When Ryan first meets Marissa, lit cigarette smouldering in his hand, he tells her, he is 'whoever you want me to be'.
When he carries her, sweaty and limp, from an alleyway in Tijuana, he is her saviour.
When he she kisses him on a Ferris wheel he is the new boy she wants to love.
When he throws an open vodka bottle from a car and slams the door again and again like his life depends on it he is teaching her the lesson she wants to learn.
When he scales flight after flight of stairs, the stroke of midnight calling, he is the fantasy she has always been waiting for.
When he punches a crazy boy he is the bad boy everyone has been expecting to surface.
When he leaves for some other girl, to some dusty inland town, he gives her excuses to write her own tragedy.
When he catches her in headlights, her lips now belonging to another boy, his jealousy feeds her.
When she taints an innocent girl, he reprimands her like her father never has.
When he is lost, he allows her to play the friend in the rain, and offer him her comfort, her practised understanding.
When his brother's hands set out to harm her, he is her avenger.
When his brother fights back he is nearly her martyr.
When a gunshot rings out, he puts the safety back on for her.
When whispers haunt her he is her protector.
When another boy loves her he is her fool.
When the lonely boy falls it is his responsibility.
When he tries to move on he still feels guilty
And when she dies in his arms he just feels empty.
When they commit her to the ground he stands up at a ceremony and speaks broken words of sympathy.
When others leave he stays to keep her memory company.
When night falls he still talks to her, gentle incantations, lullabies to help her sleep.
And when they demolish the lifeguard tower he breaks down, just as she would have wanted.
When he returns home, after months of drugs and therapy, he still sometimes has secret thoughts of her.
When he leaves the house he sees a new girl sometimes, the daughter of a new family who stands at the end of the driveway and waits for a boy in a car, just like she used o to.
When the new girl starts to smile at him, he sometimes repays the favour.
And when she asks him one day 'Who are you?' his muscles tighten and his speech stumbles as he attempts a reply, 'Ryan…Ryan Atwood' he mutters shyly and allows himself to breath.