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.”
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?”