Rating: PG13, because I like to be safe.
Summary: Another post-hiatus fic. Summer writes Seth letters of her own. They just aren't on paper.
Disclaimer: Come on. You already know this. I only own a sick cat, a fat cat, and a collection of clothes. I don't own the O.C. or its characters, unless the characters are the above mentioned cats and/or collection of clothes. Oh, also? Breakfast at Tiffany's is a movie starring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard. It was made in 1961 and its rights belong to Paramount Pictures.
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Did it hurt?
Did it hurt when you broke me? I think it should have hurt. Knowing you, it probably did. You probably cried for hours, didn't you?
But it didn't hurt you as much as it hurt me.
Think about what you did, Cohen. Think about it. You abandoned me. You left me a note. A fucking note, Seth.
You think it's the first time they've left me notes? You think you're any more special just because yours had tears on it?
God, Cohen.
I thought you were different, Seth. I thought you would love me. I think I love you. Loved you. Whatever.
Didn't I tell you about my mom? Didn't you listen and kiss me and tell me you would never do that?
You think you're different, just because you said you'd come back? Just because your boat is named after me?
My dad says it's a good thing you left. He says you deserve to die out there. I don't believe that. I think you deserve a good kick in the balls, but I don't think you deserve to die. It's only been a few days, after all.
I deserve to die.
I've pushed away so many people in my life that I shouldn't be allowed to occupy space on the earth.
I wasn't good enough for my mom, right? I wasn't good enough for you, either. You were always too good for me.
Me, I'm stupid, I'm shallow, and I'm a Newpsie-in-training.
You? I used to think you were the smartest person in the world. That you could do anything you wanted with your life, just because you were you.
I thought that maybe being your girlfriend I might be something too. Maybe I'd be worth more than a rumor around school that I was a dirty slut.
Marissa started that rumor about me sleeping with Johnny Birk, by the way.
She was mad because I got drunk and ruined her birthday party, and she told everyone I slept with him.
I deserved that, too.
I saw you that day, didn't I? The day everyone pointed and stared at me and the boys looked at me funny?
Grade nine, I think. And you looked so sad and I didn't know why, but I couldn't ask because I had a reputation to uphold. But I cared, Seth. I did.
---
It's been a week already.
I wish I would have known beforehand what a dick you were, because then I wouldn't have given you my heart.
Why couldn't you give it back to me, Seth? Why didn't you ask me if I wanted to go with you?
Whisk me away and sail with me and love me?
Like those romantic movies where they kiss in the rain and that's how the story ends. You know, minus the cat.
I always liked Holly Golightly. That was the first real movie I ever saw. I saw it with my mom.
Breakfast at Tiffany's, remember? We watched it together and you cried like a baby?
Audrey Hepburn was my idol back then. She was my mom's too. My mom looked like her. Tall and beautiful, with long brown hair that she always kept up.
"Look, sweetie. It's like we're the same person!" she'd say, and she'd pause the TV and stand beside it and pose and watch me giggle and clap.
She'd dress me up in pretty little black dresses and put fancy sunglasses on my eyes and prance around with me in the same outfit and we'd pretend to be drifters, off to see the world.
I begged her to stay. Tugged at her little black dress and told her that we were drifters together, not apart. The rainbow's end, and all that shit.
"There is no rainbow, sweetheart. I'm sorry. I love you. I'll be back soon." My dad sneered at her and crossed his arms. He pulled me back when I wouldn't let go of mom's dress.
She left me a note too, Seth. Attached to her favorite bead of pearls. Hers had tears on it too.
Her name was Holly, but you knew that. That was why she loved the movie so much. She was the drifter, but the story didn't end with her kissing my dad in the rain.
It ended with her running to a taxi and driving off in the rain.
The rain reminds me of her. It's why I can't live anywhere but where it's sunny. I always stay inside when it rains, and daddy stays home from work on those days and watches The Valley with me, and I watch The Godfather with him.
She was so beautiful, Cohen. She would have loved you, too. She would have smiled and touched your hair and said: "He's just like the man from the movie, except his hair is curlier." and it would be our inside joke.
You would be George Peppard and I would be Audrey Hepburn, only I would be different, because Audrey was thin and tall and beautiful.
Like my mother. She was petite, but tall. Not wide, like Marissa, but thin and tall and so beautiful. I wish I would have turned out like her.
Maybe you would have stayed if I would have looked like her.
My dad has a picture of her in the cupboard next to his bed. She's standing on a beach with her sunglasses on, and her hair is up and she's wearing that black Chanel dress she gave me before she left and she's looking away.
My dad's girlfriends all consist of medium height, big-boobed, belly top wearing Barbie dolls.
Just because they look different than her.
Because he knows that if he meets one like her, he might just let himself love her.
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God, Cohen. It's been two weeks. Why aren't you here? Why are you drifting without me?
I thought we were going to be together for longer than this. Why do you have to love Ryan more than me?
I know, I know, you don't love him, love him, but you love him like a friend. Maybe even a brother. And you love him more than me.
Why?
What did I have to do to make you stay? I told you you had me. I did, didn't I? You still do. I hate to say it but you still do.
Just because you're George Peppard, and I haven't kissed you in the rain yet.
I'm still gonna kick your ass when you come back.
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No. I can't. I can't wait for you, Cohen. I've changed my mind. It's been three weeks. That's too long.
You're an asshole, you know that? Your friend, Ryan, he goes off to help his friend, and you think leaving just like him will be the same? It isn't.
You're a selfish asshole, and he's just a misguided hero. There's a difference.
What did I do to make you leave? Make you forget that there was someone else in your life besides you and your fucking horse?
That's what you've pushed me to by the way, you jerk. Talking to the pony my dad gave me to make up for the fact that I was completely alone except for him.
"Her name is Princess Sparkle. She's a princess, just like you are and mommy was. Don't worry, cupcake. Things will get better. I promise. It's just you and me now."
Better, my ass.
You gone, is that better? Of course not, right? That's what I thought.
Marissa and me, we used to go to Luke's house and drink and smoke pot until we were so high that we didn't know our names. That was what we did five years after mom left.
I don't remember anything but feeling absolute release from the pain that mom put me through. The smoke filled the void in my heart and made me feel whole again.
I only did it a few times, though. I didn't want to disappoint daddy.
I always knew he loved me unconditionally, but the thing was that he would never love me as anything more than his friend because I was hers.
I was connected to her because I was her daughter, and he would always hate me for that fact alone. I would never be his daughter. I would always be his friend, but never his daughter. Never her daughter.
Is that why you left, Cohen? Do I remind you of someone you don't want to be reminded of?
Because daddy's a plastic surgeon. I can fix that.
But you don't want me to change, right? You told me I was 'perfect the way I was'. 'So beautiful that you didn't deserve me.'
I loved it when you said things like that.
But now I don't want you to say that. Because it'll sound empty.
Like when mom called me a month after she left and told me she loved me and that she wasn't coming back and how was daddy?
That's what she said. That I was her princess and I always would be, and that maybe one day she'd come see me and I'd be dressed up like Holly Golightly, and she would recognize me from afar and we'd drift away together. Because that was what we were. We were drifters.
And her words were water that filled up a glass vase, but the water didn't fill the vase up. It just disappeared when it hit the bottom of my heart.
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Claire said you called.
If you had called when daddy was home, he would have done me a favor and not told me. I'm glad I wasn't there and daddy's bimbo was.
Maybe I would have forgiven you for leaving me four weeks ago. For making your mother cry and making your father lock himself in his office for two days with nothing more than three bottles of vodka and a picture of you.
Vodka was always my drink of choice after I read notes. I tasted it for the first time when mom left, and Marissa stole it from her mom's liqueur cabinet. We didn't even know what it was. We just knew it tasted good and it took away the pain.
It filled up the glass vase.
---
Ryan's been looking for you. He calls home every day. He even calls me sometimes. Asks me how I'm doing, if I'm ok. You know, all that stuff.
He organizes search parties with the Cohens and searches hotels for your name on the internet with the laptop your parents gave him. He's been looking for you for five weeks, now. Don't you think that's long enough?
You better apologize on your knees to all of us when you get back, you asshole.
But I still think I love you. I still think that you'll show up on my doorstep and I'll forgive you and we'll kiss in the rain, even if the rain is in my imagination.
---
What did you think I'd do, wait?
I gave you eight weeks, Cohen. Eight weeks. You still haven't come back. So fuck you.
Fuck you. I promised myself I wouldn't cry over a boy after Lance wrote me a note that he put in my heavily decorated locker that said he was dumping me because I wouldn't put out.
I promised myself. So I'm forgetting about you with a bottle of vodka and a guy I met at a party. He's not as soft as you. Not as slow as you learned to be. He's rough. I don't like it, but if it helps me forget you and your boat and that note, then I don't care.
Because even if you are George Peppard, the rain stopped three fucking weeks ago, and you missed your chance.
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