“Is this coming from your mother?” he asked.
Ryan looked at him blankly. “No,” he said, “it’s coming from me.”
“Because I’m just saying, this sounds like the kind of thing that’s coming from your mother. You’re cranky around the house, so she says you can’t play hockey?”
“It’s not like that,” Ryan explained. “It’s just—”
“You know how many times I got cracked in the head, when I was playing?” Ryan’s dad continued. “You know how many of my teeth got knocked out? A shattered hand when I was twenty, a broken wrist. And you’re quitting because you’ve got a headache?”
Ryan felt himself blushing now. “It’s kind of more than a headache—”
“I knew you were soft, kid, but Jesus. Your mom really did a job on you.”
“This isn’t about Mom!” Ryan said, more loudly than he meant to. “It’s about me. I know that’s hard for you to recognize, maybe, but for once in my entire life, this is about me.”
His dad’s eyes narrowed across the table. “What’s that supposed to mean, exactly?”
“It means—” Ryan broke off, let a breath out. This was humiliating. “It means I’ve done a lot of stuff in my life to, like, try and make you proud of me, or whatever. And—”
“What’s wrong with wanting to make your family proud of you?” his dad interrupted.
“No, that’s not what I’m—” Ryan blew out a breath. He wasn’t a good arguer; his dad knew how to twist things, to make them seem different in the telling than they’d actually been. Abruptly, he wished Gabby was here. For all her anxiety and panic, he’d never met anybody less afraid of a fight.
Thinking about Gabby gave him a strange burst of confidence; Ryan lifted his chin. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get your attention,” he said, voice surprisingly steady. “And playing hockey was a big part of that. And I’m not saying I don’t love hockey, because I do. I do. But playing at school and hoping it’s going to get you to show up more is just—” He shook his head. “It’s never going to work. I’m never going to be important to you, not really. I mean, you literally didn’t call me on my birthday last year. I can’t do it anymore. I don’t even want to. And I’m definitely not going to bash my own brain in trying.” He made himself look across the table. “You haven’t actually been such a good dad, Dad.”
“And you’ve been an ungrateful little sponge, mostly,” his dad said, with an ease that took Ryan’s breath away. “Neither one of us got what we wanted, I guess.”
“Okay,” Ryan managed after a moment. “Well. I came here to tell you I wasn’t going to play hockey anymore for a while, and now I told you I’m not going to play hockey anymore for a while, so.” He tossed his napkin on the table, slid out of the booth. “Being my dad and all, I guess you can buy me this lunch.”
He headed across the diner and out into the parking lot, felt the sun on the back of his neck. He kept waiting for the pain and the anger to hit him, like the time between the moment you stub your toe and the moment you actually feel it, but as Ryan unlocked the door it occurred to him that he felt better than he’d felt all summer. He actually felt kind of . . . light.
And there was only one person in the whole entire world he wanted to tell about it.
He got in the car and stuck the key in the ignition. He rolled down the windows, headed home.
GABBY
Gabby sat on the sofa in the living room, wrapped in a blanket with the AC blasting, scrolling idly through her Instagram feed. She still hadn’t taken a single picture since the beginning of the summer, but her hair was washed today, which she was considering an improvement: baby steps, after all. She was examining a shot of a cornfield that seemed to glow in pink late-afternoon sunlight, trying to figure out what filter it had on it, when the doorbell rang.
Gabby sighed and waited for somebody else to get it before it rang again and she remembered she was the only one home. But she vaguely remembered her mom saying something about waiting on a delivery for a client, so—keeping her blanket around her like a cape—she got up and flung the door open.
There was Ryan on the other side of it, tall and summer tan and so gut-punchingly familiar Gabby almost couldn’t breathe.
“Um,” she said, suddenly acutely aware that she looked like a crazy person. Which, she supposed, probably fit. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Ryan said, tilting his head to the side and apparently deciding not to say anything about her invalid cosplay. “You wanna go bowling with me?”
Gabby huffed out a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Sure,” she heard herself tell him, turning her face up into the afternoon sunlight. “Let’s go.”
RYAN
Langham Lanes had three different little-kid birthday parties happening, so instead of waiting around to bowl, they got sodas and a bag of buttered popcorn from the concession stand and sat on the warm hood of Ryan’s car with their ankles crossed, ice rattling inside their waxy paper cups. “I’ve barely been outside in weeks,” Gabby confessed, holding one hand up and shielding her eyes from the glare in the parking lot. “I’m like a naked mole rat.”
“I don’t know,” Ryan said automatically. “You seem okay to me.” But when he turned his head to look at her, letting himself consider her full-on for the first time since she’d opened her front door, it occurred to him that he actually wasn’t so sure. Her cheekbones were more pronounced than usual; there were bluish circles under her eyes. When he glanced down at her hands, her nails were bitten down so far he winced. She was beautiful—she was Gabby, of course she was beautiful. But she also didn’t totally look like herself. “Are you?” he asked cautiously. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” Gabby started to nod, then stopped halfway through the gesture and shrugged instead. “No,” she said, sounding really and truly irritated about it. “Probably not. I don’t know.”
Ryan nodded, feeling like somebody had reached into his chest and squeezed. “You wanna tell me about it?” he asked.
Gabby shrugged again. “I will,” she said, picking at the lid of her soda cup. “But. You talk first.”
Ryan could do that for her, he thought. So he did: about his mom’s continued mission to clear their house of every speck of clutter; about Phil’s stupid dachshunds, one of whom had gotten loose the day before and run up and down the street for half an hour with a pair of Ryan’s boxers in its mouth. Finally he took a deep breath. “I’m not going to Minnesota,” he said.
Gabby’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?” she asked—more animated that he’d seen her all day, like for a moment she’d forgotten whatever was bothering her. Like she was Gabby again. “Why?”
Ryan made a face, a little irritated. “You know why,” he said. “You were the one—” He broke off.
“No no no, of course I know why,” Gabby agreed, nodding. “But I just—why?”
Ryan sighed, pulling his feet up onto the hood of the car and leaning all the way back against the windshield. “Because I don’t want to be too brain damaged to remember my own name by the time I’m twenty-two,” he told her. “Because I’m good at this or whatever, but you were right that it’s not the only thing I’m good at. And because eventually you have to stop loving shit that doesn’t love you back.”
“I love you back,” Gabby blurted immediately, turning to look at him. The sun glinted off the gold in her hair. “I just, before we talk about anything else—you know that, right? That I love you back?”
Ryan gazed back at her for a moment. “Yeah,” he said slowly. As it came out of his mouth he realized that it was true. “I know that.”
“Good.” Gabby exhaled then, shoulders dropping. Both of them were quiet. “So what happens instead?” she asked.
“Coach Harkin knows a guy in admissions at Purchase,” Ryan explained, looking down at his hands and feeling oddly shy about it. “Tuition’s not bad, especially if I live at home the first year. I’m gonna do that instead, watch my brain a little. See if I can transfer do
wn the road.” He glanced up at her again, made a face. “Do you think that’s a bad idea?”
“Are you kidding me?” Now she was smiling. “I think it’s amazing. I think it’s such a good idea. But I just never thought you would—wow, Ryan. I think that is so, so good.”
Ryan let out a breath he’d been holding since he decided. It was a good plan, he knew that. But hearing her say it out loud didn’t hurt. He trusted her opinion more than anybody else’s; he always had. “Really?”
“Yes!” Gabby laughed and then stopped just as quickly, her face falling and her eyes filling with tears. “Hi,” she said, shaking her head and sniffling a little. “I missed you.”
“Hey hey, easy. I missed you too,” Ryan said, leaning forward to swipe at the tears on her face, licking them off his own thumb before he could think better of it. “I’m sorry I fucked it up so bad,” he blurted. “You and me.”
Gabby shook her head. “You didn’t fuck it up,” she said. “I fucked it up. Or, like, we both fucked it up.”
“Yeah, but you called it right from the beginning,” Ryan argued. “Maybe if I hadn’t pushed—”
“You didn’t push,” Gabby said. “I wanted it to work just as bad as you did. I guess I thought it would make everything better, right? Us being together.”
Ryan nodded, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “But it didn’t.”
“Why?” Gabby asked, sounding genuinely curious. “Like, what is it about us that—”
“That makes us better off as friends?” Ryan shrugged. “I don’t know, really. But I know I’d rather have you in my life that way than not at all.”
“Yeah?” Gabby asked, voice hopeful. “Me too.”
Ryan smiled. “Good,” he said. “Okay.”
They were quiet for a long minute then, watching the cars speed by on the street beyond the parking lot. Across the blacktop, a couple of kids skipped toward a station wagon, trailing brightly colored balloons.
“My parents think I need to be in therapy,” Gabby said.
That got Ryan’s attention. There was a tiny edge in her voice, like she was hoping he was going to contradict her; there had been a time when he might have for the sake of avoiding an argument, but now he only nodded. “Maybe,” he agreed.
Gabby sighed. “Probably,” she admitted, and lay back on the hood of the car. “I’m scared,” she confessed, looking up at the sky.
Ryan nodded. He was scared too, to be honest: of who he might be now that he wasn’t who he’d been planning, of the future and whatever it held. But sitting here with Gabby made him feel like he could handle it. Sitting here with Gabby made him feel weirdly brave.
“It’s okay,” Ryan told her, then took a chance and reached his hand out, lacing his fingers through hers. “You’re not by yourself.”
GABBY
“Okay,” Ryan said as he pulled the car into the loading area outside Gabby’s freshman dorm, an old brick building in downtown Manhattan with oxidized copper details around the tall, narrow windows. Cars and trucks and taxis crawled down the wide city street, horns honking and people shouting and late-summer sunlight glinting off the windshields; Gabby thought she could smell fall coming underneath the trash and car exhaust. “Did you pack shower shoes? You need shower shoes, otherwise you’ll get a foot fungus and all your toes will fall off.”
“Thank you.” Gabby rolled her eyes, fingers clutching nervously at the seat belt. “Do you want me to get out of your car or not?”
Ryan tilted his head to the side. “I mean, only if you’re ready,” he said, looking at her closely. “You ready?”
Gabby nodded. Her parents had been planning to drive her down into the city, but when Ryan volunteered to do it, she’d jumped at the offer: “I don’t want to say good-bye to you in front of a bunch of strangers,” she’d explained to her mom, perched on the arm of an Adirondack chair out in the yard earlier that week. “I’ll never be able to let you leave if that’s how we do it.”
It was kind of awkward, but Gabby was trying to say this stuff lately: how to figure out what would help her and then ask for it, how to let other people give her a hand. She’d started seeing a therapist the day after she and Ryan had talked in the Langham Lanes parking lot; she was learning to breathe through the panic, learning how to talk herself down. She had a roommate and a shower caddy and an appointment at the counseling center for first thing on Monday. She wanted to barf, more than a little bit. But she also felt weirdly okay.
“All right,” she said to Ryan now, hand curled around the handle of the passenger side door, feeling her lips twist in a smile. “Let’s go.”
They unloaded her suitcases and her desk lamp and her camera bag; they put everything in a canvas laundry cart, wheeled it over the bumpy, uneven sidewalk into the lobby of the dorm. All around them was the crush of other new freshmen and their families, the smells of perfume and sweat and the heat of eager bodies: A million new faces. A whole new life.
“So this is it, huh?” Ryan asked her when they were finished, shoving his hands into his back pockets. “See you around, and all of that?”
Gabby nodded. “This is it,” she said, swallowing her heart back down into her chest where it belonged. She wanted to reach into her rib cage and hand it to him for safekeeping, wanted him to know he had it no matter what else happened next. “Ryan—” She broke off.
“No, I know.” Ryan nodded, then shook his head a little, then made an exasperated face at himself. “Me too.”
“Okay.” Gabby felt the panic start to lick at her ankles; she took a deep breath then, tugging his wrists out of his pockets and squeezing both his hands. “But—”
“Gabby. I know.” Ryan smiled faintly, his long, knobby fingers laced through hers. “You want me to come up with you?” he asked her. “Help you get settled, all of that?”
Gabby exhaled, feeling her shoulders drop and her breathing slow to something like normal. She looked at him for a moment, her Ryan: calm and so loyal, steady as a beating heart. He was her most important person. He was her best friend in the world.
“Nah,” she said, and smiled at him. “I can do this one by myself.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Every once in a while you get one that is just a joy from start to finish. Thank you, as always, to everyone on the team: my editor, Alessandra Balzer, and every brilliant beating heart at Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins; Josh Bank, Joelle Hobeika, and Sara Shandler, for that first fantastic meeting and everything that came after (including the MW challenge, clearly); plus Les Morgenstein and everybody at Alloy. I am so very lucky to be playing in this band.
Dahlia Adler and Ashley Herring Blake, for the smart, sensitive feedback: I couldn’t (and wouldn’t) have done it without you.
Rachel Hutchinson, who makes me a better writer and human.
All the Collerans and Cotugnos, especially Jackie, who read the first draft and said this one was her favorite; Tom, who has been building me up and calming me down for quite some time now; and Avon, the rescue mutt who has cracked my dumb heart wide open. It’s okay, anxious girl. You’re home.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo credit Jennie Palluzzi
KATIE COTUGNO is the New York Times bestselling author of Fireworks, 99 Days, and How to Love. She studied writing, literature, and publishing at Emerson College and received her MFA in fiction at Lesley University. Katie is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has appeared in Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, and Argestes, among others. She lives in Boston with her husband, Tom.
You can visit Katie online at www.katiecotugno.com.
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BOOKS BY KATIE COTUGNO
How to Love
99 Days
Fireworks
Top Ten
9 Days and 9 Nights
CREDITS
COVER PHOTOS BY FELISHA TOLENTINO, 500PX,
GETTY IMAGES, ISTOCK, AND SHUTTERSTOCK
COVER DESIGN BY ELAINE C. DAMASCO
COPYRIGHT
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
TOP TEN. Copyright © 2017 by Alloy Entertainment and Katie Cotugno. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017943343
ISBN 978-0-06-241830-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-06-269403-4 (international edition)
EPub Edition © September 2017 ISBN 9780062418326
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