Disclaimer: Ownership would be a negative on my part.

A/N: Don't really have much to say. Thanks (as always) to the reviewers. I had noticed there were definitely less reviews than normal but hopefully it was just a lull and people will still continue to read and review.

And in answer to Jules' question – I think there's gonna be around 18-20 chapters. Not quite sure yet.

Anyway, read, enjoy, and review (please).

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"Hey Lana," Ryan yawned into his phone. "What time is it?"

"It's nearly noon. Where are you? Last night was the opening for the art gallery across town. Remember you said you'd go with me?"

Ryan groaned, sitting up in his old pool house bed. All the curtains were shut so he couldn't tell that the sun had already been out for hours. Normally, Seth would have waltzed right into the pool house, around, oh… probably six or seven in the morning, demanding to have Seth-Ryan time so he could talk incessantly about his break up with Summer.

Ryan looked over to the clock. It was 11:37am. And there was no sign of Seth.

Which was never a good sign.

"I'm really sorry. Yesterday Summer broke up with Seth and, although he said he was fine, he was taking it pretty hard and we ended up coming down to Newport a day early."

"Oh," Lana spoke quietly. "She really broke up with him? Why?"

"I haven't really been able to figure that out yet. But judging from her reaction at dinner Friday night, it probably has something to do with him not being happy or something."

"Summer's been acting a bit off lately, don't you think?" Lana questioned Ryan.

"Yeah… I don't know what's gotten into her. But I'm sure it will come out soon enough. So you're not mad?"

"Well, I was but then when you didn't show and didn't answer your phone, I ended up calling Emily and going with her. It wasn't that big of a deal."

Ryan smiled into the phone. "Thanks."

"Although," Lana piped up again, "If it had been for any other reason than you trying to save Seth from drowning in self-pity, I would have been ten times angrier."

"I'll keep that in mind next time I need an excuse," Ryan joked.

"I'll remember you said that next time you use an excuse."

Ryan's smile got wider. "I gotta go find Seth. He hasn't been in here yet this morning so he's probably either camped out in his room watching movies in a pitiful state or planning some grand gesture to win Summer back."

"It's not even noon. Maybe he was letting you sleep."

"Seth's not considerate when there's a crisis on his hands."

"All right," Lana sighed happily, "Call me when you get back. Love you."

"Love you too," Ryan replied, flipping his phone shut as he got up and made his way into the Cohen kitchen.

Ryan entered the kitchen to see Sandy, Kirsten, and Seth all sitting together at the table, casually eating bagels, drinking juice, and chatting about Seth's life in LA while the newspaper sections were sprawled across the table.

"Hey Ryan!" Sandy looked up as he saw Ryan enter, and Kirsten and Seth turned to greet Ryan as well.

"How did you sleep?" Kirsten asked.

"Great. Thanks," Ryan slipped into a chair, grabbing a bagel and putting cream cheese on it.

Seth spoke up. "Come on buddy. I thought a few years of college under your belt would make you a little bit peppier in the morning."

Ryan sent him a questionable look as he poured the orange juice into an empty glass. "Why are you so happy today? Did you get any calls?"

Both Kirsten and Sandy looked over to Seth in response to Ryan's question, but Seth hid the question nicely. "Yeah, my boss. Turns out he's going out of town for a week so we can't have the meeting until next Monday. Gives me an extra week to do everything I needed to get done today."

Ryan smiled falsely and took a bite out of his bagel as Seth did the same.

Sandy stood up. "Well, it's good to have you back boys, but I gotta go down to the office and tie up a few loose ends. Seth," Seth looked up, "Do you wanna come with me? Get a little more work experience?"

"No, thanks though. I was thinking about taking a break from everything work-related since I've been given an extension. Planning on hitting up the tourist areas of Newport." Seth clasped his hands and rubbed them together happily.

"Since when do you do tourist things? In Newport?" Kirsten asked laughingly.

"Since today," Seth smiled. "What time's dinner?"

"Well, we told Dr. Roberts and Julie to be over around 4:30."

"Sounds awesome," Seth stood up and slapped his dad on the back lightly. "I'll be back around four to help you guys set up."

Seth then walked off, up to his room as Sandy and Kirsten turned towards Ryan, sending raised eyebrows.

"I honestly don't know," Ryan mumbled with his mouth still full. "I gotta go get ready too."

Ryan walked back off into the pool house, holding the remainder of the bagel in his hand. He immediately grabbed his phone and dialed Seth's number.

"Hey man, we're not across town. You could have easily walked up the stairs to talk to me," Seth laughed into his phone after seeing that Ryan was calling.

"What is up with you?"

"Nothing. I'm getting ready. You gonna hit the pier with me or stay around the house?"

Ryan thought for a second. "The pier. I'll be ready in twenty."

"Me too. Later," Seth hung up and Ryan stared at his phone confused.

Seth never ignored problems or issues that concerned himself. He always made sure everyone knew about them by talking about them consistently, and even if he didn't do that – which happened very rarely -, he made sure Ryan was always the "go-to" person to release all his complaints.

Ryan thought maybe yesterday when Seth said he was going to the store before dinner, he instead actually made a trip across the border to Mexico and picked up some illegal depression pills and had taken them early this morning to stop him from over-obsessing and worrying about his break up with Summer.

"Do depression pills kick in that fast?" Ryan asked himself out loud, as he grabbed an old wife beater out of the drawer.

Then Ryan immediately shook his head and laughed to himself for even thinking his ridiculous story had actually occurred.

But something was definitely up with Seth.

And although he wasn't sure he wanted to find out, he wasn't sure he could not.

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Summer unlocked the door and pushed it open; unable to move her feet forward into the apartment she shared with Seth.

Had shared.

She had never just stood in this place, peering inside the apartment, before. It gave her a new, outside perspective view of her life. Everything inside had been who she was and what she had to offer for the past two months. It was her life.

The couch was covered in chaos of old newspapers, the faint smell of left-over food reached her nose, and there were random pieces of paper, clothing, and clumps of trash throughout the carpeted floor of the entire apartment – reaching down the hallway that was connecting the bathroom and bedroom, which was received by two completely shut doors.

This was her life.

Her life was a mess.

Summer walked in, empty suitcase in hand, and shut the apartment door, sighing.

This wasn't what she had planned when she thought about her move out day. She thought Seth would be with her, packing up the big items to put into a moving van to ship them out to Rhode Island and into their new apartment they had waiting for them in Providence. Summer never thought she'd be packing up her needed necessities only to move ten minutes away to live with her gay friend and his boyfriend on their couch.

But somehow, it turned out that way.

Summer pushed open the door to the bedroom and immediately saw the crumpled up note she had written the day before on the floor, falling almost exactly halfway between the dresser and the bed. She placed the suitcase on the floor and reached down for the note, putting it in her pocket, knowing Seth didn't need any reminders of the break up when he came back from Newport that night.

She also noticed the new dent in the wall that was hidden behind the door and next to the dresser. Summer ran her fingers over it as her vision became blurry for probably the thousandth time in the past couple of days. She quickly removed her hand to wipe the tears that appeared in her eyes.

She walked back over to the suitcase, unzipping it on the bed, and began going through the closet for the rest of her clothes. Soon, she began hustling throughout the entire apartment, gathering all of her belongings and throwing them into the suitcase.

As she was emptying her life from the apartment, she stumbled across a photo album she had been making for the past two years, huddled underneath a few sweatshirts and old jeans she kept tucked in the far corner of her closet.

She grabbed it out slowly and fell backwards onto the floor, sliding up to the wall to lean against. Summer opened the cover and began examining each of the pictures, one by one, that defined her relationship with Seth ever since she was that snobby fifteen year-old bitch living in the Newport Beach bubble.

The only pictures that this album held were of ones that captured Seth and Summer's candid moments – both good and bad. All the beginning ones were either taken by Marissa or Kirsten – both people who were obsessed with taking candid photos in high school. Summer always thought it was odd to take pictures of people who weren't smiling or looking at the camera, but Marissa had always said that they showed the true story of a relationship. That smiles only hid the love that Summer and Seth held for one another throughout their high school years – when were together as a couple and even more so when they were apart.

Marissa had given Summer this album as her graduation present, with the pictures she'd already collected inserted inside. She told Summer to find someone else to continue it for her in college – almost seeming that she sensed that her time on this Earth would be cut drastically short in a few given hours – and Summer had smiled awkwardly, wondering what had possessed Marissa to take all of these candid photos of Seth and herself.

Summer wanted to ask Marissa how she knew to keep all these pictures of her and Seth, knowing they would both make it through their high school years together as a couple, but Summer never got the chance.

So Summer never had an answer as to why Marissa knew Seth and Summer would appreciate this album long down the road. And Summer really wished now that she did know why because any type of comfort that Seth and Summer were meant to be together would bring her world back into perspective.

Sometimes Summer thought Marissa had known everything. That she knew the future and foresaw everything that was to happen in her friends' lives, as well as her own.

And then Summer would realize that this thought was stupid. That Marissa was not some saint that came to inspire wisdom in the lives of others, but rather was a fucked up eighteen year old who messed around with an obsessive drug addict for attention, who in turn, killed her in the process. Marissa wasn't the perfect, model person everyone from the outside saw her as. She was someone who always tried to seize all the attention through any means, always trying to be the one people gossiped about. Marissa was addicted to drama. Marissa was stupid for dating a drunken drug addict. Marissa should have pulled herself together and gone off to college like she was supposed to do.

Marissa, Marissa, Marissa.

And there was nothing "Brady Bunch" about it.

It was pretty clear that Summer never really forgave Marissa for causing her own death.

After Marissa died, Summer finally understood Marissa's reasons for taking all the pictures because she was able to see it in all of the candid pictures of Marissa that were put on display during her funeral. The pictures in which Marissa's pose showed that she was hiding an inner sadness behind her smile, while the candids told it like it was. That Marissa's life, however short it was, was full of hope, fear, trust, guilt, and love.

It was then that Summer decided she would continue the album and make a scrapbook of it to put on display at her and Seth's future wedding her eighteen year old self was sure would take place one day.

Seth's smiles throughout the photos stopped Summer's tears momentarily. She started smiling along with him – whether he was wrapping the rope of his too-pathetic-to-actually-call-a-boat sailboat while Summer sat on the deck behind him, talking to him or if he was falling asleep on Summer's lap while they watched a movie in her dorm room freshman year, with Summer's hands playing with the curls in his hair. Seth was always smiling.

Maybe that meant something. Maybe he was happy with Summer.

Summer immediately shut the album closed and threw it up into the suitcase.

No, he needed to find someone else.

He wasn't happy. And he wouldn't be until he dated other people and found the woman he was supposed to be with for the rest of his life.

Summer stood up and zipped the suitcase shut, pulling it off the bed, walking out of the apartment. Silent tears fell down her cheeks as she descended down the three flights of stairs for the last time.