The Perils of Temptation
By Pouncer
Life couldn't be more perfect, Summer decided. She rearranged herself a smidge on the lounge chair, taking a sip of her fruit smoothie. Her hair was back in a ponytail, with a few artfully tousled wisps framing her face, her red bikini displayed her body in a way that made Seth's eyes light, and her new Stila powder enhanced her eyes almost as much as the gloss shined her lips. She wouldn't have though the Cohens' pool was paradise at the beginning of the school year, but that just showed how much she'd grown.
The fruit smoothie would have been a margarita at Holly's beach house. She wouldn't even have known who Cohen was. But waiting for Marissa to be airlifted from Tijuana, smelling the tequila on her breath and watching her drool, had made Summer rethink her attitude towards alcohol. As had her father's outrage that Summer had been in a bar doing shots with her best friend who later overdosed. She never wanted to see him so angry again.
And Cohen had grown on her, like the fungus in that gnarly bathroom on the way to TJ. He was way more genuine than Holly and her group of loser teen sluts. His declaration of love last week in front of the whole school had melted Summer's doubts. She was gooey over him. She just had to be careful not to let him know or he'd get even cockier than he was now.
A ruckus in the pool disturbed her reverie. Seth had tackled Ryan, and the two boys were tumbling over and around each other like seals. Their shouts and cries and yelps made her good mood fall like her bangs did in really humid weather. Why did Seth have to break the peace? She wished for a second that his parents were around to enforce order, but a parent-free afternoon was better than Mr. Cohen's lame attempts to be friendly. Summer had been grateful for the Newport Group client cruise thing until Seth had to get rowdy. When his antics drenched her with chlorinated water, Summer had had enough. Chlorine clashed with her new Comptoir Sud Pacifique coconut vanilla perfume.
"Cohen! Until you learn how to play nice, I'm going inside!"
She grabbed her red pareo and stalked into the kitchen on her kitten-heeled sandals. Honestly, Summer liked to swim, but today she had been in a mood to sun herself and be admired. Cohen would have to learn to control his playful impulses if he wanted a nice goodbye kiss.
She flipped through the bajillion channels on the Cohens' TV without finding anything worth watching. Seth and Chino's laughter from the pool increased her grumpiness. She stood up and started wandering through the house. Nothing to watch on TV, Cohen being a little too interested in getting his hands on Chino's body (a very touchable, well-muscled body, Summer was forced to admit) – from perfect to hideous in ten minutes.
The bookshelves in Mr. Cohen's office tempted her; maybe she could find something to read. She browsed among the books, which leaned towards Tom Clancy thrillers, and finally found an almost buried volume of Pride and Prejudice. Hah. Nothing in Summer's life was as bad as living in Regency England, plus she could imagine Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy – bonus.
She sat down in Mr. Cohen's comfy desk chair and prepared to immerse herself in social conundrums. When she leaned back, she needed a place to rest her feet, so she pulled out the lower desk drawer.
Summer knew she was too curious. It was a trait she tried to bury, but she loved to know things about people. She'd known Luke was a jerk with wandering eyes, but she hadn't suspected his wandering hands and cock. If she'd known, she would have warned Marissa somehow, thus averting the whole TJ meltdown.
The thick manila folder marked "Ryan Atwood" exerted a siren call on her fingers. Before she knew it, the file was on the desk in front of her. She stared at its blank cover, and tried to talk herself out of opening it. Coop and Chino were broken up now – the Oliver thing had seen to that. But Coop kept sighing and looking at Ryan with big moon eyes, so Summer expected they'd hook up again soon. Marissa always got what she wanted; it made Summer jealous to see her get her way all the time.
She'd just glance at the folder. No harm there.
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Half an hour later, Seth's voice echoed from the kitchen, making Summer close the file and jam it back in the drawer. She got to her feet and darted to meet Cohen. Nothing suspicious here, Seth.
"Hey, do you want some pizza?" Seth asked, dragging a jittery Summer into the kitchen.
Summer looked at Ryan standing on the other side of the counter and felt too sick to eat. "No," she told Seth. "I remembered I've got to get home. I'll see you, okay?"
She rushed out the door, but she could still hear bewilderment as Seth asked, "Dude, what just happened?" She didn't hear Ryan's answer.
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Summer went to the beach after she went home and changed. She did her best thinking walking beside the waves, and Ryan's file had given her lots to think about. She hadn't thought people lived like that, no matter how many Lifetime movies said they were based on a true story.
What she could imagine of Ryan's childhood made Summer flinch. When she'd been learning to scuba dive on St. Maarten, Ryan had been in the hospital with a broken arm from what the police report called a "domestic disturbance." Judging from the bruises in the pictures, Ryan had been very disturbed. His mom hadn't pressed charges against the guy the police had arrested.
Summer watched the waves break and flow onto the sand and wished she knew what to do. There were a lot of police reports.
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Her bed made a cocoon; 400 thread count sheets were better than silk in Summer's opinion. She stretched on the soft, cool cotton and tried to fall asleep. Her mind wouldn't stop working, random details from the file kept popping before her closed eyes: the note to Mr. Cohen from the social worker, saying she wouldn't normally give personal information to him, but she agreed he should know about his new foster son. The detective report on Dawn Atwood's whereabouts, that had list after list of three-week menial jobs. The school counselor who had been concerned about how often Ryan showed up for school with bruises, or didn't show up at all. The x-rays from Ryan's broken arm, and the doctor's opinion that it had been caused by a blunt object like a baseball bat, but "the patient refused to confirm." Page after page of the police being called by the neighbors and hauling different drunken or high men off, with the note "no charges pressed" for each.
Summer hated her parents' divorce, the way the arguments had gotten worse and worse until she hid in her room or spent entire weekends at Coop's house. And it had only been six months until her mom moved back to live with her parents in Delaware, giving Summer the choice of whether or not she'd stay with her dad. Summer knew she'd hate the little town in the middle of nowhere, so she stayed with her dad. Ryan's dad was in jail for armed robbery. He hadn't had anywhere else to go, he had to stay in Chino, year after year.
Summer got up and took one of her step-mom's Ambien. No dreams disturbed her sleep.
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School was difficult for the next couple of days. Not the classes, Summer could do well enough when she tried. But she didn't know how to act around Ryan. His bruised face with that stupid haircut kept superimposing over him, and she fled rather than fumble through awkward conversation. Which meant she wasn't seeing much of Seth, since he and Ryan were always together in the hallways. They were such an inseparable pair, like peanut butter and jelly or Chanel and pearls.
Seth kept casting beseeching looks towards her, and left a series of increasingly demanding messages on her cell phone. She couldn't stave him off with a blithe, "I'm busy!" for much longer.
She still hadn't decided what to do; she just knew she couldn't talk to Ryan. Not now that she knew those things about him.
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She was reading Allure on her bed when Seth knocked on her door. An article on how the sun damaged your skin – she'd have to ask her dad if that was true. And investigate self-tanning options.
The knocking got more insistent. "Summer. I know you're in there."
She sighed and got up to open the door. "What?"
Seth looked disarmingly upset. "You've been avoiding me. Why have you been avoiding me?"
"I haven't been avoiding you." Faced with Seth's puppy dog eyes, Summer broke down, "I've been avoiding Ryan."
"Ryan? Why Ryan?"
"Your dad should know better than to keep stuff like that lying around where anyone could see it! Why wasn't his desk locked?" Outrage was better than guilt.
"It usually is. Summer, what did you see?" Seth wasn't going to give up.
Summer looked at her freshly pedicured toes and sighed. "Ryan's file. I saw Ryan's file. Have you seen it?"
"No." Seth's face had gone hard. "Ryan's told me enough that I've got a pretty good idea of what's in it, though."
His arms started flailing around. "Summer, how could you look at that? It's way private, I don't even know what my dad has in there. My god, this is just like Ryan and that letter of Oliver's! And you know how that ended up! Ryan'll be in a mental hospital and we'll be broken up – "
"Cohen! You're getting hysterical. Ryan's not going to shoot anybody – Coop told me about the whole Oliver hotel meltdown. And it's not going to happen. Besides, it's not like I stole a vault of gold using an elaborate plan or anything. It was right there! I thought I'd peek and then stop, but I couldn't stop."
Seth looked so forlorn that she could hardly stand it. He said, "Oh god, I thought things were finally going to go well. And now you're acting all strange, and life'll go crazy again."
Summer took a deep breath. "Look, you're right. I shouldn't have read his file. Oh my God, that was so hard," she muttered.
"Hah! Of course I'm right."
"The thing is, I did read it, and I know things now about Ryan. Maybe more than he's told you. And I don't know what to do."
"What to do? You should apologize to him."
"Seth, no, it's horrible. I don't know how to talk to him now. And I don't think he'd ever forgive me." Tears started welling up in her eyes.
Seth looked at her for a long moment, then hugged her close, tucking her head beneath his chin. She snuggled in and smelled the mix of sugar and salt that always decorated his skin. He drank too much Mountain Dew. He whispered in her ear, "I asked my mom once what to do when Ryan said something about before that made me mad. Because I hate to think of him having to live with that woman and deal with all the stuff he had to deal with. We're kids, you know? We shouldn't have to worry about scrounging pennies so we can eat lunch at school. Or if we're going to get beaten up when our mom's boyfriend goes postal on cocaine. Mom said all I could do is try to be there for him." Seth's voice cracked at the end.
"Seth, I don't do feelings. I told you that." Summer felt a gaping wave on inadequacy wash over her.
"You don't have to do feelings. Ryan hasn't changed. You just know more about him now. If you start to treat him differently – which you have – you'll hurt him." He pulled back to look deeply into her eyes, earnestness pouring off him. "He shouldn't be hurt any more."
"I guess."
"C'mon Summer. You've handled the entire water polo team with no problems. How hard can one boy from Chino be?"
Summer had to grin. "Not as hard as you. But I still don't think I should tell him."
Seth hesitated. "Maybe you're right. Ryan doesn't talk about his past much. It's like he just wants to forget it all."
Summer said, "I'd like to forget too."
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The next day at school, she walked out onto the terrace with her lunch tray. She saw Ryan and Seth at a table by the ledge. "Hey guys. How's classes been?" She smiled at them both as she sat down, and then asked Ryan, "Have you started reading The Crucible in English yet?"
He looked up at her and half-grinned. "Yeah. It's pretty cool."
Seth broke in, "Ms. Starckey's all gung-ho on the Salem witch trials and their misogynistic vibes. And she keeps talking about how their grain might have developed some kind of fungus that caused hallucinations."
"No way," Summer broke in.
Ryan nodded, "Yeah, and the consequences of mass hysteria."
Seth grinned his goofy smile. "Hysteria is never good."
"Neither are deals with the devil." Summer had to get the last word. Her life might not be paradise, but she was feeling pretty good right now.
-end-
Notes: Written for the O.C. Sentence Challenge. AKA requested either "Ryan and Seth wind up in Chino juvie and discover their true feelings for one another," or "Summer reads Ryan's file and stops talking to him." I couldn't think of a way to get both boys in juvie, but I could definitely see Summer getting too nosy. I hope you enjoyed. Many thanks to SerialKarma and Maudgonne for their beta help.
Disclaimer: The O.C. and its characters were created by Josh Schwartz, not me.
Constructive criticism or other feedback makes the author pounce. Tell me what you thought!