So what would happen if the unlikely pairing alluded to in An offer too good to refuse actually got it together? This calls for extremely wilful suspension of disbelief – but it was too tempting to explore. So here goes. This takes place a week later (and you should probably read An offer too good to refuse for it to make sense).
Please review – it's what keeps me going.
DISCLAIMER: Fox owns everything; I own nothing; sue me not.
Chap 1:
It was a sultry Saturday afternoon in Chino and Ryan was sprawled on his bed indulging in a rare bout of self-pity. He felt like a monumental failure. How had he managed to wreck his life so thoroughly? Just a year ago, he'd been given the chance of a lifetime to escape his shitty no-hope existence. And now – well, he was back into a well-trodden Chino groove: get the girlfriend pregnant, drop out of school and get a crap job. He might as well have stayed in juvie.
To make things worse, he'd really started enjoying his new Newport life before he left. He was getting settled into the Cohen family, enjoying its quirkiness, its comfortable, easygoing lifestyle and its extravagant – by his standards – displays of affection. He'd wake up in the mornings, often earlier than he'd wished as the sun came streaming in through the poolhouse's flimsy blinds, and look forward to the day ahead. Unheard-of behaviour for Ryan Atwood, who was famously not a morning person. But those lazy Newport days spent floating around the pool, hanging with Seth playing videogames or cycling to the pier to meet the girls were a blast. Even the schooldays were okay – Harbor beat Chino Hills any day and school, any school, beat working on a fucking building site for piss-all money.
That's when the musings got a bit sour. Or bitter. Or whatever. When Ryan started totting up in his head the many, many ways in which he'd contrived to fuck it all up. Either because he felt duty-bound to sort someone else out, or just through crap-headed stupidity. Like the night he stayed over at the motel and fucked Theresa – hell, it seemed like a good idea at the time... Especially after the long months of drought with uptight Marissa and her "let's wait for the right moment" (not, incidentally, the one when she tried to throw herself at him to make up for the Oliver debacle). Well, okay, there had been a fair bit of making out, and the odd blowjob, but it was hardly Chino standards, dude.
And he was particularly proud of the fact that they didn't use any protection that night – good thinking Ryan. Whatever happened there? It's not like he didn't know what he was doing – they'd done it a hundred times before; they'd always played it safe. So why the fuck did he listen to his dick and go along with the whispered "It's okay, it'll be fine" when they realised they were out of condoms?
At that point, disgusted with what an asshole he'd been, he swung his legs off the bed and walked to the sparsely furnished kitchen, which took up a corner of the living-room. The house reminded him of the last house he'd shared with his mother and fucking AJ, the one she'd left so quickly after kicking him out last summer. He opened the fridge, pulled out a cold beer and downed it in a few gulps. He felt slightly better. He took another beer. Might as well get drunk, watch some TV, keep his mind off things. But he couldn't shake his black mood.
Where he'd outdone himself, he thought, is when he decided to throw it all away for someone else's sake. Why couldn't he give himself a break – ever? Why was it so wrong to allow himself to hang on to this nice new life, this unbelievably generous and loving family, his few modest ambitions – finishing high school, maybe even giving college a shot? Why go and sacrifice his entire life for the sake of Theresa's unborn child? Who might – just – be his. Even though he didn't really believe it, the odds being stacked in Eddie's favour there. Not that it mattered in the end – oh no, if the alternative was Theresa going back to Eddie for support, then Ryan had to step in. And the worst was, he just couldn't have done anything else.
God he sometimes hated himself for this knee-jerk tendency to jump to the rescue of every damn stray dog or damsel in distress. But he seemed powerless to control it – if someone needed him, his instincts, honed by years of looking after his dishevelled trainwreck of a mother, took over. His own priorities never got a look in.
And now there was a new chapter to add to this catalogue of woes. His complete and total humiliation last weekend at that strip joint in LA. The topless bar work was bad enough, but the rest – the rest had just been freakish. Even though he'd made more than a thousand dollars that night.
Ryan wondered idly why it had been so easy to slip the money past Theresa's radar. Maybe the pregnancy was making her more forgetful. Certainly he couldn't imagine the old Theresa not noticing that the bills were no longer a problem. But then he was making an effort to keep any financial concerns away from her; and she did have a lot on her mind these days. They weren't communicating all that much, either.
Anyhow, he was glad he didn't have to explain how he'd got by the cash. In fact, he shuddered at the very thought. The fewer people knew about it, the better. Patty he figured he could trust – especially since she'd been cool enough not to ask for a detailed account of his night. And he had no choice, since she'd got him the gig. Also – and that was crucial – she didn't know about Julie Nichol.
Julie Nichol.
Jesus fucking Christ, thought Ryan for the hundredth time this week as he lay back on the couch staring at the ceiling, chugging another beer, I took my clothes off in front of my ex-girlfriend's mother. And she paid me for it. And I found it hot. How did that fucking happen?
He kept going over the scene every damn day. And every damn night. Especially the nights. For some twisted reason, Ryan was starting to obsess about Julie Nichol, about her heavy-lidded eyes and her glossy lips and her cool stare and her sexy voice. And all the rest. Oh yeah, Julie was hot.
He shook his head. All this was beginning to overwhelm him. He needed to clear his mind. Or maybe what he really needed was to get some action. He hadn't been with a girl for a while – in fact, not since that ill-fated night with Theresa. Man, it had been a fallow year.
So – he needed a break. Some release. He needed to go out, pick up a girl, take her to bed and exorcise Julie Nichol well and truly out of his mind. And then make it to the restaurant for the start of his shift at 6.30. He snorted. Last year, that wouldn't have been such a problem but since he'd come back he'd stopped hanging with his old crowd any more – not least because he was trying to avoid Eddie and his friends. And he could hardly go sniffing around Theresa's girlfriends – there were limits to what she'd put up with. Although a couple of them were pretty fine.
So. That left him with the solo option for now. He squinted at the TV, flipping through a few channels half-heartedly in case something interesting came up. But they couldn't afford cable, and that meant no porn. Jesus, thought Ryan, he actually had no porn in the house at all. Not a single magazine or video. Which had to be a first for a seventeen-year- old boy. How did that happen? All that hard work and no play was really getting to him. Sure, that left his usually fertile imagination but he wanted to keep away from that. He knew that if he relied on his mind, sooner or later a certain redhead was going to turn up in his fantasies. And then he was back to square one. Fuck, he was going to have to get himself some porn or get laid. And soon.
He downed another beer in the hope of dulling his senses in the meantime and scanned channels again until he landed on a suitably violent movie. Scarface. Guns, drug-running, sexy chicks and lots of Cubans swearing seemed like a reasonable alternative. Well, bearable, at any rate.
Halfway into the film, the doorbell rang. Ryan frowned. It was Saturday afternoon and Theresa was at the bakery so it couldn't be her mom, who was pretty much their only visitor these days. The Cohens never dropped by unannounced. In fact, he usually saw them in Newport. Maybe it was a friend of Theresa's. He stood up, stretched and slowly made his way to the hall, scowling as he opened the door. He was in no mood to talk to anyone
It was Julie Nichol.
tbc