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 yours is still making that noise.”
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?”
“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.”