Pairing: Marissa/Alex
Genre: Alex POV. Angst.
Summary: She causes me to wake up in the middle of the night, confused as to whether the vision I just had was a dream or a nightmare.
A/N: Thanks so much for all the wonderful feedback on my previous story. This one's a companion piece to She Taught Me About Waves, from Alex's point of view. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: Don't own The O.C. characters, show, etc. I own my thoughts.
Soundtrack:
Antony and the Johnsons – Hope There's Someone
Regina Spektor – Samson
Keren Ann - Seventeen

Her Memory Is My Ghost

There is a night that sticks out in my memory; not because it was all that spectacular or life-changing but because a friend said something to me that seemed so strange. I think we were 15 at the time, maybe 16 and pretty stoned. He said that a bizarre man told him L.A. was the loneliest city in the world, and that he sort of agreed. Sitting there, surrounded by the smiling faces of my friends, I scoffed at the idea and we all berated him for such a stupid thought. We were children of L.A., born and raised. Of course, we also had the benefit of being fairly wealthy so we knew nothing different.

That seems like an odd situation for me. Just because I had a job at a small bar and a surf shack of an apartment doesn't mean I didn't come from something. You can't wear Ben Sherman and only be pulling in $200 a week. I like to pretend I had it rough, and on some level I did because I always felt out of place, didn't fit in quite right. I still feel out of place. But I know where I come from.

That's why I contemplate that idea of loneliness. I never understood it until I came home again. I've often heard people talk about the feeling of being alone in a crowd, and that is exactly what LA feels like now. Crowds of people breeze around the sidewalks, aimlessly cruise the streets in their convertibles, mull around over-priced stores on Rodeo and Sunset. There are those that are looking for something amongst the smog and plastic. Most likely they will never find it. There are the wannabe actors who hear the fairytales on TV and follow their dreams to the west coast. There are the industry types, seeking that next big ticket, the project that will take them to the soundstages in Burbank. There are the daughters and sons of wealthy CEOs and developers who are just looking for something real. But the problem is that they don't know that they are looking for anything at all, and most importantly, don't realize that they're never going to find it here. No one gets found in L.A., you just get lost.

Did I somehow know that already? Was I born with an instinct that what you see isn't what you get? Is that why I picked fight after fight? If I got expelled from enough schools, I'd eventually have to move out of L.A. Maybe that was my plan all along, and like those heirs and heiresses, I didn't even realize it. A subconscious yearning for more than what my parents had to offer in moving around through various houses in Beverly Hills, Santa Ana and Malibu, with their fancy parties and fancy cars.

Jody was the ticket out.

She was the key that unlocked my freedom. Kicked out of school. Kicked out of the house. I was left on my own, struggling to figure out just what the hell I was doing, left with nothing.

And I'm not sure I've figured it out yet either. I thought I had. I thought I had everything I always wanted: The job, the apartment, the freedom, and her. But her name wasn't Jody.

Marissa and I aren't really that different. We know how it goes in high society. But unlike her, I am willing to make a change, to seek out my own future and drag it kicking and screaming to the present. I wrestle with ideas and make plans. I have patience. But is patience a virtue or a muscle? I think it's the latter. You have to practice it, exercise it, and use it or else it becomes worn down and weak. On the other hand, you can strain it too far, ripping at the fine fibres that held everything together, and leaving you with nothing but stinging pain.

Too many boys and girls have passed through my life now. Their memories are like faint spectres, floating around my head. It's strange how many friends, lovers, acquaintances you can have in one life, or in my case, a quarter of a life. When you think about it, it really is a strange phenomenon.

I don't take many photographs of people I know. I remember them only by feeling, scent, or influence. Photographs don't tell me those things. Faces are unimportant. And it's not that I'm not good with them, I have to be to do my job well. I just care more about what you can't see. Maybe that's a by-product of being a Beverly Hills baby. So many people are fake on the outside, but you can't hide the fake on the inside.

People pass so easily from stranger to friend to lover to nothing. They simply disappear. Sometimes they leave your memory altogether, like they never existed. The space that was once occupied by happy thoughts and moments is crowded and filled in by adjacent memories of other people. And then there are those people that never leave. You think about them when you are alone. You see them, or hear their voice, in a familiar haunt. You dream about them in abstract, sometimes frightening, ways leading only to an abrupt awakening, your body covered in a cold sweat.

Your brain doesn't let the bad things go so easily. If you stop being friends with someone, whether by accident or not, and it ends on a good note, they're just not as memorable. I think the human brain delights in the subtle torture of constant reminders of those who left too soon or too unhappily.

Her memory is one of these ghosts. I can't hide because she's always there inside me, taunting me with her flawless skin or her scent or those soft lips. She causes me to wake up in the middle of the night, confused as to whether the vision I just had was a dream or a nightmare.

I sometimes cry at night. I shouldn't have to be confused. And it affects me in ways that I didn't think were possible. I get frustrated with the heat now. I get upset with the ceaseless sound of traffic. I reach out and feel nothing but soft cotton sheets and every time I do, another part of my heart cracks and I end up with a pillow soaked in salty tears.

I want to hate her. And I tried for months to do just that. Some days I would feel successful and satisfied that she was out of my system. Surely it's not healthy to be so hung up on someone that they cost you sleep, right? And those nights I would sleep soundly, sometimes in the arms of a boy or a girl who had no idea that I was thinking of Marissa. But the day breaks and I feel cold and abandoned again without her beside me. No matter how perfect the person lying next to me is, they aren't her.

She wasn't perfect. She knew that. But I don't think she ever fully realized that no one else was either. I ended up disappointing her, I think. My lifestyle, my love, it wasn't enough. But I tried to give her all of me.

I ended up running away.

Maybe the escape back home was a feeble attempt to fool my brain into believing she never existed in the first place. I tried to end it on a happy note, since they are less memorable.

But I can't trick my heart into feeling full when it's hollow and crumbling.

The nagging idea that maybe it was all a ruse to piss off her mother rolls around incessantly. I think about all the moments. Julie factored into many of them. Anyone who can piss of my mom gets a free meal. I have those with my mom all the time. I just had a horrible dinner with my mother. Is it wrong to worry about that? But I'm an optimist at my core.

There were moments that were genuine. The motivation to getting to those moments may not have been. I think mostly about the nights we were alone together on the beach, or in my bedroom. And she gave me part of herself. I know she did.

We experienced a lot of first times together. It was the first time I lived with anyone other than family. It was the first time for her too. When we made love, it was also the first time she had ever come with another person. I remember her chest heaving, eyes darkened, and the combination of emotions that flitted across her face in those following moments: Awe, satisfaction, and then embarrassment. I had kissed her softly on the cheek, trying to reassure her that it was okay. She had merely pulled me close, hugging me tightly and burying her face in my neck. Insatiable may have been a good way to describe us in those following days and nights.

I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

I only know that now. For weeks after I came home, I tried to figure out why it hurt so damn much leaving her on the beach. It's because I loved her with everything I had. She wasn't part of any sinister plot. I didn't have any parents left to piss off. I had nothing to prove.

But Marissa Cooper is not the kind of girl that handles choices well. I sometimes wonder if she even made a choice about Ryan. Maybe I made it for her.

Maybe things would have been different if I had stayed, if I hadn't given up, if I had handled things differently. I didn't know how. I was lost. Without her by my side, I felt isolated and confused. Something that had just been so right suddenly did nothing but send off warning signals. Stranded and alone, I lashed out. That is my basic instinct.

There's no one to point blame at since we're all to blame. It's frustrating and somewhat comforting at the same time. She's just as fucked up as I am.

I knew it wouldn't be easy. But I had patience and hope. She had something else entirely.

But I lied afterwards.

I lied when I said her bonfire looked fun. I lied when I said I wanted to go back to school. I'm not in school and I have no intentions of trying again. Her strange, teenage, tribal dance party looked like any other popularity ploy, not for her specifically but for everyone who showed their faces. I didn't want to be a part of that. If it really had looked so fun I would have been interested that night she sat on the sofa all night whining about planning the thing. Instead I drank a beer and watched TV. If it had really looked so fun, I would have gone with her, without the ex-con buddies and without any visits or threats to Ryan. Instead I ran away.

She lied. I lied. We're even.

I don't even bother pretending to be happy right now. Why bother? The funny thing is that no one even believes I'm really all that unhappy. It's just some teen-angst phase, some façade to fit into the current demographic. But I can distract myself from falling. Listening to other people's problems is enough to remind me that we all suffer.

But does Marissa?

Who knows? I can't ask. I erased her number in a self-provoked bout of counterfeit hate. I believed erasing her memory was as easy as re-organizing my cellphone. Somehow, if her number disappeared, her phantom would stop haunting me.

It's not that easy anymore. I still wonder. I still wish one day she would be sitting in my room, plucking helplessly at my old acoustic guitar. She would smile and ask me to play her something even though she has just broken the e string. I might try to play her a song. I might just kiss her instead.

I can walk the same sidewalk up and down all day and still feel lost. I can see the same people everyday and still feel alone. The seeping loneliness fills my veins when I walk down the street and see everyone else, some people smiling because of the Botox and some smiling because they mean it. It's never at me. It's never for me.

No one cares if I'm walking down this street. No one sees me. They don't see each other. Everyone sees ghosts. Her memory is my ghost. I'm a ghost to no one.

Maybe one day I'll find someone else who doesn't live in Newport. But I can't shake the eerie feeling I get when I think I hear her voice good-naturedly complaining about the dishes or when I smell her kiwi lip balm carried on an afternoon breeze. I catch glimpses of surf newbies out on the breaks and I think of her. When I sit on the beach, gazing at the sparkle of sunlight catching on the swells it comforts me, but it also reminds me. I feel her sitting beside me, the spectre of her, suffocating in its vivid memory.

But I go home and lie in my empty bed.

She cried when I left. I didn't allow myself that one last souvenir, forcing ease.

Instead, I cry now, clutching pointlessly at the cold sheets, wishing she were here. Her memory drifts above me as the loneliness swallows me up in its silence.