A/N: It's been ages since I last posted, for which I'm sorry but I've simply been too busy. Hopefully, with the summer coming up, I'll have more time to post. And, I know some people are waiting for the final instalment of 'Home Again' but somehow the inspiration has completely left me for that fic, so who knows when that final chapter will come. However, here is a new fic and there should be two more parts to it. Hopefully, you'll all enjoy it. Thank you for the kind reviews on my previous fics and as always, reviews on this will be much appreciated.

Marissa Cooper lounges on the beach, a fluffy pink towel separating her bikini clad body from the silky yellow sand. Her concentration shifts from reading her tattered copy of 'On The Road' to observing the vivid blues of the ocean waves. It's a nice day; the sun is beaming down but it isn't burningly hot. The beach is truly crowded and although she usually revels in the solitude of the setting, today she appreciates the crowds for it makes her feel normal. Today she is another 18 year old girl - like any other in these crowds - enjoying the summer heat and getting in some crucial tanning.

Except she really isn't like any other girl, but for today that's all she wants to be.

"Hey."

She sees his shadow before she hears him and as she turns to check, she sees it's him. Ryan Atwood stands in front of her, dressed in shorts and that one blue shirt that he always wears but he looks so unbearably handsome in it that she won't even complain.

"Hey."

She sits up and scoots over, leaving space for him to sit down next to her but he stands there sheepishly, his hands tucked in his pockets, not really doing anything. She thinks he is nervous and she cringes from how awkward things can be between them when a time ago, they were so seamless. Nonetheless, she doesn't want him to leave because she'll take the awkwardness if it means more time with him, more time to fix their mess of a friendship. She thinks of something to say to ease the situation but in the end she doesn't have to since he finally decides to sit down. Their eyes meet and the awkwardness transcends and as it does it unites them in this shared feeling and suddenly they're both chuckling from the absurdity of the situation. They've suffered so much; they've been utterly in love, lost in anger, filled with uncontrollable lust and somewhere along the line even been successful friends; and after all that, awkwardness simply doesn't have a place.

"Summer's with Seth, they were planning for next year and I was kind of beginning to feel like a third wheel," he explains.

"So you left and joined me instead." she completes for him.

"Something like that." he pauses for a second and then adds with genuine concern on his face, "I hope you don't mind."

"Of course not, in fact I'm glad you're here."

The curious thing about their relationship is that they both seem to love each other's company and yet are always awfully conscious about imposing on the other. Not only that, they are impeccably tentative about submitting to those wishes. Ryan paced up down the pier a good 10 times before finally making the decision to approach Marissa. Ever since their break-up, perhaps even a while before it, they've had this painstaking distance between them and all he had ever wanted was to close it. For a while he retaliated and ran further and further from this task but now, with the summer ahead of them and Berkeley looming in the near future, he is all the more compelled to fulfill it. He was wholly determined but the minute she came into his view and he saw her in all her glorified beauty- because that bikini really didn't leave much to his imagination, especially when he has seen it all already and is shamefully able to recall every detail - he was thrown into a sudden state of panic. While he wanted them to be close again, he has no certainty whether he wishes that in a platonic or romantic way, and so the sexual attraction was really a jarring distraction when trying to organise his thoughts. It's also a troubling throw back to the vulnerability which Marissa has the uncanny ability to inspire in him; the feeling came on him with such a vivacity, that it left him feeling powerless. But he shook himself of such thoughts and told himself, that his attraction is merely an attraction which any hot blooded male would feel. After all, Marissa is undeniably beautiful and as they sit on their little stretch of the beach, he notes how the gaze of every man that passes, glances over her body.

When he sees the attention she gets on an ever frequent basis, it strikes him that it wasn't ever surprising how every boy that came into their lives seemingly fell in love with her. He can't blame them really, can he blame her? Time has passed, but Johnny still bothers him. Maybe even Oliver and Trey too but not in the same way. He doesn't actually blame her, not rationally anyway, but he wants answers and he wants to talk but as always, doesn't know how to.

He leans back slightly and tries to work out how he, the boy from Chino, managed to get a girl like Marissa. He never really saw her as the same picture of perfection that everyone else did and their relationship certainly wasn't perfection but even so, she always did and always will inspire a level of awe in him. For one thing, her beauty overwhelms him but past that, he knows the kindness and the sincerity which exists, so unlike anyone he has ever known. It still eludes him why she ever wanted him. He can only ever consider himself as common but she, she has the potential to be extraordinary. Only she never seems to know and always seems to throw it away.

As he was pouring through those thoughts, he must have been staring at her with unbarred intensity because she looks at him with sheer confusion.

"Ryan?"

"What?" he says embarrassed, coming out of his stupor.

Her eyes soften and voice becomes quieter as she asks him gently, "What are you thinking?"

This is the chance to ask, to clear the air but he has become an expert at keeping it all under constraint. However, he really does want them to be close.

"I'm thinking..." he waits, trying to chose wisely, "...about the past."

Marissa takes in his words and bites her lips as she contemplates their implication.

"Our past."

"Sort of."

For a while they say nothing and watch the sea instead. There's the awkwardness again.

"I miss it, the way it used to be." Ryan tries to elaborate further, "Before everything, like last year when we were really friends and it was so easy."

He gives her a look as if to ask 'Don't you, agree?' and she thinks it over. There's the despondent part of her, weighing down on the implication that he preferred them best as friends, yet she undeniably has to agree. Those days, before everything with Trey came to pieces, had to be some of the easiest she ever spent but she never saw that time spent as truly just friendship. She had genuinely intended to be a friend to him but in hindsight she hoped that in that time he had fallen in love with her again. They had after all gotten back together, so she concludes, he must have surely felt something greater than friendship.

Anyway, she pushes those thoughts away and gives him a simple - though unconvincing - nod of her head to prove her agreement

"I guess, what I'm trying to say really is that I've missed you."

Marissa's eyes shoot up as she hears his words and he feels the seriousness of the statement too because it's been a while since they've really been emotional with each other. He sits up straight and looks at her with a piercing intensity so she understands he truly means this.

"I've missed you too." she tells him.

She feels she might almost cry. There's something overbearingly emotional about this simple exchange between them. Those words, "I've missed you", alone convey everything; it's the keystone for change, for a shift forward in their relationship; it's the commitment to repair what they've broken; it's the symbol for the depth of their care.

They spend more or less everyday on the beach. Quite often, Seth and Summer are there but about a fortnight passes when Seth and Summer are off visiting Brown and in that time, Ryan and Marissa find themselves thrown together in an unsettling but no less appealing intimacy. Long hours spent lounging in minimal clothing along with the sensual summer haze meant it was an inevitability. But in addition to that, this turned into a chance to forge once again the bond that had diminished along the way.

It's one afternoon, that he sets aside the copy of 'On The Road' she's forcing him to read, and asks her about Johnny.

"Marissa, will you get angry if I ask you something?"

"Probably not but I can't tell you if don't ask me." she says after completing applying her sun screen, which was an excruciating event for Ryan to witness, so much so that he couldn't even peel his eyes away.

Forcing himself to concentrate, he begins, "After Johnny...after what happened..."

"After Johnny died," she repeats, "It's ok, you can say he died. I'm not going to freak out."

"Ok. So, did it change the way you felt or, feel about him?"

She ponders it over, not because she doesn't know the answer but because it's just hard to explain.

"I don't think I ever loved him. Maybe after his death, I felt I did but I think that was the guilt talking."

"Guilt?"

"I wrote him a letter, it was a cowardly thing to do really. I wrote him a letter to tell him I didn't love him, that I never would. I really owed him an upfront explanation but I don't know, back then I was making all the wrong decisions. And then he died, and I couldn't help feeling that somehow my letter led him to that road. It's probably a very egotistical thing to think, isn't it?" a deep cynicism laces her tone as she continues, "That my letter meant so much that it drove him to act the way he did. There I am again, making his death about me."

"You know, you probably did mean that much to him but it doesn't mean you caused it." he sighs and then adds, "It's not your fault that he thought you loved him."

"Isn't it?"she asks but he can't tell if it's rhetorical or not. "You thought I loved him, some part of you still seems to think that. He thought I loved him. Kaitlin too. So maybe it is my fault, maybe I did lead him on."

Ryan runs an uneasy hand through his - rapidly growing very long - hair. He notes he needs a haircut.

"I'm sorry I never believed you."

She shrugs.

"It's not your fault. I never helped."

He sighs again.

"Maybe sometimes it was the way you acted but then that became magnified with my own insecurities. It made more sense to me that you would rather be with him than me, especially with everything that happened that summer." He stops and he thinks about leaving it there but then he is hit with this uncontrollable need to expel everything from within him. This is the moment to clear the air, and it might be messy but the silences and the awkward stumbles are messier. "I don't want to blame you Marissa, and I don't. Maybe my jealousy, my insecurity fucked everything up and maybe that's what's talking now but there was something wasn't there? You were always with him, you cared about him, you cared that he was Kaitlin, you cared so much that it never made sense to me unless, you were in love with him."

Marissa plays with her fingers, avoiding his gaze because the validity of the accusations bring her a certain embarrassment but moreover a sadness, that their relationship strayed so far, so full of insecurities. She can feel the weight of Johnny finally unravelling in front of them and suddenly she is struck with this peculiar feeling of poignancy. Perhaps had they had this conversation months ago, their relationship would be in a different direction.

"I wanted you; never him. And I know that with a distinct certainty," she says with pointed resolution, "and when I think back to last year, I'm sure I knew that then but...it was hard for you to talk to me. Understandably, maybe I didn't quite see that then but I do now. I guess that was it. I wanted to talk, and he was there and he wanted to talk, and it was easy." She sees a flicker of hurt pass through his eyes on that comment and she quickly adds, "But it wasn't that it was him, I think I needed to just talk everything over, have it out in the open rather than pent up inside me. Really, I should have been in therapy."

"We both should have." He laughs lightly and she does too even though it's barely funny.

"But, it was not love Ry. Not with him." she tells softly and, only for the briefest of moments, she seeks out his hand and gives it a firm squeeze.

He feels her sincerity; from the manner of her words to the glowing assurity in her eyes to the final touch of emphatic confidence from her hand.

They stay silent for a moment, absorbing that final sentiment.

Ryan plays her words over.

"wanted you"

"never him"

"not love"

"not with him"

He can't help a small smile sneaking in when he hears the resounding assurity in those statements but as he keeps replaying her monologue, his mind settles on one phrase.

"I wanted to talk, and he was there and he wanted to talk, and it was easy"

She had wanted to talk, she had needed him and he had failed her. He was difficult. He was pathetic.

Cowering in an all consuming shame, he feels his throat clog up.

Somehow, from somewhere, he blurts out "I'm sorry." His eyes diverge as far from her as possible. He felt he must apologise but he also wants to forget the whole ordeal, his failure and in apologising, he is only reminding her.

She blinks cluelessly and still not realising the purpose of his apology, she is forced to ask him.

"What do you mean?"

He groans and he can feel his throat drying up at an exponentially rate.

"I'm sorry for not being there. To talk." he croaks and his eyes which cross hers momentarily, immediately shift back to a vacant spot in the sea.

"Ryan, that's ok. Like I said, I understand; you don't have to be sorry." she tells him with an apologetic look of her own.

He shrugs, dismissing her. Trey is suddenly on the forefront of his mind and he wonders if it's on hers as well. He had forgotten about that and along the line had deluded forgetting with resolving the problem. His throat is now a dry well as he realises that him and Marissa are yet to have really talked about it. She might as well have resolved her individual issues over Trey but there's a foolish pride in him that demands that they have a discussion of their own, for he will not be outdone by Johnny. There's an overwhelming desire to have her confide in him, to trust him, and it was there all through their relationship. Perhaps it was why it had pained him so much to see her talk to Johnny or further back when it had been Oliver. But the tragedy remains, that she had wished it to be him as much as he had, only he had been unable to fulfill the role. Not as a result of something central their relationship lacked because she really felt an openness with him that was unparalleled with anyone else but rather it was the tragedy of the circumstances. He almost understood too well.

He has come to terms about Trey to a better extent now. So before he can run from the opportunity, he tells her, "If you want to talk, I'm here now. I know it's far too late to be saying it, but I am here."

It's an offer for her benefit but as he speaks, he is forced to acknowledge, it's also a request for her to be there for him. He hasn't really spoken about it; not to Sandy nor Seth but he feels he ought to. There are times when the pressure inside gets too much. He relieves it by attacking the punching bag hanging in the poolhouse but that unsettling discomfort in the pit of his stomach never quite leaves.

She looks at him carefully and having never really noticed it before, she ponders the same realisation he has just had. And then her own neglect strikes her, glaringly obvious. He needed to talk too, still does, and she had given up trying with him after the first few moments. Concluded far too quickly that he simply wasn't going to let her in.

"I want to talk," she tells him and in their special way, that's also her telling him she will listen. But not now, she decides. They've just gone through Johnny and it's just gone past one, the sun is beating down a scorching heat and when she looks over at Ryan, it really doesn't feel like either of them is quite ready to have this conversation yet. "But, I think we should leave it for later. We've done enough for one day I think."

He breathes a sigh of relief he wasn't quite conscious he was holding in.

"I think that's good idea." he replies smiling.

She gets up and brushes the sand of her body before slipping on her shorts and blouse. He watches her framed by the beaming light of the sun behind her and can't help but be transfixed by how gorgeous she looks. So much so, that he doesn't hear her when she asks if he wants to have lunch.

She repeats herself once more and his eyes are shaken away from staring at her infinitely long legs up to her face. He hurriedly gets up, hoping he hasn't gone a horrific shade of crimson.

"Lunch sounds good."