. “Really.”
Ryan looked at her for a moment, worried—but also, Gabby thought, a little annoyed. “Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
Gabby let out a breath she’d been holding for what felt like hours. “Yeah,” she promised. “Absolutely.” She slipped out the door and headed across the lawn toward the sidewalk, the summer breeze cool on the back of her neck.
GABBY
Ryan’s mom got married in a restaurant overlooking the Hudson River at the end of July, white tablecloths and baby’s breath and a DJ playing Frank Sinatra songs; Ryan twirled Gabby around to “Summer Wind” while his great-aunt Dolly cooed at them from her wheelchair. “They look really happy,” Gabby said, nodding over Ryan’s shoulder at Luann and Phil, who were sitting at a table with their arms linked, feeding forkfuls of turkey tetrazzini to one another.
“I guess,” Ryan said, rolling his eyes. “I’m just surprised he didn’t bring the dogs.”
Gabby came out of a stall in the ladies’ room a little while later and ran into Luann reapplying her lipstick in the mirror above the sink, mouth puckered; right away Luann hugged Gabby tight. “You are like a daughter to me, you know that?” she asked, sounding slightly maudlin. She’d had a lot of champagne, Gabby thought. “I’m so glad you and Ryan have finally found each other for real.”
Gabby didn’t know what that meant, exactly, but something about it made her uncomfortable. Hadn’t it been real when they were just friends? “I’m glad too,” she finally said. “Congratulations again, Luann, really.”
She found Ryan out on the back deck of the restaurant overlooking the water, his tie loosened and the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up in a way Gabby had to admit she really appreciated. “I think your mom is planning what to name our children,” she reported, looking south at the outline of the bridge in the distance. The sun was just starting to set.
“Oh, Jesus. Sorry.” Ryan made a face. “She’s nuts. I guess I should be glad she’s thinking about grandchildren, though, and not, like, trying to give me a little brother with—with—” He broke off, shaking his head. “What’s his face.”
Gabby felt her eyes narrow. “Phil?”
“Yeah.”
She looked at him more closely then, leaning against the wooden railing; she could smell the brackish water from the river down below. “Ryan . . .”
“What?” he asked irritably.
“Are you okay?”
“What, because I—?” He shook his head. “I had a brain fart, Gabby. It happens.”
“No, I know.” It happened, sure. But something about it was bothering her, suddenly. The headaches he’d been getting. How crabby he sometimes seemed. “Ryan,” she said again. “Listen to me. Do you think maybe you should go back to the doctor about this?”
“What?” Ryan looked at her l
“Because you’re eighteen years old and you’ve had three concussions and you just forgot your new stepdad’s name.”
“Don’t do that,” Ryan said immediately, standing up straighter. “First of all, I forgot his name for one second because I always call him Dachshund Guy. Second of all—”
“It’s getting worse, right?” Gabby asked, though she already knew it, the certainty like a sickness deep inside her gut. Right away she thought of a bunch of different times this summer she hadn’t let herself articulate it, the memories flooding in like a tidal wave: The night they’d gotten to the movie theater and realized he’d bought tickets to the wrong show on the website. The time he’d gotten cut off in traffic on the parkway on the way back and completely lost his mind, yelling and swearing even though he was normally the most laid-back driver Gabby knew. Normal stuff, she’d told herself, dumb stuff. But taken together, she couldn’t act like they didn’t start to add up. “Your head is getting worse. And in a month you’re going to be showing up for practice in Minnesota with guys who are three times your size and—”
“Thanks a lot,” Ryan said.
“Really?” Gabby asked. “That’s the part of what I’m saying that you’re choosing to hear?”
“Gabby, I can’t have this argument with you, I mean it. Not again. Not now.”
“What does that mean, not now?”
“It means it’s my mom’s fucking wedding and I would love if you could act like my girlfriend and not the police.”
“I—” Gabby shook her head. “Wow.”
“I’m sorry,” Ryan said immediately, taking her hands and lacing their fingers together. “I just—I really, really don’t—” He sighed loudly, looking out at the water for a moment. “Look, let’s go back inside, okay? You know at some point this guy is going to play ‘New York, New York’ and all my mom’s old-lady friends are going to want to do a kick line. You don’t want to miss that, do you?”
Gabby hesitated. She wanted to push him. She would have pushed him—she had pushed him on stuff like this, in the past—but something about the look on his face, something about his act like my girlfriend made her feel like it wasn’t a good idea. And that was wrong, Gabby thought. That wasn’t how it was supposed to work. They were supposed to be closer than ever now, weren’t they? Instead it was just this weird, sick anxiety all the time, like something bad was perpetually about to happen. Like she was going to lose him either way.
“Okay,” she said, and banged her head against his, just lightly. “Let’s go inside.”
It was time for cake anyway, a dense slab of chocolate and buttercream. It tasted like sand in her mouth.
GABBY
Gabby’s parents were sitting on the couch watching a movie about a giant tsunami when she came in that night, holding her pinching shoes by their skinny heels. They looked utterly relaxed, her dad leaning slightly forward—he was bonkers for disaster movies—while her mom paged idly through a design magazine, stretched out with her ankles crossed in his lap. They looked like they belonged together. They looked like they fit.
“How was the wedding?” Gabby’s mom called, motioning for Gabby to come into the living room; Gabby would have, except that all of a sudden she felt that awful tightness in her throat that suggested she might be about to burst into tears.
“Good!” she called over her shoulder, making a beeline for the staircase. God, what was wrong with her?
She had wriggled out of her dress and into her pajamas by the time her mom’s knock sounded on the other side of her bedroom door. “You want to try that again, maybe?” her mom asked softly, easing it open.
“Not really,” Gabby said, which was the truth, but then before she could stop herself she was sitting down hard on the bed and it was all coming out: his distance and his crankiness and their argument at the wedding, how worried she was about his brain.
“I mean, we fought before we were together, too, obviously,” she finished, feeling oddly embarrassed: she never unloaded on her mom this way. It made her feel exposed and incapable of handling herself. It made her feel like one of her sisters. “But we didn’t, like . . . bicker.”
Gabby’s mom nodded, sitting down beside her on the mattress. “That sounds hard.”
“It is hard,” Gabby blurted, before she could stop herself. “I miss him. Which is idiotic, because we’re—” She broke off. “Well, theoretically we’re closer than ever, right? We’re dating.”
Her mom considered that. “Theoretically, I guess,” she said after a moment. “Although I don’t think dating relationships are always better or closer than friendships, do you?”
Gabby shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, starting to feel a little bit sorry she’d said anything to begin with. “I guess not.”
“And it sounds like what you’re saying is that you feel less close to him now that you guys are romantic.”
“Oh god!” Gabby flung herself backward on the bed, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Is that what I’m saying? That can’t be what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying, isn’t it.”
“It sounds a little like that’s what you’re saying, yeah.” Her mom peeled Gabby’s hands off her face, linked their fingers together. “And if it’s true, maybe you ought to ask yourself why that is.”
“What are you guys talking about?” That was Kristina in the doorway in a pair of ratty boxers and one of Gabby’s T-shirts, eyes big and curious behind her glasses. “How was the wedding?”
“I’m having a conversation with Gabby right now,” her mom said, but Gabby shook her head.
“It’s fine,” she said to Kristina. “You can come in.”
Kristina bounded up onto the bed between them, wriggling like a puppy angling to get petted. Gabby’s mom obliged, running her fingers through Kristina’s tangled hair. “I think the question you need to ask yourself, sweetheart,” she continued, looking at Gabby over Kristina’s shoulder, “is what do you want?”
That was easy, Gabby thought. She wanted Ryan.
She just wasn’t entirely sure what that meant.
RYAN
“Okay, so I just texted Remy,” Ryan said the following weekend, yanking his T-shirt over his head and tossing it in the general vicinity of his hamper. “I’m gonna jump in the shower, but when he texts back with his train time will you just say got it and we’ll get him on the way to the party?”
Gabby nodded. She was lying on his bed in a way that somehow communicated she was intending on staying there for the foreseeable future, possibly all night long. Sure enough, she reached out her hand for Ryan’s, pulling him onto the mattress alongside her: “What if,” she asked, in her best let’s-make-a-deal voice, “instead of going to the hockey party, we didn’t go to the hockey party and we just stayed here and made out instead?”
“Tempting,” Ryan said, leaning over and pressing his mouth against hers. It was tempting, too, although to be honest it was also a little bit annoying. He’d been looking forward to this party all summer, a reunion with a bunch of his old teammates who were back from college; he knew Gabby probably didn’t want to go, but having her confirm it out loud sort of irritated him. “But I can’t.” He straightened up again, wriggled out of his cargo shorts. “Even if I didn’t want to go, I’m Remy’s ride.”
“Nice boxers,” Gabby noted, propping herself up on one elbow and nodding at the robot print. Then, “I don’t even know who Remy Dolan is.”
“Yes, you do,” Ryan explained, and this time he was more than a little annoyed. Sometimes it was like she forgot who his friends were on purpose. “You met him a bunch of times; he was my Big Brother on the team my freshman year. I hardly ever talked to him outside of hockey, though. Anyway, he got like two DUIs in Binghamton, so now he doesn’t have a license anymore.”
“Charming,” Gabby muttered, flopping moodily onto her back and staring at the ceiling. “Why don’t you just go without me? You can take my car if you
Ryan frowned. “I’m not using you to drive me places. I want you to come.”
“Why?” Gabby sounded genuinely baffled. “You used to do stuff like this without me all the time.”
You didn’t used to be my girlfriend, Ryan wanted to say, but thought better of it. It wasn’t that being his girlfriend meant she owed him anything, but it did mean that he wanted to show up places with her occasionally. It meant his buddies noticed that she never came out. “We stayed in last night,” he reminded her. “And the night before that, actually.”
“I’m not saying you have to stay in,” Gabby argued, sitting up on the mattress. “I’m saying you should go. But it’s going to be a bunch of dudes I don’t know, you’re probably going to leave me alone to talk to people’s boring girlfriends who are strangers, you’ll be shitfaced anyway—”
“Who says I’m going to be shitfaced?”
“I feel anxious about it, Ryan!” She shrugged, a quick aggressive jerk of her shoulders. “I don’t want to go.”
What was he supposed to say to that, seriously? Like, in all honesty, how was he supposed to argue? “Okay,” he told her finally, shrugging back at her, holding his hands up. “Don’t go, then.”
Gabby sighed loudly. “Are you mad at me now?”
“I’m not mad at you,” Ryan said, although truthfully he kind of was. Still, it felt harder to say it to her now that they were a couple. It felt like everything had a lot more weight. “I just—I feel like you let being anxious keep you from doing fun stuff a lot of the time. I feel like if you gave stuff more of a chance—”
“Wait wait wait,” Gabby interrupted, eyes narrowing. “Seriously? Since when do you say stuff like that to me?”