Top Ten by Katie Cotugno
“What?” Ryan asked. “What do you mean?”
“If I gave stuff more of a chance? You never used to pull that with me before we were dating.”
Ryan blinked. “It’s not about us dating,” he said, even though he’d literally just been thinking the opposite. “And it’s not like I never said—”
“You didn’t,” Gabby countered. “So I don’t know why you’re saying it now. On top of which, how much longer is it going to take before you realize that this stuff isn’t fun to me?” Her voice was getting louder. “It’s not like you just met me, Ryan, Jesus Christ.”
“Fine,” Ryan said. “What about stuff that is fun to you, then?”
Gabby shook her head. “What exactly do you imagine I want to be doing that I’m not doing?”
“That photo thing last summer,” Ryan said immediately. Wow, he hadn’t even known he was carrying that example around in his back pocket, but there it was. “The camp thing. You wanted to do that, right? But you didn’t.”
Oh, she did not like that: “Shut up,” Gabby said, eyes flashing. “I don’t want to talk about this. Forget it, okay? It’s fine. We’ll go to the thing, I can put on a show, I can do it.”
“Gabby—”
“No, it’s fine,” she said again, setting her jaw in the way that meant she’d decided. “You’re right: we stayed in last night. It’s fine.”
Ryan looked at her for a long minute; it occurred to him, not for the first time since they’d started dating at the beginning of the summer, that he was a little bit out of his league. Finally he sighed. “I’m going to get in the shower, okay? If Remy texts, will you just text him back for me and tell him we’ll get him?”
“Sure,” Gabby said, not quite looking at him. “Of course.”
GABBY
Remy Dolan texted almost immediately after Ryan got in the shower: On the train, get in at 814. Gabby texted back just like she’d promised—see? she wanted to yell in the direction of the bathroom, here I am being normal and friendly—then hesitated for a moment, sitting cross-legged on Ryan’s bed and flicking idly up through their message history.
She didn’t mean to snoop, not exactly—she knew it was wrong and invasive, whether she was pissed at him or not—but it wasn’t like she was creeping on his texts with other girls, and anyway there was always something kind of entertaining to her about the way Ryan talked to his guy friends, all their dudes and bros and casual swearing. It was like seeing another version of him, catching sight of him through a window in town. It occurred to Gabby again that she missed him, even though he was just in the other room. It occurred to her that she’d been missing him for a while.
Ryan was right, that he hadn’t talked to this guy in forever; in less than a minute she’d scrolled all the way back to freshman year. She was about to set the phone down—was about to go into the bathroom, was about to apologize for their stupid, useless fight—when she froze:
Dude what happened to you last night? Past-Remy wanted to know. You bail?
Nah, Past-Ryan had texted back, ended up stuck with celia hart’s sister all night.
Ooo you guys hook up?
Ha dude no. She was a giant loser.
Gabby’s eyes flicked up over the timestamp, though she already knew there was only one night he could be talking about: sure enough, the conversation was from the morning after the party. The morning after the very first time they met.
She was a giant loser.
She was a—
The shower chunked off inside the bathroom. Gabby could taste the iron tang of her own heart. She grabbed her purse, wrenched the bedroom door open—and found Ryan standing on the other side.
RYAN
“Hey,” Ryan said, dripping all over the matted carpet in the hallway. “Where you going?”
Gabby didn’t say anything for a moment. She looked like she’d died while he was washing his back.
Ryan frowned. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Gabby. Hey. What happened?”
Gabby shrugged. “A giant loser, huh?” she asked.
“What?” Ryan stared at her blankly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Gabby sighed. She went back into his bedroom and swiped his phone up off the dresser, thrust it out in his direction so that he could see the screen. “It’s from after Celia’s party,” she said dully. “The first night we met.”
Ryan scanned the texts, his heart tripping with recognition even after all this time. He knew he should start apologizing immediately—he meant to start apologizing immediately—but when his eyes flicked back to Gabby’s what came out of his mouth was, “What are you doing looking through my texts?”
Gabby’s jaw dropped. “You told me to message that guy for you!”
“I know, but—”
Gabby huffed a breath out. “Look, I know I snooped, okay? And I’m sorry. But that’s not the point here, and you know it.”
Ryan did know. His heart was pounding crazily, adrenaline pumping; somewhere at the back of his head he wondered if this was what it felt like to have a panic attack. “Gabs,” he said, trying to keep his voice even, “that was four years ago. It was before I had any idea what you were actually like.”
“What I was actually—” Gabby broke off then, took a deep breath before continuing. “You know,” she said, leaning back against the doorjamb, “it never mattered to me that you didn’t remember the night we met, not really. Because I remembered it. And I always thought that the details didn’t make a difference because, like . . . you were a stranger, and you were popular, and you were cool. And you still saw me, even if it was just for a little while.” She stood upright again, shook her head. “But it turns out you didn’t.”
Something about the way she said it caught in Ryan’s skin like a fishhook. “What do you mean, the details didn’t make a difference?” he asked. “What details?”
Gabby shook her head again. “Forget it. You’re missing the whole point.”
“No way,” Ryan said. “What?”
“Ryan—”
“Gabby.”
Gabby looked at him for a moment, eyes dark and hot. “Fine,” she announced, and it sounded like she was putting a curse on him. “You wanna know the details, Ryan? We made out the first night we met.”
Ryan blinked at her. He felt . . . concussed. “What?”
“They very first night we met,” Gabby repeated. “Up in my room. We kissed. And I had no idea that you were going to be too wasted to remember—”
“We kissed?”
“Yes, Ryan.” Gabby scowled at him. “I am sorry to inform you, you told this giant loser that you liked her mouth, and I was stupid enough to—”
“Gabby,” he interrupted; he wanted her to stop talking with that tone in her voice, like she hated him. “Really?”
“You think I’m making it up?”
“No, of course not, I just—” Ryan tried to stop gaping at her and couldn’t. It felt like their whole entire friendship was reshuffling itself in his head. He thought of how dubious she’d been that very first night he ever came to Monopoly. He thought of how she’d yelled at him the morning he woke up on her floor. “You didn’t tell me?”
“Why should I have?” she snapped. “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me. And it looks like I was right.”
“Gabby, come on.” Ryan reached for her arm, suddenly acutely aware he was still only wearing his towel; it put him at a disadvantage, and Gabby scooted out of his reach. “I was unequivocally a dick at the beginning of freshman year, you know that. I don’t need to remember that party to know I probably acted like an asshole. I didn’t know you were you when I met you; I had no idea I was meeting my best friend. You’re different from everybody else in my life, do you get that?”
Gabby shrugged head. “I was, maybe.”
Ryan felt his eyes narrow. “What does that mean?”
“It means everything has been fucked up since we started dating; haven’t you noticed that?
“What?” Ryan stared at her. “Now you’re just being insane.”
“Don’t call me that,” Gabby said immediately, and Ryan held his hands up in surrender.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right.”
But Gabby wasn’t listening. “This was a massive, massive mistake,” she was saying, the pitch of her voice rising; he knew better than to try and touch her now. “We never should have started dating. I never should have let you talk me into—”
“Talk you into?” Ryan felt like she’d punched him. “Is that what this was, us dating? Me pressuring you into something you didn’t even really want to begin with?”
“No!” Gabby shook her head. “That’s not—I don’t mean—”
“You said you wanted to do this, Gabby. And I’m the idiot who took you at your word.”
“I did want to do this!” Gabby insisted. “Of course I wanted to do this. But you don’t think it’s been a little bit of a disaster in practice, really? Can you honestly stand there and tell me that?”
Ryan didn’t know how to answer that. Obviously it hadn’t been perfect. But a disaster—that stung to hear her say, to be honest. That really fucking sucked.
“Well,” Ryan said, mimicking her tone exactly; he knew he sounded nasty, but he didn’t particularly care. “I can stand here and honestly tell you that you shouldn’t come to this party with me tonight, I think that much is pretty obvious. And from the way you’ve been talking it sounds like we should probably quit doing a shit ton of other stuff together, too.”
Gabby was wide-eyed and terrified looking, like the implications of this fight were suddenly becoming real to her. “Ryan—” she started, but he shook his head to stop her talking. He wanted her out of his house like he hadn’t wanted anything in quite some time.
“I’ll see you around, Gabby,” he told her, eyes on the hallway behind her.
“I—okay,” Gabby said after a moment. “I’ll see you around.”
GABBY
Gabby was sitting at the kitchen table when Celia let herself in through the back door late that night, flicking the overhead lights on and letting out a bark. “Jesus Christ,” Celia said, hand on her heart like a romance novel heroine preparing to swoon. “You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing sitting here in the dark?”
“You’re home?” Kristina asked, coming into the kitchen in her pajamas at the sound of their voices. It was after ten; Gabby had heard her watching a movie with their parents in the living room but hadn’t quite been able to motivate herself to go in and say hello. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting here. She felt like a wounded animal who’d dragged herself into a cave.
“Who’s home?” There was their mom appearing behind Kristina in the doorway. “How long have you been here?” she asked Gabby. Then, looking at her more closely: “What’s wrong?”
Gabby did not want to talk about this. Gabby did not want to talk about anything, possibly for the rest of her life. Still, she might as well tell them all at once and get it over with. Her voice was surprisingly steady as she announced it: “Ryan and I broke up.”
“You what?” Kristina said, at the same time as her mom said, “Oh, Gabby.”
“I—” Celia began; Gabby was on her feet in an instant, whirling on her.
“I don’t want to hear it, Celia,” she snapped, slamming her hands down on the kitchen table. Kristina jumped about a thousand feet in the air. “Whatever great big-sister wisdom you’re about to dispense about how Ryan was always an idiot to begin with, or about how I brought this on myself by being a giant weirdo about everything.” She was furious all of a sudden, rage cresting like a bright red wave inside her; she wanted to scratch and shove and bite. “Save it, okay? Just, for once in your entire life, I need you to keep your opinion to yourself.”
For a moment the kitchen was silent. “Gabby,” her mom said quietly, but Gabby barely heard. The worst part of how angry she was was how much it felt like panic, her heart thudding in her chest, violent as an act of war. She thought she could sprint from Colson clear across to North Dakota. Also, she thought she might be about to faint.
“I wasn’t going to say anything like that,” Celia said finally, setting her purse down on the table and looking—oh god—looking cowed. “I was just going to say I’m really sorry, and ask you if maybe you wanted me to make you a sandwich?”
“Oh.” Gabby nodded and sat back down at the table, all the fight going out of her at once. “Yes, please,” she said, looking up at her sister, then put her head down on the kitchen table and cried.
NUMBER 1
THE NEW BEGINNING
SUMMER AFTER SENIOR YEAR
GABBY
“Want to take a drive to Target?” Gabby’s mom asked, hovering in the doorway of her bedroom the following Saturday. Gabby was still in bed even though it was after eleven, under the covers scrolling unseeing through her phone. “See if they’ve got anything for your dorm?”
“No, thanks,” Gabby said to the wall, pulling the blankets more tightly around her. Her roommate info had come last week, though she’d left it unopened in her email. A couple of days after that, she’d stopped checking her email altogether. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Gabby, sweetheart,” her mom began, her deep breath audible from clear across the room. “You know I’m here if you ever want to talk about how you’re feeling, right? You know you can always come to me? Or if you ever wanted to talk to someone who wasn’t me, even—”
“I’m feeling great,” Gabby mumbled into the pillows, interrupting. “Just tired.”
“Gabby,” her mom said again, but Gabby didn’t answer. Eventually, her mom gave up and closed the door.
So. They were broken up. She’d gotten through it once before, Gabby reasoned; she thought she could probably do it again. Granted, they hadn’t been dating the first time, and she’d had Shay to cushion the blow of it, but still. She didn’t need him. It was what it was. It was fine.
It did not feel fine.
She missed being quiet with him. She missed his loud, stupid laugh. She missed his hands and his mouth and the steadiness of his best friendship but worse than all of that was the undeniable fact that some very important, tethered part of her had shut down when they broke up and now she seemed to be hurtling off through space at a million miles per hour, her oxygen tank rapidly emptying out.
Her mind was a ceaseless churning, wracked by the feeling that something terrible was about to happen. She woke up sweating in the middle of the night. Her jaw started aching, then her neck and the back of her head and her shoulders. Her body felt a hundred years old.
“Go out,” Celia suggested, when she caught Gabby downing ibuprofen in the bathroom. “Get some sunshine.”
“Wow, thanks,” Gabby said, scowling at her in the mirror. “You know, I think you just solved all my problems at once.”
Even if she had wanted to go out, it wasn’t like there were a whole lot of people clamoring to spend time with her. It didn’t take long at all to become clear that the friends she’d thought she and Ryan had in common—Sophie, Nate, Anil—were very much Ryan’s friends, people who’d tolerated and even liked her but who, when forced to pick a side, didn’t blink before deciding. Gabby couldn’t blame them. She would have chosen Ryan, too.
Michelle was the one exception, showing up with iced teas and pointedly flinging the windows open, perching on the edge of Gabby’s desk with the comfort of a person who’d been visiting her house for the better part of a decade. They’d hung out a little more sporadically in the last couple of years, but Michelle was a really good friend, actually. Probably Gabby hadn’t appreciated her enough. Probably Gabby had done a lot of things wrong.
“Jacob and I are going to a show down in
Gabby considered it—she hadn’t left the house in three full days—but the idea of taking the Metro North all the way into the city, then getting on another train and going to Brooklyn, then standing in a hot, crowded room where she probably wouldn’t be able to see and listening to music she didn’t already know she liked seemed so profoundly difficult and terrifying in this moment that Gabby was certain there was no way on earth she could go.
She scrubbed a hand through her hair, remembering Ryan telling her she never wanted to do things. Remembering Celia telling her to go outside. She sat there in bed for another minute, debating, before finally sitting up and pushing her hair out of her face. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay. I can come.”
They got on the train in Poughkeepsie, found three seats together on the river side. Normally Gabby really liked the train, the soothing rocking motion and the view of the Hudson, but she’d had a gnawing headache since that morning; she’d chalked it up to garden-variety dread, refusing to bail on the concert even though she was dying to. Annoying as it was, she told herself firmly, Celia was right. She couldn’t expect to feel better if she stayed in the house all the time.
She sat back in her seat and looked out the window, half listening as Michelle and Jacob talked about the band’s newest EP; Michelle had sent her a link to listen, but she’d never actually been motivated to do it. Her vision was a little spotty, Gabby noticed as she stared at a poster for a language immersion program. She blinked, then blinked again; maybe her eyes were tired? She hadn’t exactly been sleeping well lately. Maybe she needed glasses before she went away to school.
Shit, she did not want to go away to school.
Gabby squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again: it seemed like maybe it was worse now, things going dark and blurry around the edges of her vision. It occurred to her that maybe this was more serious than just looking at her phone too much. God, what if there was something really wrong with her? She imagined it now, the doctor’s drawn face as she diagnosed cancer or lupus or some tropical disease Gabby had never even heard of. What if she woke up one morning at college completely blind? What if she was going completely blind right now?